Steep streets and city steps climb past frame and brick rowhouses to a green domed church, the setting for a scene in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.
What Polish Hill looks like
Streets climb the hillside in straight, steep lines, and several turn into outdoor stairs where the grade gets too sharp for a road. Harding Way is one of them, a flight of concrete steps between a stone retaining wall and a wood-frame house on its way up from Herron Avenue to Bigelow Boulevard. Frame houses in wood clapboard sit beside taller brick rowhouses, two to four storeys, packed close along narrow sidewalks strung with utility wires.
Brereton Street is the commercial spine, tall narrow buildings with small storefronts at street level and apartments stacked above. , a dive bar with a jukebox and a small stage, sits partway up the block. The street runs straight down to , a domed church with twin bell towers and a patinated copper dome, its brick and limestone front rising above the rowhouse rooflines.
holds a similar run of storefronts a block over, in a building that has carried a coffee shop, a record store and a comic shop stacked on its floors. Small frame houses squeeze into narrow lots between the larger buildings, some no wider than a single room.
, at the top of the hill, has ten raised beds for a community garden. Its edge gives a clear view down over the rail yards in the valley below.
Shot in Polish Hill
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl used Copacetic Comics Co on Dobson Street as Greg's DVD and comic shop, stocked for the film with Criterion titles. Roommates, a 1995 film starring Peter Falk, filmed a scene at a diner in Polish Hill.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, 2015
Copacetic Comics Co
The production dressed Copacetic Comics Co as Greg's DVD and comic shop, generously stocked with Criterion Collection titles for the scene. The store was then on the building's third floor, sharing it with a coffee shop and a record store on the floors below. It has since moved its own sales online, though the building still stands on Dobson Street. Street View
Tremont sits on a bluff above Cleveland's industrial Flats, with frame and brick houses climbing steep streets to Saint Theodosius, a domed Russian Orthodox cathedral that reads the same way as Polish Hill's own church on the skyline. Tremont's gold domes and wider streets read differently in close shots, so a tighter frame on the houses holds the match best. Try searching steep streets domed church now.
Manayunk's Main Street climbs a steep grade lined with tall narrow rowhouses over ground floor storefronts, close in scale to Brereton Street's own run of shops below the church. Manayunk's stucco fronts and wider Main Street give away Philadelphia in a full block shot, so hold closer on one storefront run to keep the match. Try searching narrow rowhouses over storefronts now.
Mount Adams in Cincinnati, Ohio
Mount Adams climbs a steep bluff to Immaculata Church at the top, ninety four steps up to its door, the same relationship between houses and a hilltop church. Mount Adams's Victorian color and denser tree cover give it away in a wide shot, so this works best in a tighter frame on the steps themselves. Try searching ninety four steps now.
