Harlem covers a lot of ground and the housing changes street by street. The parts most useful to a production are the brownstone rows, which run for whole blocks with high stoops, deep window reveals and street trees that have been there a long time.
is the best preserved of them. Two blocks of West 138th and 139th Street were built in the 1890s to a single plan. They still have their rear service alleys, which almost nothing else in Manhattan does.
on West 130th Street is different again. Twenty eight houses built in the 1880s with wooden porches and front gardens, set back from the pavement. Porches on a Manhattan street are unusual enough that the block does not look like Manhattan at all in a tight shot.
faces Marcus Garvey Park and has a similar row of fronts, with the park giving a clear line for a camera on the far side of the street.
North and west the ground rises. in Hamilton Heights curves, which most Manhattan streets do not. runs along the ridge above the valley in Sugar Hill.
125th Street is the commercial spine. The has been on the block since 1914. The marquee and vertical sign are the part most people recognize.
Wes Anderson shot The Royal Tenenbaums in a house in Harlem in 2001. The production worked to keep the backgrounds from reading as a recognisable New York, which these blocks make easier than most of Manhattan does.
