9. 7th Avenue

The 1994 film, Leon: The Professional, is a dark thriller that features Jean Reno as a professional assassin who takes in a young girl, Natalie Portman, after her parents are murdered and then reluctantly teaches her the trade. The film undoubtedly has a severely dark tone, but the scene that makes 7th Avenue an iconic movie location for New York City has a sense of wholesomeness to it. The scene features Reno walking through a deserted 7th Avenue, with the little girl and a house plant.

7th Avenue is not typically a place you can ever see vacant, like in the movie. Some of the most popular attractions in the world are located on, or around, 7th Avenue—Madison Square Garden, Penn Station, and Carnegie Hall are only some of the buildings that touch the avenue. This makes it eerie, yet warming, to see the two characters walking down the middle of the avenue with no traffic.