Filming in the Great Falls Historic District, Paterson
A waterfall drops seventy seven feet into a basalt gorge past a working power plant and brick mill shells, with the footbridge The Sopranos used twice for its bridge scenes.
What Great Falls Historic District looks like
The Passaic River drops seventy seven feet through a break in the basalt cliff into a narrow gorge. A steel footbridge crosses the gorge just downstream of the falls, mist rising off the water below its rail. runs along the west rim on a paved path, with the falls and the gorge walls in view the whole way.
A brick power plant sits at the edge of the gorge on McBride Avenue, one tall arched window lighting its turbine hall and facing the falls. It still turns turbines on the same water that once ran the mills, and the generators inside supply power to part of the city today. Mill rooftops and a lone smokestack show above the tree line on the far side of the gorge.
A three tiered system of stone walled raceways once carried water away from the falls to the mill blocks below. is now a paved towpath between a stone retaining wall and a wooded slope. Some of the brick mills the raceways once fed still stand roofed and in use. Others are open to the sky, their walls collapsing into the brush.
sits a short walk from the falls, its oval track and grandstand cut into the same rock shelf above the river. From the air, the falls, the raceway paths and the stadium bowl all sit inside one bend of the Passaic. Downtown Paterson's brick mill blocks fill the middle distance beyond them.
Shot in Great Falls Historic District
Paterson and The Sopranos both used the same gorge for very different scenes. One sits at the quiet overlook above the falls, and the other plays out on the footbridge below it.
Paterson, 2016
The film's bus driver returns to the gorge rim near the falls throughout Paterson, and the last scene of the film is set here. The gorge and the mist off the falls fill the frame behind him.
The Sopranos, HBO
In the pilot, Big Pussy and Hesh walk an insurance man out onto this bridge and drop an ice cream cone into the gorge to make their point. In the episode Pax Soprana, Mikey Palmice throws a dealer named Rusty Irish off the same span.
What Great Falls Historic District can double for
Harmony Mills in Cohoes, New York
Cohoes Falls drops about seventy feet right beside the red brick towers of Harmony Mills, the closest match anywhere for a waterfall next to working era brick mills. The mills run four and six storeys with mansard roofs and cast iron trim, a taller and more ornate silhouette than Paterson's. Many of the mill windows now carry residential blinds and air conditioners from a loft conversion, so a tight frame on the brick and the falls together holds the period better than a wide one. Try searching red brick mill waterfall now.
Lowell in Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell's own canal system, nearly six miles of it, runs beside brick mill blocks much like the raceways here. Five and six storey mills line the water. The scale of the canals and the brick is the closest match anywhere outside Paterson itself. The Pawtucket Dam is a low, wide drop rather than a narrow gorge, so keep a falls shot out of the same frame as the canal blocks. Try searching brick mill canal now.
Manayunk's towpath runs beside the same kind of red brick mill blocks, now shops and lofts along Main Street above the canal. It has no waterfall or gorge, so it only doubles for the raceway and mill fabric here, not the falls. Keep the frame on the canal and the mill fronts, since the surrounding hills and rowhouses look like Philadelphia rather than Paterson in a wider shot. Try searching brick mill canal towpath now.
