Queens Boulevard runs wide and multi-lane past an enclosed mall and a repurposed 1920s lodge building.
What Elmhurst looks like
Queens Boulevard runs wide and multi-lane past , a four-story mall with a blank brick and stucco wall on the street. A few blocks west, 's curved concrete retail block sits before a modern apartment tower.
Farther along the boulevard, a limestone and granite building from 1923 rises three and a half stories, a bronze elk still standing beside its front steps under a balustraded terrace. It belongs to a church now.
Broadway, a few blocks north, runs past an older row of buildings. The 's white clapboard sanctuary, with portico columns and a small steeple, dates from 1832 and sits behind an iron fence. 's brick parish house stands nearby, a carved stone reading its name above the door. The 's glass and steel corner rises a block over.
's tower climbs 169 feet in copper-topped turrets over Corona Avenue and 90th Street, its walls faced in buff brick, limestone and terra cotta. Away from these buildings, the side streets are mostly detached and semi-detached frame houses from the 1920s, with brick two-family houses from the 1930s through the 1950s and driveways beside many of them.
Shot in Elmhurst
Coming to America filmed its McDowell's restaurant in a Wetson's turned Wendy's at Queens Boulevard and Broadway in 1988, on a corner that is an apartment building today. The King of Queens opened every episode with a real shot of Queens Center on Queens Boulevard, though its interior scenes were filmed on a soundstage in California.
The King of Queens, 1998 to 2007
Queens Center's exterior
The CBS sitcom's opening titles used a real shot of Queens Center among other Queens landmarks, establishing the borough before every episode. The show's interior scenes were filmed on a soundstage at Sony Pictures Studios in California. Street View
The Loew's Jersey theatre, a 1929 movie palace, stands across Journal Square from a busy transit hub. A new retail tower is going up beside that hub, the same contrast between an ornate older landmark and new big box retail that Queens Boulevard has around Queens Center. PATH station signage and New Jersey license plates would need dressing to hide the state. Try searching theatre beside a transit hub now.
Ilford in London, England
Ilford's Exchange shopping centre stands on the High Road a short walk from Redbridge Town Hall, a Renaissance style civic building from 1901, the same pairing of an indoor mall near an ornate civic landmark that Queens Boulevard has. The High Road repeats the same dense, multilingual storefront signage as the boulevard. British road markings, double decker buses and left hand traffic give away the UK in a wide shot. Try searching shopping centre town hall now.
