Limestone university quadrangles and prewar apartment blocks sit on a ridge, with an unfinished Gothic cathedral and Riverside Church a few blocks apart.
What Morningside Heights looks like
Columbia's central quadrangle runs from the iron gates at Broadway and 116th Street back to , limestone buildings lined up on both sides of a long lawn. Alma Mater's bronze statue stands on the library steps, facing south down the length of the quad toward the gates.
East and west of the gates, prewar apartment houses run about ten storeys in buff and tan brick, cast iron fire escapes zigzagging down their fronts. On the block backs toward Riverside Park, and at on Broadway some of the upper windows are filled in with brick that does not quite match the wall around it.
On Riverside Drive, the Colosseum and the Paterno building face each other across 116th Street with matching curved fronts, forming a rounded gateway onto the drive. Farther north the Interchurch Center's limestone tower steps up in two pointed gables at 120th Street, and 's Gothic tower rises past ivy covered walls a block beyond it.
The stands on Amsterdam Avenue between 110th and 113th Streets, granite and limestone Gothic Revival begun in 1892 and still two towers short of finished. Uris Hall, a slab of stone and glass from the 1960s, stands on the business school corner of the quad among the neoclassical buildings around it.
Shot in Morningside Heights
Ghostbusters has Venkman, Stantz and Spengler conceive their ghost hunting business plan on the steps of Low Memorial Library, after Columbia cuts the funding for their parapsychology research. Ghostbusters II returns five years later to Avery Hall, whose facade becomes the fictional Institute for Advanced Theoretical Research. The same campus lecture hall, 309 Havemeyer, turns up throughout Hollywood too. Malcolm X shoots a scene inside it, and Mona Lisa Smile turns it into a 1950s Wellesley classroom.
Ghostbusters
Low Memorial Library and Avery Hall, five years and one sequel apart. Both scenes use Columbia's own campus rather than a different city, under invented department names.
Ghostbusters, 1984
Low Memorial Library
After Columbia cuts the funding for their parapsychology research, Venkman, Stantz and Spengler conceive their ghost hunting business plan on the steps of Low Memorial Library. The university has neither a real Department of Parapsychology nor a Weaver Hall, both invented for the film. Street View
Ghostbusters II, 1989
Ghostbusters II uses Avery Hall's exterior as the fictional Institute for Advanced Theoretical Research. Avery Hall is the real home of Columbia's architecture school and its Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, one campus building doubling for an invented department entirely. Street View
What Morningside Heights can double for
Old Campus in Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Yale's Old Campus is the university's oldest quadrangle, built from the same period Beaux-Arts and Collegiate Gothic mix as Columbia's, limestone and brick buildings lined up on both sides of a lawn behind iron gates. From most angles, Low Library's dome and colonnade could pass for a New England quad. Yale's actual quadrangle runs more Gothic and less neoclassical, so keep the frame on Low Library's dome and colonnade rather than the pointed windows further down the block. Try searching limestone university quadrangle now.
Hyde Park mixes the University of Chicago's Gothic quadrangle campus with the same wave of prewar apartment buildings that went up around Columbia, so a block combining campus stone and apartment brick reads the same way in both places. Chicago's apartment buildings run to grayer limestone and greystone fronts, so a shot leaning on Morningside Heights' buff brick blocks needs a tighter frame to avoid the color difference. Try searching quadrangle apartment blocks now.
Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Washington National Cathedral is the same scale of American Gothic Revival stonework as St. John the Divine, so a tight shot on the nave can stand in where a production needs a grand American cathedral rather than a specific building. St. John the Divine's front is missing its two towers, which a wide establishing shot would give away against Washington's completed towers, so keep to interior or partial framing on the nave. Try searching Gothic cathedral nave now.
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