A Bronx peninsula of brick rowhouses and beach bungalows ending at a nineteenth century fort under a suspension bridge.
What Throggs Neck looks like
Throggs Neck occupies a narrow peninsula in the southeast Bronx, with the East River on one side and Long Island Sound on the other. In Throgs Neck proper, brick Greek Revival and Italianate rowhouses sit behind front yards larger than average. Cape Cod bungalows line the narrow lanes of Edgewater Park, and Locust Point has detached colonial revival houses on wider lots, some facing the water directly.
is a private cooperative of small houses behind iron fencing, its own roads marked with hand lettered street signs. runs along the East River shoreline past , which occupies a large mansion set behind a lawn, and a scatter of small private clubs.
On , two storey houses in brick and siding sit close to the sidewalk behind small lawns and parked cars. East of Brush Avenue, is a four storey red brick building with two white cupolas.
At the peninsula's tip, under the Throgs Neck Bridge, Fort Schuyler is a pentagonal brick and stone fort whose walls date from 1833 to 1856. It has a water side gate and interior bastions, and is now the campus of SUNY Maritime College. The Empire State training ship docks at the campus pier with the bridge rising behind it. Storefronts line under two and three storey brick buildings, and the Cross Bronx Expressway Extension runs through the peninsula in a sunken trench lined with brick retaining walls.
Shot in Throggs Neck
Fort Schuyler, the coastal fort at the tip of the peninsula, has stood in for two different fictional institutions. The Departed used its parade ground and gates as the police academy where Billy and Colin train, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 used the same fort as the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane. The FX series The Americans separately redressed storefronts on East Tremont Avenue, between Schley and Roosevelt Avenues, for its 1970s and 80s setting.
The Departed, 2006
Played the police academy, Boston, Massachusetts, 2000s
In The Departed, Fort Schuyler's parade ground and gates stand in for the police academy where Billy Costigan and Colin Sullivan train, one as an undercover mole and the other as the mob's man inside the force. The scene uses the fort's own nineteenth century brick and stone rather than a built set.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2, 2014
Played Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane, New York City, 2010s
In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the fort plays the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane, where Max Dillon is taken after he becomes Electro. The bastion and outer walls pass for a secure institutional exterior with no set dressing.
What Throggs Neck can double for
Boston, Massachusetts
The Departed already used Fort Schuyler's brick and stone walls and parade ground as a Boston police academy, and the coastal masonry needs no further dressing to pass for New England. Long Island Sound sits behind the fort in a wide shot, more open water than Boston Harbor shows from most angles. Try searching coastal masonry fort now.
Newport, Rhode Island
Fort Adams in Newport is the same Third System era of masonry coastal fort, built between 1824 and 1857 in granite and brick close to Fort Schuyler's own construction. Fort Adams sits on a wider open harbor mouth, so a tight shot inside Fort Schuyler's own walls holds the illusion better than a wide one. Try searching Third System coastal fort now.
Whitestone, Queens
Whitestone's quiet streets of Tudors, colonials and Cape Cod houses sit across the water on the same shoreline, with yacht clubs and docks along its own waterfront. Whitestone's own bridge has a different tower design, so keep it out of any water level frame meant to stand in for elsewhere. Try searching Tudor and colonial houses now.
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