Flat blocks of brick and formstone rowhouses meet O'Donnell Square, where House of Cards shot a campaign rally.
What Canton looks like
Rows of two and three storey brick rowhouses run block after block toward , some fronts left as plain red or tan brick and others covered in formstone, the textured stucco patented in the city in 1937. White marble steps front nearly every door. The square itself is a fenced green ringed by bars and restaurants, cars parked nose in along the curb and a stop sign at each corner.
Boston Street runs along the water past , a cannery built in stages from 1895. Its brick boiler house, factory building and 1924 signature block now hold shops, offices and restaurants behind their original industrial windows. Farther down the same waterfront, a red brick office tower with green glass and a rooftop CareFirst sign rises over a gym and a parking structure clad in ribbed grey metal.
Inland, institutional buildings break up the rowhouse blocks. The former St. Brigid's school and convent on South East Avenue is a mid-century building in brick and aluminum, its glass fronted stair tower at the corner. On South Ellwood Avenue a former Methodist church has a steep gable and a tall pointed arch window. The neighborhood's Enoch Pratt library branch stands nearby, its own roofline gabled and slate roofed. , its three towers covered in gold onion domes, stands off Eastern Avenue near the neighborhood's edge.
Shot in Canton
Netflix's House of Cards used O'Donnell Square for a Pennsylvania campaign rally in its first season. Decades earlier, the diner from Barry Levinson's Diner sat on a vacant lot at Boston Street and Montford Avenue, a site since redeveloped as townhouses.
House of Cards, 2013
O'Donnell Square
Played a campaign rally, Pennsylvania, present day
The production used the square's own green for a Season 1 campaign rally scene, standing in for Pennsylvania during Congressman Peter Russo's campaign story line. The rowhouses and bars around the square are undressed today, the same block a scout would find now. Street View
Fishtown's rowhouses got the same formstone treatment Baltimore's did. Salesmen went door to door on streets like Crease Street, and a number of houses there still carry it in good condition. The two and three storey brick scale matches Canton's blocks closely. Fishtown's marble steps are less universal than Canton's, and newer glass infill buildings show up in wider shots. Try searching formstone rowhouses now.
Narrow brick rowhouses built for industrial workers still line Lawrenceville's blocks, and century old brick warehouses along the Allegheny have been converted into offices and studios much the way the Can Company was. Lawrenceville's hillside streets and murals are unlike Canton's flat grid, so tighter frames along a level block hold the match better. Try searching brick rowhouses converted warehouses now.
Red Hook Stores, a brick 1869 warehouse on Conover Street, was converted into apartments and ground floor retail behind its original arched windows. It is the same kind of adaptive reuse as the Can Company. Red Hook's own streets are cobblestone and its houses are wood frame and brownstone rather than rowhouse brick, so the match is closer on the waterfront than inland. Keep wide shots to the converted warehouse blocks on the waterfront rather than the residential streets. Try searching converted brick warehouse waterfront now.
