Borough Hall's colonnade and a pedestrian shopping mall sit under new glass residential towers.
What Downtown Brooklyn looks like
Fulton Street runs through the middle of the neighborhood as a pedestrian mall, closed to cars between storefronts selling phones, sneakers and fast food under painted signs and plate glass. 's Greek Revival colonnade and green copper cupola rise at the western end, fronted by a working fountain and a small park.
The keeps a domed banking hall behind its own marble colonnade on DeKalb Avenue, dating from 1908. Closer to Borough Hall, the 's cast iron and terra cotta storefront survives from Fulton Street's department store years, dwarfed now by the towers around it.
Glass residential and office towers rise directly behind the older civic buildings. 's plazas and mid rise blocks and the supertall Brooklyn Tower stand over Borough Hall's dome and the white tiered federal courthouse on Cadman Plaza, so a single wide shot can hold a nineteenth century colonnade and a reflective glass tower in the same frame.
Underground, keeps two disused outer platforms behind its working tracks, tiled in the same cream and green as the platforms still in service. A rider on the working side sees a lit, empty platform across the tracks with nobody on it.
Shot in Downtown Brooklyn
Brooklyn Borough Hall's Greek Revival portico and cupola stood in for a Chase Bank branch in Catch Me If You Can. A few blocks south, the disused outer platforms at Hoyt-Schermerhorn Street station have carried a run of productions needing an empty, working looking station.
Hoyt-Schermerhorn Street station
The disused outer platforms sit behind the working A, C and G tracks, walled off since the line's outer local tracks stopped carrying passengers.
Catch Me If You Can, 2002
Brooklyn Borough Hall
Played a Chase Bank branch, an unnamed American city, 1960s
The building's Ionic portico and steps were dressed as the exterior of a Chase Bank branch that Frank Abagnale scams. The gilded Justice statue on the cupola and the fountain in front were not disguised. Street View
The Warriors, 1979
Hoyt-Schermerhorn Street station
Played a New York City subway station, New York City, 1970s to present
The station's disused outer platforms have stood in for working subway scenes in The Warriors and The Wiz. Nighthawks used the same platforms, and so later did Coming to America, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Taking of Pelham 123. No dressing is needed beyond running a train through and clearing the platform. Street View
Journal Square keeps the same pairing Downtown Brooklyn does, a Beaux-Arts civic building beside new residential towers. Joker used the front steps and colonnade of the Hudson County Courthouse as Wayne Hall, dressed with police cars and a crowd for the clown riot. Journal Square's PATH station entrance and the Loew's Jersey marquee are recognizable enough to need framing out, and its new towers cluster tighter together than Downtown Brooklyn's do. Try searching Beaux-Arts courthouse front steps now.
Four Corners in Newark, New Jersey
Newark's Four Corners historic district lines Broad and Market Street with the same run of Renaissance and Italianate era retail buildings that lines Fulton Street toward Borough Hall, most built between the 1870s and the 1930s. Newer towers stand close behind them, the way MetroTech and the Brooklyn Tower stand behind Downtown Brooklyn's older blocks. Newark's storefronts run narrower and its side streets are quieter, so a shot needs the widest part of Broad Street to match Fulton Street's scale. Try searching Renaissance Italianate retail buildings now.
