Bowfront brick and brownstone rowhouses from the 1850s to the 1880s, and the Benjamin Franklin Institute building Boston Strangler dressed as a police headquarters.
What South End looks like
Bowfront rowhouses in red brick and brownstone line the streets behind wrought iron stoop railings and small fenced gardens, most of them built between 1850 and 1880. Some facades are stucco scored to look like cut stone rather than the brick underneath. crosses Tremont Street where the rows run four and five storeys with cafe awnings and storefronts at ground level. keeps the same bowfront scale without the shops, trees crowding the sidewalk in front of the stairs.
Eleven residential parks break the grid into small squares rather than one open green, each a fenced garden facing rows on every side. is a fenced garden with bowfronts facing it on every side. 's park is smaller and newer, a brick path and benches behind apartment blocks built after the original rows, with a playground slide against the fence.
runs through as the main thoroughfare, a Silver Line bus crossing the block with rowhouse chimneys behind it. The Massachusetts Turnpike marks the edge to the north, brick rowhouses lining the cut where Berkeley Street crosses it. meets Massachusetts Avenue at a gas station under a brick wall. Albany Street holds a transit bus yard on the opposite edge, behind a chain link fence with a mill building and its chimney beyond.
Shot in South End
Boston Strangler's production dressed the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology building as a period police headquarters, lining vintage cars along Appleton Street. Confess, Fletch restricted parking on West Newton Street and Columbus Avenue for a separate scene, near Rutland Square.
Boston Strangler, 2023
Boston Strangler's production dressed the building as a period police headquarters, lining vintage cars along Appleton Street. The Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology occupied the building until its campus closed in December 2025, so the columned portico and stone piers stand as filmed with the school gone from inside. Street View
South End's eleven residential parks were laid out to the same English precedent as Pimlico's own garden square plan, terraced houses facing a fenced green. The stucco-scored fronts on some South End blocks echo Pimlico's white stucco terraces more closely than the plain brick does. London's cream and white stucco reads differently on camera than Boston's red brick and brownstone, so a stucco-fronted block works better than a brick one. Right-hand traffic and British street furniture need dressing out in any wide shot. Try searching garden square terraced houses now.
Boerum Hill in Brooklyn, New York
South End's bowfront brick and brownstone rowhouses share Boerum Hill's period and stoop-and-iron-rail scale, particularly on Warren Avenue where no storefronts break the run. Both were built for the same middle class market in the same decades. Boston's stucco-scored facades and occasional mansard roofs are less common in Boerum Hill, so a straight brick or brownstone block reads more convincingly than one with a scored front. Try searching brownstone stoop rowhouses now.
Fitler Square in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The small fenced garden squares South End's bowfront rowhouses were built around match Fitler Square's own scale, brick rowhouses facing a garden square rather than a single large park. Union Park is the closer comparison of the two. Philadelphia's marble front steps and different cornice brackets are a tell in a close shot; a wider frame on the garden itself hides the difference better. Try searching bowfront rowhouses garden square now.
