Stone and brick office towers ring Four Corners, and Newark City Hall is where The Dark Knight Rises unveiled its own Batman statue.
What Downtown Newark looks like
Broad and Market Streets cross at , where a narrow, columned office tower rises straight up from the corner over ground floor storefronts. Market Street continues west in three and four storey walkups, roll down gates under most of the upper windows and a vertical sign marking the shuttered halfway down the block.
runs along Broad Street a few blocks north, its mature trees fronting a brick office tower with a stepped, pointed crown. Farther north on the same street, stone and glass towers rise over parking decks, one topped with a pyramidal crown among the taller blocks.
West on Market Street, the fronts a row of Corinthian columns under a triangular pediment, reached by a broad flight of steps. Newark City Hall stands a few blocks south on Broad Street, a limestone block under a gold leafed dome, its name spelled out in bronze over the columned entrance.
stands at the district's eastern edge, its pink granite arches and limestone walls dating from 1935. Its two storey waiting room keeps the original travertine wainscoting and a blue tiled ceiling banded in gold leaf.
Shot in Downtown Newark
Kenny's Music Shop, the Nobel Prize ceremony and a Batman statue unveiling all used real downtown Newark buildings rather than a set. Joker, A Beautiful Mind and The Dark Knight Rises each shot in a different block of Four Corners and its civic core.
Four Corners and the civic core
Three productions used real buildings within a few blocks of Broad and Market. Each one played somewhere else on screen, from Gotham City to a Nobel ceremony in Stockholm.
Joker, 2019
Played Kenny's Music Shop, Gotham City, 1981
Arthur Fleck dances in his clown costume outside a failing storefront called Kenny's Music Shop, an empty store at 199 Market Street beside the disused Paramount Theatre. The same production used Market and Washington Streets a few blocks away for the film's climactic riot, building a fictional Ballinger's Department Store into another storefront. Street View
A Beautiful Mind, 2001
Played the Nobel Prize ceremony hall, Stockholm, Sweden, 1994
John Nash accepts his Nobel Prize inside Prudential Hall, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center's main auditorium at 1 Center Street. The production used the real hall to stand in for the Nobel ceremony itself. Street View
The Dark Knight Rises, 2012
Played Gotham City Hall, Gotham City, present day
Commissioner Gordon unveils a statue of Batman in the rotunda of Newark City Hall, under its grand double staircase. The ceremony plays out inside the real 920 Broad Street building, whose own gold leafed dome tops the rotunda where the statue is unveiled. Street View
What Downtown Newark can double for
Lower Manhattan in New York City, New York
Joker and The Dark Knight Rises both used real downtown Newark buildings to play Gotham City, a version of New York, building a failing storefront into 199 Market Street and using Newark City Hall for a Gotham City Hall scene. The prewar office towers and masonry storefronts look like an older New York, without the crowds or the glass towers of Midtown. Keep modern glass towers and heavy traffic out of the wide shot, since Manhattan's own blocks are far busier and far taller today. Try searching prewar office tower block now.
McLevy Green in Bridgeport, Connecticut
Bridgeport's own McLevy Green is ringed by the same scale of Romanesque and Renaissance Revival stone buildings, including a courthouse with its own columned portico from the 1880s. The green sits at the center of downtown the way Four Corners does in Newark, with commercial blocks radiating outward. Bridgeport's blocks are a story or two shorter on average, so a low, tight angle reads closer to Newark's taller blocks. Try searching Romanesque courthouse on a green now.
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