Press brick rowhouses from 1800 to 1919 run to Eastern Market, where Body of Lies dressed a block as wintry Amsterdam.
What Capitol Hill looks like
Rowhouses run in matching blocks across more than 150 squares, most two or three storeys and two or three bays wide. Federal townhouses and Greek Revival fronts from the early 1800s stand beside the press brick rows that followed, with bracketed cornices, decorative brickwork courses and stoops rising straight from the sidewalk. Most of what is standing dates from 1800 to 1919, and most of that is late Victorian.
Iron fences enclose small front gardens along the residential side streets, and more than a hundred apartment buildings went up between 1900 and 1930 on the same blocks. , a covered market hall on 7th Street SE, sits at the commercial edge with a long iron canopied shed along its side. continues south along 8th Street, awnings and painted signs over storefronts under the same brick facades. runs through as the main retail corridor.
and break the rowhouse blocks with open squares, trees and benches along brick paths. does the same a few blocks south. The grid is regular and mostly flat, numbered streets running one way and lettered streets crossing them at right angles.
Shot in Capitol Hill
For Body of Lies in 2007, the production dressed Eastern Market and the block around it as a wintry Amsterdam street for a short car bomb sequence. Broadcast News used a rowhouse on the 600 block of as Aaron Altman's home, a separate real credit from 1987. The address is 639 East Capitol Street SE, where one scene plays out on the front stoop.
Body of Lies, 2008
Eastern Market
Played a street, Amsterdam, Netherlands, present day, dressed for winter
Filming began here in September 2007 for a short sequence in which the market block was dressed to stand in for a wintry Amsterdam street, ending in a car bomb explosion. Eastern Market operates today as a public food hall on the same site.
Society Hill's brick rowhouses share the same press brick fronts and bracketed cornices as Capitol Hill's own blocks, both built across the same span from the early 1800s through the 1910s. Federal era townhouses stand mixed with later Victorian rows in both neighborhoods, one design running to a corner before the next block changes. Philadelphia's marble stoops and shuttered windows read differently in close shots, so keep the frame on the brick fronts and the cornice line. Try searching press brick rowhouses now.
Federal Hill's Victorian rowhouses match Capitol Hill's own late nineteenth century blocks for scale, two and three storeys with bracketed cornices along a flat roofline. Formstone recladding covers some of the original brick fronts there, so a block where the original brick survives is the one to scout. Skip any formstone clad front in a wide shot, since that stone look cladding does not appear on Capitol Hill's own press brick rows. Try searching brick fronts bracketed cornices now.
Savannah's historic district squares echo Capitol Hill's own run of garden squares breaking up the residential grid, brick and stucco townhouses from the same general span facing onto them. The comparison holds for a square and its immediate block rather than the wider neighborhood. Savannah's live oaks and hanging moss are the giveaway in any wide shot, and its squares sit closer together than Capitol Hill's own. Try searching garden squares residential grid now.
