Brick rowhouses climb the hill above Butler Street, where Happiest Season used the corner at Fisk Street as an apartment exterior.
What Lawrenceville looks like
climbs steadily away from the Allegheny River, steep enough that some of the cross streets turn into city steps before they reach the top. Storefronts fill brick blocks two and three storeys tall along the strip, with a repertory cinema's marquee and a music venue's painted sign hung out over the sidewalk.
The rowhouses on the side streets keep the same brick, with stone lintels over the windows and stone stoops at the doors. Some blocks still have their porches.
Two former bank buildings sit on separate corners of Butler Street. One is faced in pale stone with an arched doorway and iron fencing, the other has columns under a pediment and an ATM built into the corner. A red brick library branch with stone trim stands a block off Butler on Fisk Street, set into the slope.
At the top of the hill, a cut stone gatehouse with a clock tower and castellated parapets marks the Butler Street entrance to . A four storey brick corner building with arched ground floor windows sits closer to the bottom of the hill, leasing banners on its front.
Shot in Lawrenceville
Two films used the same stretch of Butler Street. An American Pickle used the block to stand in for Brooklyn, and Happiest Season shot its apartment exterior on the corner at Fisk Street.
Happiest Season, 2020
The building at Butler and Fisk
The exterior above the storefronts at Butler Street and Fisk Street stood in for Abby and Harper's apartment in Happiest Season. Abby and her friend John walk the same stretch of Butler Street earlier in the film, past the storefronts along the block.
What Lawrenceville can double for
Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati, Ohio
Vine Street runs uphill from the basin through blocks of Italianate brick storefronts and rowhouses, wrought iron and taller cornices among them. The commercial buildings are more heavily ornamented than a plain worker's storefront strip. Favor the narrower side streets off Vine for a plainer brick front. The main strip's cast iron and cornice work belongs to a richer downtown than a small commercial spine. Try searching Italianate brick storefronts now.
West 36th Street, known locally as The Avenue, runs below blocks of two story brick rowhouses built for mill workers. The blocks climb a comparable grade, in tighter and narrower rows. Newer apartment buildings have gone up at the edges of the commercial stretch in recent years. Keep a wide shot close to the older brick fronts on the side streets, since the newer infill at the edges would give away the year. Try searching two story brick rowhouses now.
