Limestone and brownstone rowhouse blocks climb the hill to City College's Gothic campus.
What Hamilton Heights looks like
and Hamilton Terrace carry long rows of three and four storey rowhouses, limestone and brownstone fronts set behind raised stone stoops. Corner turrets and stepped gables break the roofline every few houses, and low iron fences mark the property lines. The Hamilton Heights Historic District counts 192 rowhouses, apartment buildings and churches across these blocks. Most went up in Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival and Beaux-Arts styles between the 1890s and the 1920s.
City College's rises at the south end of the neighborhood in dark schist and white terra cotta, its towers visible over the rooftops from several blocks away. drops steeply below the campus, a wooded slope between the rowhouse blocks and the avenues to the east.
Storefronts line , a deli or a dry cleaner under each awning, with brick apartment buildings six storeys and taller rising above and fire escapes running down their fronts toward the sidewalk. , a block east of Convent, keeps the freestanding stone and brick mansions that once stood alone on the hill. Each sits behind its own iron fence and trees.
runs along the western edge, limestone based apartment houses with rusticated corners facing the park and the Hudson below. occupies a wooded rise between Riverside Drive and Amsterdam Avenue, granite obelisks and family plots set under old trees.
Shot in Hamilton Heights
Wes Anderson filmed Royal's graveside scene in The Royal Tenenbaums at Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum, a few blocks from the Charles H. Tuttle Mansion the production used as the Tenenbaum family's own house. Hunters sent Sister Harriet's wartime London boarding school to the crypt of the Church of the Intercession, at the neighborhood's northern edge.
The Royal Tenenbaums
Wes Anderson used Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum for Royal's graveside scene. The Tuttle Mansion the production used as the Tenenbaum family's own house stands a few blocks away on Convent Avenue.
The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001
Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum
Played Maddox Hill Cemetery
Royal pays his respects at his family's plot here, under the fictitious name Maddox Hill Cemetery. The production filmed among the real graves and the granite mausoleum overlooking the Hudson. Street View
Hunters, 2020
Played a boarding school, London, the Second World War
The crypt beneath the church stands in for a girls' boarding school in wartime London. Sister Harriet is sent there as a child before the story moves to New York. Street View
Hyde Park and Kenwood pair the same greystone and limestone rowhouse blocks with a university campus at the edge, much like Convent Avenue meeting City College here. The stoops and raised terraces run at a similar scale to Hamilton Heights in a mid shot. Chicago's greystone runs darker and flatter fronted than the limestone here, so a wide establishing shot needs a building with carved stone trim to hold the match. Try searching greystone rowhouse blocks campus now.
Bolton Hill's brownstone and pressed brick rowhouses sit a few blocks from the Maryland Institute College of Art, the same campus at the edge as City College here. Bay windows and marble stoops repeat down its blocks in a similar rhythm to Convent Avenue. Baltimore's rowhouses run flatter fronted with less carved stonework, so a close shot on a doorway will need dressing to match the Beaux-Arts ornament here. Try searching brownstone rowhouses art college now.
Prospect Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn, New York
The limestone and brick two and three family houses around Midwood Street and Rutland Road went up in the same two decades as Hamilton Heights and share its raised stoops and bay fronts. Storefronts line Flatbush Avenue past those blocks the way they line Amsterdam Avenue here. The Brooklyn blocks run flat with no hillside grade, so a shot that needs the slope has to stay on Hamilton Heights itself. Try searching limestone two family houses now.
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