The Williamsburg Bridge comes down at South 5th Street, brick tenements and converted factories on one side and new glass towers on the other.
What Williamsburg looks like
The crosses the East River and comes down at , its red steel spans passing low over the rooftops on the Brooklyn side. The J, M and Z trains run on the same steel over Broadway. The roadway underneath sits in permanent shade beneath the tracks.
Broadway is the commercial spine below that structure, four and five story brick buildings with ground floor shops and apartments stacked above them. The building stands at Broadway and Driggs Avenue under a steel dome, its stone corner cut with WILLIAMSBURGH SAVINGS BANK over an arched window. Peter Luger occupies the plain brick corner across the street, dark green paint and a hand lettered sign over the door.
East toward the river, the brick refinery buildings of the Domino Sugar plant run along Kent Avenue. Glass residential towers with blue balconies stand beside them on the waterfront. Set back from the water, wood frame houses and low brick shopfronts fill the side streets between the numbered streets and Bedford Avenue.
South of Broadway, shopfront signs on are lettered in Yiddish above the storefronts. North of the bridge, Bedford Avenue is lined with newer storefronts and bars. sits at the Greenpoint line behind a brick arch with two flagpoles.
Shot in Williamsburg
The blocks at the Brooklyn end of the bridge have played somewhere else three times. Productions use the brick tenements and the elevated bridge steel behind them to stand in for other cities and other decades.
Once Upon a Time in America, 1984
Played Lower East Side, Manhattan, 1920s
Sergio Leone wanted a few blocks of 1920s brick street with one of the big bridges behind them for the film's opening. He took South 8th Street at Bedford Avenue and had the block rebuilt for the scene where Noodles and Max meet as boys, with the interiors built afterward at Cinecitta in Rome. The New York shoot ran into a dispute with the IATSE union over Leone's Italian crew, which reached a Department of Labor investigation before filming continued.
Coming to America, 1988
South 5th Street
Played the My-T-Sharp barbershop, Queens, New York City, 1980s
Akeem asks the cab driver for the most common part of Queens and is put down at 392 South 5th Street, on the corner of Hooper Street, which is in Brooklyn. The My-T-Sharp barbershop was the ground floor and his room was above it. The building is still standing and is painted yellow now instead of red brick, and Coming 2 America returned to the same corner in 2021 for Akeem and Semmi's visit.
John Wick, 2014
The old savings bank
Played a church in Little Russia, New York City, present day
The room where Wick waits for Viggo and his men is the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank at 175 Broadway, under the dome. In the film it is part of a church in Little Russia that hides the Tarasov vault, and another scene was filmed a few blocks away under the bridge on Wythe Avenue.
Once Upon a Time in America rebuilt South 8th Street at Bedford Avenue as the 1920s Lower East Side for its opening sequence, tenement rooftops and the bridge steel standing in for Sergio Leone's Delancey Street prologue. The same brick tenement blocks and elevated bridge steel are still there, largely unchanged. Newer glass buildings now stand on some of these blocks, so a wide shot needs framing away from them to hold the period. Try searching brick tenement blocks now.
Queens in New York City
Coming to America put Akeem's fictional Queens apartment at South 5th and Hooper Streets. Coming 2 America returned to the same corner in 2021, and the tenement over a ground floor shop still looks like an ordinary Queens block on camera. Keep the Williamsburg Bridge towers out of a wide shot, since they name this bridge rather than anywhere in Queens. Try searching an ordinary Queens block now.
Lawrenceville's Butler Street corridor mixes brick rowhouses with converted warehouse buildings along the Allegheny River, close in scale to Broadway under the bridge approach. New apartment buildings have gone up on former industrial lots there too, the same layering visible along Kent Avenue. Pittsburgh's hills and its own bridges give it away in a wide shot, so tighter frames along the flat blocks hold the match better. Try searching converted warehouse buildings now.
Northern Liberties in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Northern Liberties has the same pattern of brick factory buildings turned into lofts and offices standing next to new glass apartment blocks, on streets that run down toward the Delaware River. Philadelphia's elevated Market-Frankford Line runs over Front Street, similar to the J, M and Z over Broadway. Philadelphia's rowhouse fronts are narrower and more uniform, so a scout should favor the wider factory to loft blocks over the rowhouse streets to hold the comparison. Try searching brick factory buildings now.
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