Gabled and turreted wood frame Victorian houses with gingerbread trim and wraparound porches line the streets around a pedestrian mall a few blocks from the beach.
What Cape May looks like
and the blocks around it carry wood frame houses with round corner turrets and steep gabled roofs, porches wrapped in scroll saw brackets and spindled railings. Paint schemes run from pale yellow and cream to teal, olive green and dusty pink, with shutters and window trim picked out in a second colour.
The is a three block brick pedestrian street through the middle of town, shopfronts at ground level under canvas awnings and string lights overhead. Benches and planted beds line the brick paving on and the blocks either side of it, and the upper storeys keep bay windows and porch railings in the same trim as the houses around them. Washington Street continues past the Mall to the , a Stick style house with patterned dark timbering set back on its own grounds.
has the largest of the guesthouses, three and four storeys of stacked porches and balconies facing the water, a widow's walk topping the tallest of them. Open beach and ocean sit a short walk from any of the side streets, with no boardwalk arcade or high rise crowding the shoreline.
Smaller houses on and keep the same vocabulary at a domestic scale, a single turret or a gabled dormer over a wraparound porch. Bay windows are picked out in a contrasting colour, and low picket fences line the sidewalk. Mature trees shade the blocks from one to the next, behind the activity of the mall.
Shot in Cape May
The Prowler was shot at several of the town's real buildings during an off season stretch in 1980, standing in for Avalon Bay, California. A Complete Unknown's production dressed the Washington Street Mall for a week in 2024 as 1965 Newport, Rhode Island.
The Prowler, 1981
Emlen Physick Estate
Played the Chatham house, Avalon Bay, California, 1980
The Chatham house in the film's final act was shot at the Emlen Physick Estate. The production used the real house, a Stick style design with patterned half timbering and a deep wraparound porch, on its own grounds off Washington Street.
A Complete Unknown, 2024
Washington Street Mall
Played a Newport street, Newport, Rhode Island, 1965
The 300 block of the Washington Street Mall was dressed for a week as the 1965 Newport Folk Festival setting. The Victorian Motel at the mall's eastern end stood in as the Viking Motel, its sign swapped by crane for the shoot.
What Cape May can double for
Newport, Rhode Island
A Complete Unknown already dressed the Washington Street Mall as 1965 Newport for the folk festival scenes, swapping storefront signs and renaming a motel for the week. The scale of Cape May's own wood frame hotels and wraparound porches reads convincingly as a Newport street of the period. Keep the brick paving particular to the mall and the modern shop signage at its western end out of frame. Try searching wood frame hotels now.
Wesleyan Grove in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts
The Campground's scroll cut gingerbread trim and steep gables are close cousins of Cape May's own detailing, grouped tightly along narrow lanes around a central green. Most of the surviving cottages went up between the 1860s and the 1880s, the same decades as many of Cape May's own houses. The cottages run a single storey where Cape May's grander houses run two or three, so a wide shot needs careful framing to avoid giving away the smaller scale. Try searching scroll cut gingerbread trim now.
Old Town in Eureka, California
Old Town's Carson Mansion and its Queen Anne neighbours carry the same turrets, bay windows and bracketed porches at an equally grand scale, built across the 1880s like many of Cape May's own hotels. The millwork there runs darker and more heavily carved than Cape May's painted trim. Eureka's fog and conifers place it in the Pacific Northwest in a wide shot, so keep the sky and tree line out of frame for an East Coast match. Try searching turrets bay windows porches now.
