The Pepsi-Cola sign stands in Gantry Plaza State Park. The Silvercup sign is still on the roof of the old bakery.
What Long Island City looks like
Long Island City is the western tip of Queens, across the East River from Midtown. The towers along the water are recent. A few streets inland the buildings drop back to two and three storeys of brick.
Pepsi bottled on the waterfront and the Silvercup bakery ran on 21st Street. The neighborhood was rezoned from industrial to residential in 2001, and 41 apartment buildings went up between 2010 and 2017.
The in the park is a 1990s rebuild of the one that went up on the bottling plant roof in 1940. It runs 150 feet wide in red neon script. The two gantries the park is named for stand beside it, from 1925.
The neon roof sign on dates from about 1961 and is visible from the 7 train coming into . The building was the Gordon Baking Company bakery before it became a studio.
Low blocks run west from . Nineteen townhouses from the late nineteenth century stand on between 21st and 23rd Streets, a city landmark since 1968. One street south, the elevated 7 platform stands over 45th Road. is the old shopping street, still two or three storeys with storefronts at the bottom.
Shot in Long Island City
Both of these used what was already standing. The Warriors found it in the block below Court Square, and Highlander found it on the roof of the old bakery.
The Warriors, 1979
Played the Orphans' turf, Tremont, the Bronx, 1979
The Warriors come up onto the street after a fire stops their train and the Orphans meet them there. In the film this is Tremont in the Bronx. The block is 45th Road, beside the elevated Court Square station. The card shop with the pitched roof that one of the Orphans watches from is 21-57 45th Road, a barber shop now. Mercy comes out of the doorway at 21-37. They leave heading west towards 21st Street. Street View
Highlander, 1986
The Silvercup sign
Played a rooftop above New York City, New York City, New York, 1986
The last fight with the Kurgan was written for the Coney Island rollercoaster and moved to the roof under the Silvercup sign, at the Queens end of the Queensboro Bridge. The sign went up around 1961 over the building now known as Silvercup Studios. The sign that comes apart in the film was a third scale copy built and wrecked at a studio in London. The real one is still on the roof.
Productions already use Exchange Place to double for Manhattan and its edges, Joker, A Beautiful Mind and Men in Black among them. The Harborside complex there is a 1927 to 1931 concrete and steel railroad warehouse standing beside glass office towers up to 700 feet, the same brick-warehouse-against-glass mix as Long Island City's own waterfront. Harborside's warehouse blocks read lower and more uniform than Long Island City's mixed towers, so keep both the old brick and a glass tower in frame to hold the match. Try searching Harborside warehouse towers now.
Liberty Village has stood in for itself in a run of real productions. The original Police Academy's foot chase went past the Irwin Toy Factory and the Brunswick factory, and a lab building that once stood on Liberty Street appeared in The Fly. Its red brick Victorian factories converted into loft condominiums starting in the 1990s, with new glass towers built in among them, the same old brick and new glass mix as Vernon Boulevard and Court Square. Toronto's factory smokestacks and taller brick cornices are a giveaway in a wide shot, so a tighter frame on a converted loft entrance works best. Try searching converted brick factory lofts now.
Fulton Market's brick warehouses and loading docks stand beside new glass towers the same way Vernon Boulevard does, on cobblestone streets under buildings that once served the meatpacking trade. The exposed brick and low, dense blocks match the streets west of Court Square before the towers start. Chicago's cobblestone paving is a tell in a low wide shot that Long Island City does not have, so keep the pavement out of frame or work close on the brick alone. Try searching brick warehouses glass towers now.
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