Flat industrial streets of car lots and warehouses meet the shoreline, and the Poppenhusen Institute's ballroom stood in for a Women's Temperance League hall in Boardwalk Empire.
What College Point looks like
runs as the commercial spine through a grid of one and two family houses, most of them built in the 1920s. On 20th Avenue nearby, the street widens into a strip of big box stores with parking lots out front, across from a wide fenced field where a few old hangars remain.
On 15th Avenue, corner gas stations and auto body shops face each other under painted signs, garage doors open to the street. A few blocks north, the plant fills a full block in blue corrugated metal, its name lettered across a white tower above the roofline.
The shoreline at is undeveloped, a line of wooden pilings in the water and a rocky bank facing the Whitestone Bridge. Farther south on Flushing Bay, the loads waste barges under blue gantry cranes, a tugboat working the dock below.
Inland, 14th Road holds the , a five storey Stern Victorian building with a mansard roof and its name set into a pediment above the cornice. A few blocks east, rises in white clapboard with a square steeple. The mansard roofed stands at the traffic circle on 13th Avenue.
Shot in College Point
For Boardwalk Empire, the HBO series shot its Women's Temperance League scenes inside the Poppenhusen Institute's own grand hall on 14th Road. Margaret Schroeder's address to the League of Women Voters was filmed there in the show's first season.
Boardwalk Empire, 2010
The Poppenhusen Institute hall
Played a Women's Temperance League hall, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1920s
Margaret Schroeder addresses the League of Women Voters inside the institute's own hall, dressed as a 1920s meeting room. The Women's Temperance League scenes from the show's first season were shot in the same room. Street View
What College Point can double for
Bayonne, New Jersey
Bayonne sits on its own flat industrial peninsula, with car dealerships and warehouses running down to the water under the Bayonne Bridge, a scale close to College Point's own edge. The Bayonne Bridge is a steel arch rather than a suspension span, so a shot naming it needs care. Port Jersey's container cranes also stand taller than anything at College Point's own waterfront. Try searching car dealerships and warehouses now.
East Side in Chicago, Illinois
East Side sits flat between the Calumet River and Lake Michigan, its small houses backing onto old steel mill land, with the Chicago Skyway crossing overhead the way the Whitestone Expressway crosses College Point. Chicago's bungalow houses and the Skyway's own tollway signage are different enough from College Point's frame houses to need dressing in a close shot. Try searching expressway crossing overhead now.
Cape May, New Jersey
Cape May's own churches use the same Stick style and Gothic Revival details College Point's do, block after block of wood trim and steep gables from the 1870s to the 1890s. Cape May's whole downtown is preserved as a historic district, so a wide pull risks showing more matching houses in one frame than College Point actually has. Try searching Stick style churches now.
