Brownstone rows from 1859 to 1900, and the library Spotlight filmed from Copley Square.
What Back Bay looks like
Back Bay runs on a flat grid laid out in the French style. Commonwealth Avenue, and Boylston Street run east to west, crossed by streets named alphabetically from Arlington to Hereford. Three- to five-storey brownstone rowhouses line every block, the same bay windows and cornices repeating from one front to the next, dating from 1859 to about 1900.
Newbury Street repeats the same brownstone fronts as the blocks around it, with glass shopfront windows filling the ground floors under the original bay windows and iron fire escapes above. At Exeter Street, a Romanesque corner building rises in red sandstone and brownstone trim. Arched windows run over its ground floor storefronts.
Commonwealth Avenue splits into two carriageways around a tree-lined mall down its center, gravel paths and iron benches under rows of trees, with matching brownstone rows facing the mall from both sides of the avenue. The mall runs 32 acres along the avenue, laid out between 1856 and 1888.
The fills the west side of in pale granite, three arched doorways under an inscription naming the building, the John Hancock Tower rising in glass behind it. Several blocks out Commonwealth Avenue, the stands in dark red brick with a columned entrance and iron balconies over the sidewalk, a crimson flag above the door.
Shot in Back Bay
Spotlight filmed its Boston Public Library scenes on location at the Copley Square entrance, with the Hancock Tower visible behind the actors as they climb the steps. The newsroom scenes elsewhere in the film used the Boston Globe's then Dorchester offices rather than a Back Bay location.
Spotlight, 2015
The Boston Public Library
Rachel McAdams' character enters the library from its Copley Square side, with the Hancock Tower visible behind her. The journalists' research scenes inside used the library's own public records and materials, filmed on location rather than on a constructed replica. Street View
Park Slope sits at the same scale and period as Back Bay, brownstone rowhouse blocks with the same bay windows and stone stoops repeating from one flat, gridded street to the next. Both were built out in a single sustained push rather than lot by lot, so the cornice lines run true for entire blocks. Park Slope's stoops sit higher off the sidewalk and its blocks are narrower, so a wide shot needs care to avoid the difference in street width. Try searching brownstone rowhouse block now.
Mount Vernon's rowhouses run to the same three and four storey height with bracketed cornices and bay fronts, and its own tree planted squares echo the 's formal median. Marble steps and lighter toned brick are the giveaway in a close shot, and the streets are narrower than Back Bay's. Try searching rowhouses with bay fronts now.
South Kensington's white stucco terraces run to a similar three and four storey scale with bay fronts and iron balconies, a genteel residential grid comparable to Back Bay's own. The material reads differently on camera, stucco rather than brownstone, but the proportions and repetition match. British postboxes and road markings would need dressing out. The stucco would also need staining to pass for brownstone. Try searching white stucco terraces now.
