Limestone and brownstone townhouses line the cross streets, and Ocean's Eight shot its heist night inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
What the Upper East Side looks like
The cross streets between Fifth Avenue and Lexington are rows of attached townhouses, four and five storeys in limestone and brownstone, with iron railings along the stoops and areaways below the sidewalk. Very little newer construction breaks a row, and cars line the curb along nearly every block.
Fifth Avenue and carry apartment houses instead, most of them prewar, canopies reaching to the curb with doormen underneath. at 72nd Street is a limestone example from 1915, its cornice repeating along the block. runs between the two and is the shopping street, storefronts filling the ground floors under the same limestone and brick fronts.
Several of the buildings on Fifth above 82nd Street are museums rather than apartments. fronts the avenue at 82nd Street with a broad flight of steps, and the 's curved white facade stands seven blocks north at 89th.
and Second Avenue are wider than the blocks to the west, lined with taller apartment towers in brick and glass, storefronts and subway entrances at the sidewalk. Toward the high Eighties and Nineties the buildings turn to older tenements, in what is called . They run five and six storeys, with fire escapes on the front and awnings over the shops below.
East of York Avenue the cross streets end at the water. runs along the river from East 84th Street, a promenade behind iron fencing, with set back on its own lawn inside.
Shot on the Upper East Side
Ocean's Eight was shot inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art over ten nights. The 2021 Gossip Girl reboot used the museum's own front steps as a hangout for its characters. The front of 169 East 71st Street stood in for Holly Golightly's building in Breakfast at Tiffany's, its apartment built as a set at Paramount in Hollywood.
Ocean's Eight, 2018
The Temple of Dendur
Played the Met Gala, present day
The heist dinner happens in the Sackler Wing at the north end of the museum, under the sloping glass wall. Gary Ross has said everything in the Temple of Dendur was shot in the room itself, along with the scenes of the crew casing the museum and the one where Sandra Bullock plants a fake Banksy over a reworked Washington Crossing the Delaware. The gala is not a real one. It was staged for the film with help from the museum and from Vogue. The costume exhibition and the corridor by the bathroom were built on a stage at Bethpage on Long Island. The crew was allowed to move equipment in at half past five each evening. The first shot came around half past eight, once the sun was down. Everything had to be out of the building by seven in the morning, and that went on for ten nights.
What the Upper East Side can double for
Astor Street in Chicago, Illinois
Astor Street's limestone and brick mansions run three to six storeys behind iron fences, in Queen Anne and Georgian Revival styles close to the townhouses off Fifth and Park. The Charnley-Persky House and the Patterson-McCormick House anchor the most intact block. Astor Street's freestanding mansions sit farther apart than the Upper East Side's continuous rows, so a tight frame holds the match better than a full block. Try searching Astor Street limestone mansions now.
Back Bay's Victorian row houses are the same four to five storey scale as the Upper East Side's townhouses, with raised stoops and iron railings. Bay windows break up the brick and brownstone fronts, and Marlborough Street keeps the most continuous blocks. Back Bay's mansard roofs and Second Empire cornices look busier and more ornate than the Upper East Side's flatter fronts, so a wide shot needs careful framing to keep them out of frame. Try searching Victorian brownstone row houses now.
Rittenhouse Square's townhouses on Delancey Place and Spruce Street are the same four and five storey brownstone and brick rows as the cross streets off Fifth and Park, most built between the 1870s and 1900s. Iron fences and raised stoops repeat the same rhythm. Philadelphia's rowhouses run narrower and redder than the Upper East Side's limestone fronts, so a block shot needs the paler stone streets rather than the red brick ones. Try searching brownstone brick rows now.
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