Flat postwar streets and strip malls back a state university campus whose library stood in for Starfleet Academy in Star Trek.
What Northridge looks like
runs the length of the neighborhood as a straight commercial strip, four lanes wide with strip malls, chain stores and surface parking lots set back from the sidewalk. A Metro bus runs the boulevard's full length, and the storefronts repeat in low stucco blocks from one intersection to the next.
Behind the boulevard, the side streets are flat and wide, laid out in a grid of single-story houses on individual lots. and streets like it carry tract houses from the late 1940s and 1950s, mostly stucco with attached garages and long, uninterrupted sightlines down the block.
California State University, Northridge occupies 356 acres at the north end of the neighborhood, its low concrete buildings arranged around open quads and walkways. The stands at the head of the main quad in tan concrete and glass, its colonnade running the width of the building under a flat roofline.
sits on a 72-acre site off Reseda Boulevard, its two levels of stores wrapped around wide interior corridors and anchor department stores at each end. Outside, a multi-level parking structure surrounds the building on three sides, open to the sky.
Shot in Northridge
CSUN's campus and the mall down Reseda Boulevard have both stood in for other places on screen. The library played a Starfleet campus, and the mall has been rebuilt once since a chase scene ran through it.
Star Trek
The Delmar T. Oviatt Library at CSUN. The production shot the library's real exterior and courtyard as the Starfleet Academy campus, no set dressing beyond dressing the extras.
Star Trek, 2009
Delmar T. Oviatt Library
Played Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, California, 23rd century
The production used the Delmar T. Oviatt Library's exterior and courtyard as the Starfleet Academy campus. The library's brutalist colonnade and broad front steps are what appear on screen.
Innerspace, 1987
Northridge Fashion Center
Played Santa Clara Fashion Square, a fictional mall in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1987
The mall's interior was used as the fictional Santa Clara Fashion Square for a chase sequence that runs through its stores and upper level. The mall has since been rebuilt after 1994 earthquake damage, so the storefronts on screen no longer match what is there today.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 1991
The mall's exterior was used for the chase sequence in which the T-1000 pursues John Connor's motorcycle out of the building. The current level 2 entrance and forecourt postdate the 1994 rebuild that followed the film.
What Northridge can double for
John S. Park in Las Vegas, Nevada
The low-pitched roofs and broad street-facing facades of John S. Park's ranch and minimal traditional houses read close to Northridge's own postwar tracts, both built for the same scale of family lot. Covered patios and L-shaped plans give the block a similar rhythm from house to house. John S. Park's lots are smaller and its streets narrower than Northridge's, so a wide establishing shot gives away the difference; tighter frames on one or two houses hold the illusion better. Try searching ranch house block now.
Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona
ASU's Tempe campus went up in the same building boom as CSUN, with precast concrete buildings linked by covered concrete walkways around shared courtyards. The low, flat-roofed massing plays a similar institutional quad without needing a specific building match. ASU's concrete buildings show more red brick and sun-shading grille work than CSUN's plainer panels, so a close study of one facade risks giving away the difference; a wider quad shot holds up better. Try searching concrete campus walkway now.
Central Avenue in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Central Avenue is a long, straight commercial strip lined with the same small storefronts and surface parking as Reseda Boulevard, at the same driving scale. Its Route 66 era motel signs and murals give the strip more signage and colour than Reseda's plainer stretch. Those signs and murals are distinctly Albuquerque, so a frame that includes them gives the location away; hold on a plain storefront block instead. Try searching straight commercial strip now.
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