Angled streets of Victorian wood and brick cottages, and the Twin Anchors bar where The Dark Knight shot its Two-Face scene.
What Old Town looks like
Old Town's side streets break from Chicago's grid, narrow and set at angles instead of square corners. Two and three storey houses line them, wood frame next to brick. Bay windows, porches and small front gardens sit under trees that arch over the sidewalks, iron fences and gas lamps marking the property lines down blocks like Menomonee and Eugenie.
rises over Eugenie Street, a red brick tower dating from 1869 topped by a spire added in 1888. A few blocks over, the old building sits at Hudson and Menomonee. Its upper floor is half timbered in white stucco and dark wood, the shop's lettering still painted across the gable above shuttered street level windows.
Wells Street is the commercial strip running north from North Avenue, three and four storey brick buildings with arched windows and ground floor awnings, the building that houses among them. Private courts run off the side streets behind the houses, brick paved and gated, 's stone gatepost marking one entrance.
The Sedgwick stop on the CTA Brown and Purple lines sits on elevated tracks a few blocks west, its platforms roofed in steel over the street below. North Avenue has its own row of storefronts east of Wells, the marked by a green awning and a hanging sign at its corner.
Shot in Old Town
The Twin Anchors bar and rib restaurant at the corner of played itself in The Dark Knight. The same room appeared earlier in Return to Me.
The Dark Knight, 2008
Twin Anchors
The bar is where Harvey Dent, as Two-Face, confronts and shoots the corrupt Detective Wuertz. The neon Twin Anchors sign over the door is visible from both Sedgwick and Eugenie.
Cabbagetown's brick and wood Victorian cottage rows are gabled and bay windowed at a similarly compact scale, built in roughly the same decades as Old Town's own. Both keep small front gardens behind low fences right up to the sidewalk. Cabbagetown's blocks run straighter and longer than Old Town's angled streets, so a wide shot down more than one block gives it away. Try searching Victorian cottage row now.
Cole Valley in San Francisco, California
Cole Valley's wood frame Victorian cottage rows share the same bay windows, gables and narrow lot widths as Old Town's own. Front stairs and small porches look the same way in a tight shot. San Francisco's hills show in almost any wide or elevated angle, so keep the camera at street level and close to one house. Try searching wood frame Victorian cottage now.
Georgetown in Washington, District of Columbia
Georgetown's side streets also break from the surrounding grid, lined with small brick rowhouse blocks from a similar period. Most are taller and more uniform than Old Town's mixed wood and brick cottages. Georgetown's cobblestone paving and colonial era brick are the giveaway in a wide shot, so a tighter street level frame works better. Try searching brick rowhouse side street now.
.jpg)
