A sheltered harbor behind a sand spit holds a marina next to quiet blocks of postwar ranch houses.
What Great Kills looks like
A narrow sand spit shelters from the open water of the Lower Bay. Marinas and boatyards line the inner shore, with docks, boat lifts and moored sailboats and motor cruisers side by side. The park behind the harbor runs for close to two miles, with a swimming beach, salt marsh and woodland trails behind the dunes. About half of it stays closed for an ongoing radiation cleanup, so a shoot needs to confirm which stretch of dune or trail is open first.
Away from the water, the streets are single family ranch houses, split levels and center hall colonials. Most went up in the 1960s and 1970s, after the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened. The blocks are tree lined and quiet, with driveways, attached garages and backyards behind most houses.
has the shops, crossing Nelson Avenue at the neighborhood's main intersection with supermarkets, banks and diners along both sides. A Coptic Orthodox church with a white cupola and arched windows stands farther along the road. The Staten Island Railway station sits a few blocks north on Giffords Lane, its platforms under turquoise blue canopies, with the post office and the public library nearby.
Shot in Great Kills
Donnie Brasco used the boatyard on Great Kills Harbor for the scene where the FBI pulls Joseph Pistone out of his undercover assignment before the mob can order a killing. The 2015 comedy Staten Island Summer staged an explosion at the Great Kills Swim Club on Nahant Street.
Donnie Brasco, 1997
Donnie Brasco filmed here in 1996, at what was then Staten Island Boat Sales, for the scene where the FBI ends Pistone's undercover assignment. The yard is still a marina today, trading as SI Yachts at the same Mansion Avenue address on Great Kills Harbor.
What Great Kills can double for
Massapequa, New York
Massapequa's canal front streets south of Merrick Road were built the same way after the war, ranch and cape houses on quarter acre lots with private docks and boats kept behind them. The scale and period match Great Kills closely. The canals put boats directly behind the houses rather than in a shared marina, so a wide shot needs to avoid showing private docks unless that is the point. Try searching canal front ranch houses now.
City Island, Bronx
City Island's marinas and boatyards give it the same working harbor feel as Great Kills, with yacht clubs and moored sailboats along City Island Avenue. The houses are older clapboard cottages rather than ranches, so it reads better for the water than for the streets behind it. Keep the frame on the docks and boats. The Victorian clapboard houses behind them look older than Great Kills and give the difference away in a wide shot. Try searching marinas and boatyards now.
Silverton in Toms River, New Jersey
Silverton's lagoon front streets on the bay side of Toms River are ranch houses and split levels on quarter acre lots, close in scale to Great Kills. Boats sit on private lifts behind each house rather than in one marina. A wide shot showing several backyard docks in a row looks more like the Jersey Shore than Staten Island, so keep boats to one or two houses at most. Try searching lagoon front ranch houses now.
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