Main Street runs the length of the island in red brick between concrete apartment towers, and Nighthawks used the aerial tram overhead for its 1981 hostage climax.
What Roosevelt Island looks like
The island sits in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, two miles long and about eight hundred feet across at its widest. is the only paved road, laid in red brick and running the length of it. A red bus works it end to end. Cars park at meters along the curb, with signed limits that change block to block. Residents park free overnight.
Concrete and brown brick towers line Main Street, four to twelve storeys, set back behind lawns and paved plazas rather than a sidewalk grid. Taller towers in plainer brick and glass rise toward the south end, some reaching the water with balconies stacked in red and white bands.
At the south tip a roofless stone ruin stands behind a chain link fence, ivy climbing its grey gneiss walls and steel bracing across one corner. The sits nearer the middle of Main Street in red brick and rough stone, its copper spire and slate roof set directly against the towers behind it.
At the north end an octagonal stone rotunda with a grey mansard dome forms the entrance to a modern apartment building, curved balconies rising in tiers around it. fills the south tip, a triangle of lawn and clipped trees narrowing to an open granite room inscribed with Roosevelt's own words and a straight view to the United Nations.
The tram runs on a cable slung under the Queensboro Bridge, a small red cabin marked ROOSEVELT ISLAND crossing the river in a few minutes. A paved promenade follows the water west of Main Street, ending at a rusted steel platform shaped like a ship's prow, with Midtown towers filling the opposite bank.
Shot on Roosevelt Island
Two productions have used Roosevelt Island as itself rather than dressing it as somewhere else. One took over for its climax, and the other shot an entire film among the apartment blocks along Main Street.
Nighthawks, 1981
The tram taken hostage
Wulfgar hijacks a tram car of hostages in the film's climax and holds it over the East River while a police helicopter circles below. Universal shut the tram down to shoot the sequence, and thirty islanders sued to stop it before a State Supreme Court judge let filming continue. Stallone was winched up to the moving cabin himself, with no stunt double. That cabin is gone now, replaced along with the rest of the system in a 2010 rebuild that kept only the three original tower bases. Street View
Dark Water, 2005
The apartment block
Walter Salles set the film on Roosevelt Island and shot its exteriors here, the first production built entirely around the island rather than a single set piece like the tram scenes before it. The brutalist apartment blocks along Main Street are what the camera shows, standing in as the leaking, dimly lit building a mother and daughter move into.
Thamesmead's raised concrete walkways and slab towers around open water are one of the closest matches for Roosevelt Island's own scale, a whole planned town rather than a single block. Both were built car limited and pedestrian first, in the same postwar decades. Thamesmead's lakes and green verges read wider than the East River promenade, so a tight walkway frame holds the match better than a wide aerial shot. British road markings and postboxes still need dressing out. Try searching raised concrete walkways now.
Co-op City in The Bronx, New York
Co-op City's brick towers rising over open lawns and parking courts read at the same 1970s scale as Roosevelt Island's own Northtown blocks. Both went up under the Mitchell Lama program, with wide plazas between the towers rather than a street grid. Co-op City's towers run taller and its grounds spread wider than Roosevelt Island's narrow strip, so keeping two or three towers together in frame holds the scale better than a single wide establishing shot. Try searching Mitchell Lama brick towers now.
Starrett City in Brooklyn, New York
Starrett City's concrete tower blocks set among courtyards and playing fields are a looser match for the same Mitchell Lama era, built between 1972 and 1976. Its marshy site spreads far wider than Roosevelt Island's narrow shape, with no waterfront promenade running its length. Frame tight on a single courtyard between towers, since the open ball fields and parking lots around them give the wider site away in a drone or wide shot. Try searching Mitchell Lama tower blocks now.
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