Brownstone rows from the 1880s and 1890s stand a few streets from truck yards along the Harlem River.
What Mott Haven looks like
between East 138th and East 141st Streets is lined with brownstones built by the 1890s. These blocks became a New York City historic district in 1969. The 40th Precinct station house, built to resemble a Florentine palazzo, is inside the district. So is the , a Carnegie building from 1905.
Two more districts were designated in 1994. and East 140th Street between Brook and Willis Avenues have brownstone rows designed in 1883 by William O'Gorman and William Hornum. The on East 136th Street is yellow brick, put up between 1891 and 1895.
The blocks along the Harlem River carry factories and truck yards, with residential streets to the north. The of 1886 still stands at Lincoln Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard with a clock tower on the corner, the oldest piano factory left in the borough.
is the main cross street, and the 6 train runs beneath it. The and the Willis Avenue Bridge cross the Harlem River at the southwest corner. Most of the neighborhood between the landmark blocks is tenements and public housing.
Shot in Mott Haven
Most of the feature film Mott Haven was shot in the neighborhood it is named for. Several of its sets sit within a block of Lincoln Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard, including a clothing store interior and a corner bar exterior.
Mott Haven, 2021
Lincoln Avenue at Bruckner Boulevard
Played The Ventura, present day
Several of the film's locations are within a block of this corner. Interiors were shot in the Bronx Native clothing store at 127 Lincoln Avenue, and the Mott Haven Bar and Grill at 1 Bruckner Boulevard appears from outside. The Crescendo apartment building at 25 Bruckner Boulevard plays a condominium called The Ventura. Other scenes used Double Dutch Espresso at 2430 Third Avenue, Kramer Pharmacy at 554 East 141st Street and the street beneath the Third Avenue Bridge. Michael Domino, Jesse Wakeman and Robert Mladinich made the film, with Robert Davi in the lead.
What Mott Haven can double for
Mount Morris Park Historic District in Harlem, Manhattan, New York
The Mount Morris Park Historic District has the same high stooped brownstone rowhouses from the 1880s and 1890s, brownstone at the stoop and ground floor with brick above on many blocks. The scale matches Alexander Avenue and the Mott Haven East district closely. Mount Morris Park's rowhouses lean more heavily on Romanesque Revival carving and terra cotta trim, so a plainer block matches Mott Haven more closely. Try searching high stooped brownstone rowhouses now.
Stuyvesant Heights in Brooklyn, New York
The same run of high stoop brownstone rowhouses lines Stuyvesant Heights, built between 1870 and 1900 in Italianate, neo-Grec and Romanesque Revival styles. The blocks run wider than Mott Haven's own, so a tighter frame keeps the two at a matching scale. Deep front stoops and carved cornices repeat down entire blocks here, a denser run than Mott Haven's own landmark streets. Try searching brownstone rowhouses with deep stoops now.
Nineteenth century brick factories and warehouses line the Gowanus Canal the way similar low brick buildings sit along the Harlem River in Mott Haven, with working auto shops and truck yards still active among them. Gowanus is built along a canal rather than a river, and newer glass condominiums now stand among its warehouses, so a frame would need to avoid both to hold the match. Try searching brick warehouses and truck yards now.
