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Season six of Homeland, which just debuted, takes a significant departure from previous seasons – it’s set in New York City, and largely in Brooklyn. Not only timely (the storyline involves a President-elect who is holed up in a luxury hotel), the location was also built around star and executive producer Claire Danes – who wanted some time in her home town with her 4-year-old son and husband, actor Hugh Dancy. But the show weaves in actual terrorist events in New York City from the past, as you’ll see below, as a setting for the story.
Here are the notable locations we’ve caught in the season so far. Check back throughout season six as we add more after each episode.
Photo: Jo Jo Whilden/SHOWTIME
The modern awning on the Intercontinental New York Barclay hotel at 111 East 48th Street belies its long history, built in 1916 originally by Cornelius Vanderbilt as part of Terminal City around Grand Central Terminal. The hotel was built by the prolific architecture firm of Cross & Cross, known also for the skyscraper 20 Exchange Place, the Tiffany & Co. store on Fifth Avenue, and numerous other downtown and midtown buildings.
According to the hotel’s website, “The Barclay became a notable railroad hotel built to service the men and women travelling to New York City.” Besides referencing Donald Trump‘s Trump Tower headquarters, Homeland takes some direct clues also from Bill Clinton’s campaign, who used this hotel as the headquarters for his 1996 election.
The location is featured repeatedly throughout the season and plays an important role in the season finale.
Photo: Jo Jo Whilden/SHOWTIME
The new character Sekou Bah lives with his mother and sister in Marcy Houses, a NYCHA public housing complex in Bedford-Stuyvesant, built in 1949. Though not as large as Queensbridge Houses which is the largest public housing in the United States with 3,142 units, Marcy Houses still takes up a sizeable swath, bordered by Flushing Avenue, Marcy Avenue, Nostrand Avenue and Marcy Avenue. Sekou meets his friend Saad and they drive to midtown to film videos for the website they’ve been running.
Sekou and Saad go to film a video at the New York Marriott East Side, which attempts to show that Al-Qaeda’s first attack was not in 1993 at the World Trade Center but at the ballroom of this hotel. Sekou says in the video, “Right here, this is where the founder of the Jewish Defense League was executed, where he got popped.” The assassination of Rabbi Kahane by Egyptian-American El Sayyid Nossair is a true story, as you can read in the New York Times. The Jewish community repudiated Kahane’s violent and anti-Arab ideology. The connection to Al Qaeda comes from a 2002 Senate Intelligence Committee investigation. The director of the investigation, Eleanor Hill, reported that Osama Bin Laden paid for the defense of Nossair. Nossair was also allegedly aided by a man later connected to the 1993 bombings.
Photo: Jo Jo Whilden/SHOWTIME
In a nice sweet converted manufacturing loft space in Williamsburg with a tech-friendly open layout, Carrie is running a defense a legal defense operation. Otto During shows up before Carrie gets in and gets briefed by a Professor Reda Hashem, who is representing to prisoners at Guantanamo and clients in New York City on terrorism charges.
Photo: Mark Schafer/SHOWTIME
Sekou and Saad also go to Times Square to see where Faisal Shahzad parked the Nissan Pathfinder in 2010 armed with several bombs on 45th Street and Broadway. Several street vendors noticed the vehicle, which did not detonate as planned due to a malfunction, and reported it.
Photo: Jo Jo Whilden/SHOWTIME
Though Peter Quinn escaped death after the last season, he is in bad shape. He’s being treated at a VA Hospital, but gets taken on drug benders with active cooperation with one of his therapists. Before Peter and his conspirators head to the crack den, they stop at a cash checking spot to get money out of Peter’s payout from the government. This check cashing location is on Broadway near the Myrtle Avenue subway stop, between Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick.
Photo: JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME
If you know Homeland, you know that Dar Adal is always up to something. He heads to the Greenpoint waterfront to meet with an Israeli agent on the pier of WNYC Transmitter Park. Transmitter Park replaced the old WNYC radio transmission towers with a host of trendy urbanite amenities. The park also includes an open lawn, and a publicly accessible wetland area, all crammed into 1.6 acres. Check it out for the unobstructed views of the Midtown Manhattan skyline, with the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building in view.
Photo: JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME
FBI Special Agent Ray Conlin and DA Ortiz give a press announcement at the New York County Supreme Courthouse rotunda on the arrest of Sekou, with Carrie waiting in the wings to accost Conlin. The show sets up a forthcoming showdown between the aggressive, play it safe FBI agent and Carrie, in her new role as defender of those targeted by the government. Sekou’s plane ticket to Nigeria to see his father becomes a part of the investigation, a fact that Carrie obviously does not know about when Conlin tells her.
The courthouse rarely opens up for public photography but you can see photographs we took of the interior here.
A Senator meets with Saul to get the real down low on the President Elect’s domestic and international anti-terrorism strategy at Trouble’s Trust, a bar inside the New York Palace hotel. The hotel was once the Villard Houses, previously six brownstones that the railroad tycoon Henry Villard transformed into a mansion to rival those of the Vanderbilts.
Photo: JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME
Carrie is living in a brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant near the intersection of Throop and Halsey streets, and you can see that it sits alongside other brownstones that have still yet to be renovated in this rapidly developing neighborhood. Seeing how bad Quinn is doing, she takes him back to her place and set him up in her garden apartment that she rents out on AirBNB. In the second episode, Quinn heads to the local bodega, Organic Food Deli (the real name of the corner spot) where he has a seizure.
According to The New York Times, the locations in season six were somewhat inspired by the brother of Homeland co-creator and showrunner Alex Gansa
“who lives in a brownstone in nearby Crown Heights, and by the “Homeland” production designer, John Kretschmer, who lived in Bed-Stuy while working on the show “The Following.” Michael Klick, a “Homeland” producer and locations scout — “My memoirs will be called ‘My View From the Van,’” he joked — found a Bed-Stuy block dotted with “brownstones that have been fixed up, apartments across the street, and boarded-up buildings: an area in transition, but one that she could afford.”
Photo: JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME
Like in The Night Of, when Sekou is arrested, he’s taken to The Tombs, the Manhattan Detention Complex downtown between City Hall and Chinatown. He is jailed in The Tombs as he awaits his hearing, with Carrie and and Professor Hashem meeting Sekou there and representing him in the adjoining New York City Criminal Courts.
Apparently, Orsay is Dar Adal’s favorite watering hole, where he regularly tells a tall tale about pulling people “chocking off the streets” during 9/11. The restaurant with very French brasserie-style interior decor is located on 75th Street and Lexington Avenue, significantly far from Ground Zero. After meeting President Elect advisor Rob Hemmis here, Dar Adal has another meeting in the same episode with Saul Berenson.
Dar returns here in the season finale, where the maitre’d assists in holding a senator involved in the conspiracy against the President elect in the walk in freezer.
Photo: Mark Schafer/SHOWTIME
In another covert meeting with the President Elect, Carrie heads to the kitchen of the restaurant Raoul’s at 180 Prince Street in Soho (the more obvious sign on the façade says “Restaurant Français.” The restaurant has been a neighborhood staple since the 1970s, created by two brothers from Alsace, France.
Photo: JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME
Is Quinn paranoid or onto something? In the fourth episode, he breaks into the neighbor across from Carrie’s apartment. Convinced he’s been watching their apartment, he stays up to observe and sees the neighbor get picked up carrying a bag in the middle of the night. He grabs Carrie’s Volvo car keys and tails them to Long Island City, where he watches the neighbor unlock the padlock to the warehouse to Medina Medley (not a real New York company) and truck parking. This warehouse is located at 35th Street between Hunter’s Point Avenue and Borden Avenue.
Things come together the next day, when we see Sekou arriving at the job Reda got back for him. It’s the same spot and we see on the signs in more detail that Media Medley is a “Eastern Mediterranean Cuisine purveyor.” We won’t spoil it but the ending of the episode is a game changer for the season.
Photo: JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME
While President-Elect Keane is sequestered in Millbrook in the Hudson Valley, the current President Morse gives a speech on the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall, which was built in 1851 when Brooklyn was still an independent city. This film location has also appeared in Gotham.
Photo: JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME
Saul hits up an old Russian spy contact, Viktor, arranging to meet him on Coney Island in front of the Thunderbolt ride at Luna Park. Saul wants to know what the Mossad agent Tovah Rivlin has been up to. We know from earlier episodes, she’s been in cahoots with Dar Adal. On a second meet up, Viktor shows him the photos of the Dar Adal/Tovah meet up and says, “You’re on the outside looking in.”
Majid Javadi arrives to New York City to debrief Saul, landing at JFK Airport Terminal 1 and is greeted by CIA officer Nate Joseph who gives Javadi’s traveling team each passports under different names. Inside Javadi’s fake passport is a ticket to an Islanders game where Saul will meet him.
The ever-scheming Dar Adal meets General Jamie McClendon at Bamonte’s Restaurant in Williamsburg. The old-school Italian restaurant was also a film location in Gotham and has one of the city’s last surviving wooden phone booths. It has been in operation in this location since 1900.
Photo courtesy of Alonso Balaguer Designs Inc.
Javadi makes a visit to Aire Ancient Baths in Tribeca for some relaxation where he gets picked up and taken to an off site location for questioning and torture. Read about the history and renovation of Aire Ancient Baths, a stunning interior with multiple spa pools.
Photo: JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME
After Franny is taken from Carrie, she has to attend a court hearing about her custody which takes place at 320-330 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn at the Supreme and Family Court.
Saul expects to meet Javadi at the New York Islanders game at the Barclays Center, in Downtown Brooklyn, but Amir Bastadi, who saves Javadi from the torture meets Saul instead and promises to take him to Javadi. Besides the Islanders, The Barclays Center hosts The Nets, and the arena is designed by ShoP Architects.
Franny’s foster home is located at the intersection of 86th Avenue and 110th Street in Richmond Hill, Queens, an ethnically diverse neighborhood home to one of the city’s largest Sikh and Guyanese communities. The house is just a few blocks south of Forest Park.
Photo: JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME
Majid Javadi has been hiding out in a homeless shelter in Chinatown, while he awaits news from Saul about his meeting with the President Elect. The film location of the shelter is at 27 Forsyth Street at the Saint Barbara Greek Orthodox Church, an active church built in the 1920s. It is the only Greek Orthodox church left in the Lower East Side, a holdout much like the Eldridge Street Synagogue nearby.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Carrie brings Javadi to meet Saul and the President Elect in the Duggal Greenhouse, the airport terminal-like building at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The building is used primarily as an event space. The Greenhouse recycles 80-90% of waste from all of its production facilities.
At the end of episode 9, Quinn confronts Dar Adal in his home about the attempt on his life (and the killing of Astrid) at the lake house. Dar denies his involvement and a phone call on a line Quinn taps in the house reveals that the mysterious man in the hat who has been behind most of the shenanigans this season has gone a little rogue. Quinn traces the call to a diner and heads there to see what’s up.
The sign of the diner shown in the episode says “SUNNYSIDE” diner, indicating it’s in Queens but the actual film location is the Clinton Diner (now known as the Goodfellas diner) in Maspeth, Queens. It is one of the last stand alone diners in New York City and has been a film locations in Goodfellas, the Good Wife and other shows.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Saul is on the run, now that Carrie is going to testify against him and Dar Adal about the Russian mole at the Berlin station. He heads to a supplier in Manhattan’s Diamond District on 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues to get guns and passports for his escape out of the country.
On his way into the commercial stretch, he passes by the diamond shaped lampposts that demarcate the district and hops in and out of a few stores before heading up the stairs in one shop. We hoped he’d make his getaway using the cross-block Gold Arcade, but alas, we’re still on the lookout for a shot here in a future show.
Carrie heads for her deposition (conveniently also in Midtown) in a neoclassical building that in real life is the Association of the Bar of the City of New York on 44th Street. On this same block are notable clubs like the Harvard Club, Penn Club, and the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen. The scenes from the show reveal the marble lobby and columns of the building.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Saul arranges to meet his estranged wife Mira at the restaurant Isabella’s on the Upper West Side, but in a classic spy move is actually meeting her somewhere else. He jokes in the hand written letter that is handed to her that she always wanted to see more about what he does. She is instructed to leave Isabella’s, is taken in a car to an apartment building.
Isabella’s is on Amsterdam Avenue at the corner of 77th Street, just down the street from the American Museum of Natural History, where the entrance to the new Gilder Center will be.
Next, check out our film locations column for other shows set in NYC like The Night Of and Mozart in the Jungle.
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