Cobbled harbor streets of brick rowhouses, and the pier building Homicide: Life on the Street used as its police headquarters.
What Fells Point looks like
runs along the working harbor, paved in Belgian block, with piers reaching into the water at the cross streets and boats moored along them. Brick storefronts line the street at ground level, their upper floors given over to housing, with dormers and iron balconies set into some of the rooflines.
Most of the rowhouses are two and a half storeys and run in unbroken rows to the corner. The earliest fronts are laid in Flemish bond, each course alternating brick end and side faces along its length. The , at 812 South Ann Street, is built this way and dates from 1765. Later rows built through the nineteenth century keep the same brick and the same scale.
is the neighborhood's commercial corner, with painted wood shopfronts set into three storey brick buildings and hanging signs over the sidewalk. , on Thames Street, is a three storey brick building with an arched side entrance and a hanging sign over the door. Narrow alleys, like the one off , cut behind the main streets between plain brick rear walls.
Farther from the water, is a run of two storey brick rowhouses on South Dallas Street, with stone steps and iron rails at each door. Their brick is a darker red than the harborfront blocks, laid in plain running bond.
Shot in Fells Point
For seven seasons, Homicide: Life on the Street used the old City Recreation Pier as the exterior and squadroom for its fictional homicide unit. The show ran on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and the pier sat vacant for years after it wrapped before reopening as a hotel. Sleepless in Seattle, also from 1993, used 904 South Broadway as the exterior of Annie's family house.
Homicide: Life on the Street
The pier building at 1715 Thames Street was the police headquarters exterior and squadroom for all seven seasons. It is a large brick block with a colonnaded upper front, a pediment and a radio tower over the roof, standing at the harbor end of Thames Street. Street View
What Fells Point can double for
Old Town in Alexandria, Virginia
Old Town's brick rowhouses and Belgian block streets run down to the Potomac waterfront at the same scale and material as Thames Street. King Street's storefronts sit under similar two and three storey brick fronts. Alexandria's streets run wider and its curbs are granite rather than brick, which shows up in a low wide shot. Try searching brick waterfront rowhouses now.
Portsmouth in New Hampshire
Portsmouth's colonial harbor blocks mix brick rowhouses with painted wood storefronts at a similar two and three storey scale, close enough to the water to frame boats in the same shot. Portsmouth's brick runs paler and more Georgian in detail, and its streets are narrower than Fells Point's. Try searching colonial brick harbor storefronts now.
Red Hook keeps cobblestone streets running down to piers on the water, with plain brick warehouse fronts nearby. Red Hook's buildings run larger and more industrial, so a tight street level frame reads closer to Fells Point than a wide shot does. Try searching cobblestone street to the water now.
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