A formal square of diagonal walks and a limestone terrace, ringed by brick rowhouses and prewar towers, with the walkway near 18th and Locust where Trading Places shot Eddie Murphy's blind veteran scene.
What Rittenhouse Square looks like
Diagonal paved walks cross the square toward a central oval terrace ringed by a low limestone balustrade, with a fountain and a stone pavilion at its center. Plane trees shade every path, and a bronze lion crushing a serpent stands near the walk toward . Its surface is a weathered green.
, two blocks south, is lined with four storey rowhouses in red brick and white marble. Fanlights are set over the doors on its 1800 block. On the square's south side, an apartment tower at rises nineteen storeys in pale limestone, well above the rowhouse roofline around it.
West on 22nd Street, the has a columned stone portico behind iron railings. , farther south on the same street, is a steep gabled brick double house with arched brownstone doorways.
The stands at 19th and Walnut, its brownstone bell tower rising over the square's trees. , on 18th Street at the square's south side, rises in limestone above a canopied entrance. It is a 1929 hotel building since converted to condominiums.
Newer hotel entrances break up the older stone fronts farther along 17th Street, glass doors and canopies set beside limestone piers. The paved walkway at the square's southeast corner, where 18th Street meets Locust Street, opens onto the same diagonal paths that cross the terrace.
Shot in Rittenhouse Square
Trading Places used the walkway near the square's southeast corner for Eddie Murphy's opening scene as a panhandling con man. The production shot Rittenhouse Square as itself, Philadelphia's own downtown square.
Trading Places, 1983
The walkway near 18th and Locust
Eddie Murphy's Billy Ray Valentine panhandles as a blind, legless Vietnam veteran on the walkway near the intersection of 18th and Locust Streets. The scene opens the film's Philadelphia plot around the Duke and Duke brokerage. Street View
Gramercy Park is a fenced formal square keyed only to its ringing buildings, with The Prewar at 225 East 19th Street rising nine floors in original stone beside taller prewar towers on the same block. The scale and the mix of stone facades and iron fencing around a private green make it one of the closer matches for Rittenhouse Square's own edge. Gramercy's locked gates read differently from Rittenhouse's open paths, so a shot holding the fence line needs to avoid implying public access. The surrounding towers run taller in wide shots than anything on the Philadelphia square. Try searching iron fencing prewar towers now.
Berkeley Square keeps a run of Georgian townhouses on its west side, brick fronted with tall sash windows behind mature plane trees in the square's own garden. Numbers 42 to 46 are the best preserved run, close in scale to the brick blocks around Rittenhouse Square even though the detailing is Georgian rather than American Regency Revival. Right hand traffic and British road markings give London away in any wide shot holding the street. Most of the square's houses are now offices with modern signage at street level, so a period frame needs to hold tight on the upper floors. Try searching Georgian townhouses plane trees now.
Louisburg Square in Boston, Massachusetts
Louisburg Square is a fenced private garden ringed by Greek Revival rowhouses built between 1834 and 1844, three and four storeys with bow fronts, close in scale to the brick blocks on Delancey Place. Framed tight on a doorway or a bow front it passes for a period Philadelphia street rather than Boston. The cobblestone paving and gas lamps are distinctly Beacon Hill and give the location away in any wide shot. Holding a single house front rather than the whole square keeps the comparison working. Try searching Greek Revival bow fronts now.
