Three short Belgian block streets of brick rowhouses run between the Navy Yard wall and a Con Edison power plant.
What Vinegar Hill looks like
Hudson Avenue, Plymouth Street and Water Street still have their original Belgian block, worn granite setts laid in tight rows rather than the asphalt that covers most of the surrounding blocks. Two and three storey brick rowhouses line them, Italianate and Greek Revival fronts with a few boarded storefronts at the corners. One wood frame house with red cedar shingle siding and a white picket fence still stands mid block, one of a handful of its kind left standing.
A single white smokestack rises over the three storey roofline at the Hudson Avenue end, the last of five that once marked the Con Edison generating plant on the block. Fencing and construction equipment now surround its base, part of a new substation being built on the same footprint. Down toward Bridge Street the granite blocks run on past parked cars to a chain link fence and a concrete retaining wall, with the Manhattan Bridge towers and the Lower Manhattan skyline visible over the top.
At the corner of Evans and Little Streets a large white clapboard house with black shutters and twin chimneys sits behind its own lawn and a gated drive, set apart from the brick rows around it. Hudson Avenue still has a restaurant in an old rowhouse storefront, and a decades old bakery awning hangs over a storefront on Gold Street a block over. Both stay open behind the same worn cobbles.
Shot in Vinegar Hill
The white clapboard Commandant's House at the corner of Evans and Little Streets has stood in for two different television households on the same lawn and gated drive. The production designer's team restored its own parlor floor and built a period kitchen into a former storage room, while the bedrooms for one of the shows were built separately on a soundstage with a matching hallway.
Boardwalk Empire and Elementary
. Two different networks used the same real house on the same gated drive, five years apart.
Boardwalk Empire, 2010
The Commandant's House
Played Nucky Thompson's house, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1920s
Most interior shots of Nucky Thompson's house were filmed in the real parlor floor and a kitchen built into a former storage room, with the bedroom scenes built separately on a soundstage. Exterior shots of the drive, porch and lawn are the real house behind its own iron gates. Street View
Elementary, 2013
Played a private estate, New York City, present day
The Risk Management episode used the same house's exterior and grounds as a private estate connected to the season's antagonist, shot from the same gated drive as the earlier HBO series. Unlike the redecorated parlor floor built for Boardwalk Empire, the sources describing this episode mention only the exterior, the lawn and the gate. Street View
What Vinegar Hill can double for
Fell's Point in Baltimore, Maryland
Fell's Point keeps its own Belgian block streets and Flemish bond brick rowhouses from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a waterfront quarter that kept its original paving at roughly Vinegar Hill's own scale. Both sit right against working harbor infrastructure rather than a park or a promenade. Fell's Point runs many more blocks of this fabric than Vinegar Hill does, so a wide shot needs careful framing to keep out the bar signage and crowds Vinegar Hill does not have. Try searching Belgian block waterfront rowhouses now.
Elfreth's Alley in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Elfreth's Alley is a single cobblestone lane of small Federal and Georgian rowhouses, built earlier than Vinegar Hill's own blocks but at a similar brick and shutter scale close to the street. The alley is narrower and shorter than any of Vinegar Hill's three streets, so it only holds a tight frame rather than a full block. Try searching cobblestone lane rowhouses now.
Wapping's cobbled lanes and converted brick warehouses along the river share Vinegar Hill's mix of a small residential quarter backed onto working river infrastructure, both cut off from the water by a wall. London brick runs a darker red. The ironwork and signage look distinctly British at any distance, so a tight frame on the cobbles and brick alone holds the illusion best. Try searching cobbled lanes brick warehouses now.
