Wide avenues carry Victorian houses and Gothic institutional buildings around a brick Main Street and a 1907 rail stop.
What Garden City looks like
Franklin Avenue is the village's commercial spine, two storey brick storefronts under awnings, overhead traffic lights and a brick crosswalk at the Stewart Avenue corner. Side streets off it run wide and straight, with mature trees and large houses set back from the curb on deep lawns.
On Hilton Avenue, a yellow brick Victorian house from 1871 sits at the end of a gravel driveway behind dense trees and a low fence, a slate mansard roof over its upper floor. Fifty houses from the same 1871 to 1893 period line 4th, 5th and 6th Streets and Cathedral and Cherry Valley Avenues. They carry mansard roofs, cupolas and frame or brick construction.
on Stewart Avenue is a dark red brick Victorian Gothic building with carved stone archways and an inscription over its entrance. A few blocks south, a three storey stone and brick building with neoclassical columns stands among the lower storefronts on Franklin Avenue.
, a one storey brick and stucco building under a wide hipped roof, is a 1907 stop on the Long Island Rail Road's Hempstead Branch. Brick pavers run along its platform side. A concrete passageway, painted beige with brown wainscoting, connects the platforms underneath.
Shot in Garden City
The Many Saints of Newark filmed for two days at a working funeral home on Franklin Avenue. The production used the building itself rather than a set standing in for it.
The Many Saints of Newark, 2021
The funeral home is a red brick Colonial Revival building on Franklin Avenue. About 250 cast and crew were on site over two days in April 2019, including Michael Gandolfini. They shot at the funeral home itself. Street View
What Garden City can double for
Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey
Llewellyn Park's large Victorian houses on lots sit behind long driveways and dense trees, close to the scale and period of the mansard roofed houses on Garden City's oldest blocks. A gated, private association marks the park's edges rather than open streets. The park's lanes curve through dense trees, while Garden City's grid runs straight, so a camera held square to a house front keeps the match tighter. Try searching large Victorian houses on lots now.
Bronxville keeps a short run of Tudor storefronts near a station a block from its downtown, in the same institutional Gothic register as Garden City's own school and cathedral buildings. Bronxville's hillier terrain and closer building spacing give it away in a wide shot, so tighter frames on the storefronts work best. Try searching Tudor storefronts near a station now.
Chevy Chase in Montgomery County, Maryland
Chevy Chase has the same wide tree lined avenues and large houses set back on deep lawns, platted from the 1890s like Garden City's own Estates streets. Chevy Chase's closer lot lines and the absence of a Franklin Avenue style commercial spine are the giveaways in any wider establishing shot. Try searching wide tree lined avenues now.
