Hear from an author and map designer who has been creating maps of the NYC subway, officially and unofficially, for over forty years!
A new street art hotspot has some unconventional holiday decorations!
From giant menorah lightings to New Year's Day hikes, check out our picks for how to spend the holidays in NYC!
The new Marvel series, Iron Fist, released on Netflix this past weekend. The story chronicles billionaire heir Danny Rand, who has been presumed dead for fifteen years and his return to New York City, and his attempt to regain control of his father’s company and defeat sinister forces that have infiltrated the city and Rand Corporations. Many characters appear in other Netflix Marvel shows, like Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Daredevil.
Here below are the film locations seen in Iron Fist:
Photo: Ali Goldstein/Netflix
After a long time away, Danny Rand heads back (shoeless) to the headquarters of Rand Enterprises looking for Harold Meachum. He’s promptly escorted out by security, after he sees what appears to be some unsettling information in the company video. Though the street signs indicate that Rand Enterprises is located on Vanderbilt Avenue and 46th Street next to Grand Central Terminal, the actual exterior film location is in One Chase Manhattan Plaza at 28 Liberty Street, just next to the Federal Reserve Bank, whose rusticated facade you can see in the background of the scenes.
This building is also where some of Lower Manhattan’s notable public art is located, including a sunken piece by Isamu Noguchi and Group of Four Trees by Jean Dubuffet, which you can see on the outside of the building in the shots filmed at the elevator bank.
Danny fights with security and makes it up to see Joy and Ward Meachum, where he’s informed Harold died 12 years back of cancer and that they believe Danny has died too. In the elevator, we see Danny have flashbacks back to a plane crash. The interior office scenes are filmed in the MetLife building in Midtown near Grand Central Terminal. In the interior shots, you can see the Helmsley Building right in front Ward Meachum’s office.
Photo: Patrick Harbron/Netflix
Danny heads back to the Meachum’s house at 19 Gramercy Park, a 37-room mansion known as the Stuyvesant Fish Residence. Dating to 1845, 19 Gramercy Park was built for William Samuel Johnson, a Connecticut senator and one of the original signers of the Constitution, and later expanded by famous architect Stanford White.
The neighbors nearby would have included the elite of the city and country, including Samuel Tilden, whose home is now the National Arts Club and the actors who frequented the Players Club, founded by Edwin Booth. 19 Gramercy Park has seen guests the likes of John Steinbeck, Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall, and John Barrymore. In 2000, 19 Gramercy Park was sold to Dr. Henry Jarecki, the father of Andrew Jarecki, director of the HBO documentary series The Jinx.
The interiors are also filmed inside 19 Gramercy Park, including a stunning multi-level chandelier/art piece and a great rooftop.
Photo:
Patrick Harbron/NetflixDanny spends the night in City Hall Park (you can see the gold statue atop the Municipal Building through the trees in the dark), where he meets a homeless man sleeping in a tent nearby.The next day, Danny meets Colleen Wing in the park in front of the Jacob Wrey Mould fountain as she’s putting fliers for the dojo class she runs in Chinatown,. Wing deposits $2 into Danny’s collection and he tries to convince her to let him work for her, without success.
Photo: Patrick Harbron/Netflix
Colleen’s school, Chikara Dojo, is located in Chinatown near the Manhattan Bridge at 47 Monroe Street. Danny goes to see her at the school and upon leaving, is attacked by Ward Meachum’s goons. Colleen sees this happen and heads off to help, weapon in tow.
Danny disappears into a Chinese New Year parade on Mott Street and manages to fight off his attackers. Season wise it’s a bit off since cherry blossoms are out, but Chinese New Year is usually in February.
Photo: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
Harold’s penthouse is supposedly located inside 570 Lexington Avenue, known as the General Electric Building (originally the RCA Victor building). The stunning Art Deco skyscraper was designed by Cross & Cross with a Gothic top, perfect architecture for superhero movies. The materials used were deliberately selected to pair with St. Bartholomew’s Church, located just next door. 570 Lexington Avenue also has distinctive matching Art Deco subway entrances. The lobby is real, the interior of the penthouse is a set.
Photo: Patrick Harbron/Netflix
Colleen heads down the streets of Chinatown and along Monroe Street, at the bottom of the Manhattan Bridge at the entrance to Coleman Square Playground, her students attack her in a outdoor dojo practice run. Colleen is disappointed in their lack of stealth abilities and leaves them.
Photo: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
Danny heads to Green-Wood Cemetery to see where the memorial to him and his family is located. The beautiful setting is along the Sylvan Water lake where many of the city’s wealthiest (often mob related) are interned. Danny is confused as to who continues the maintenance of the site, where there are planted flowers and asks the caretaker who says the family takes care of it.
Green-Wood Cemetery, built as a rural cemetery, was once the second most popular tourist site in New York State state with over 500,000 visitors each year by 1860, second only to Niagara Falls. Today, it is often used for film locations – seen in shows like Daredevil and Gotham.
Photo: Cara Howe/Netflix
Danny tracks down the lawyer Hogarth (she’s also in Jessica Jones, working in this building, the Bank of America Building), who has a bone to pick with the Meachums. She realizes Danny is telling the truth when he talks about tormenting her in his dad’s office when she was an intern and knows that she had a foldable desk in the copy room.
Talking in Bryant Park afterwards, Hogarth eagerly takes on Danny’s case to prove his identity and get the 51% shares that would have belonged to him, through his father.
Photo: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
Danny is given a temporary apartment by Hogarth, which is the Presidential Suite duplex in the InterContinental Times Square hotel, a 2,700 square foot unit with panoramic views of Times Square. Danny heads there with Joy, and while recounting part of his story in K’un Lun, is attacked by rivals of Madame Gao, who are displeased with the Rand Corporation’s acquisition of the Red Hook pier. This film location was also seen in Mr. Robot.
Danny confronts Joy and Ward, who are having lunch at the restaurant hotspot STK Midtown on 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue. The restaurant is designed by the firm ICRAVE, which has worked on projects as wide ranging as JFK Airport Food Hall, Le District downtown at Brookfield Place, the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the restaurant and club Lavo in Manhattan.
Photo: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
The restaurant the Hatchet Gang hangs out at (and runs it seems) is the Golden Sand Seafood Restaurant at 39 East Broadway, located about three and a half blocks from Chikara Dojo. It’s also half a block from Chatham Square where there is a real life tunnel once utilized by Chinatown gangs.
Photo: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
Although there really is a pier in Red Hook, the film location for the “Red Hook Pier” that the Rand Corporation has purchased (for the Hand, who is using it to distribute the synthetic heroin) is actually in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. This popular film location is also home to Steiner Studios and the distinctive giveaway is the World War II antennas that are lighted up in blue. These antennas were once used by the Navy, specifically the Third Naval District US Naval Communication Center Headquarters. They sit atop the 1940s-era building, 25 Washington Avenue, in the Navy Yard, and part of Steiner Studios.
You’ll see the Brooklyn Navy Yard appear in most shows filmed in New York City, including Homeland, Jessica Jones, Gotham and Boardwalk Empire.
According to an Untapped Cities reader Glenn Curry who was present for the shooting, the warehouse where Danny duels numerous assassins from The Hand, called on by Madame Gao is on Coffey Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn near the waterfront across from Louis Valentino Jr Park and Pier.
Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx is mentioned several times, where the Meachums go to dump bodies. Harold instructs Ward to take Madam Gao’s attackers there, once he removes their teeth and obliterates their faces, and Ward takes Harold there after he kills him.
Pelham Bay Park is a real park in the Bronx, the largest public park in New York City. Read about its secrets here.
Photo: Cara Howe/Netflix
Danny, Colleen and Claire Temple head to Anzhou, China where the chemist has told them Madame Gao has gone. Danny recognizes the city because it’s where he and his parents were headed when their plane crashed and he suspects that his father may have been going to inspect the Rand Corporation’s holdings there.
“China” is really Staten Island in this case, with the Bayonne Bridge, which connects the borough to New Jersey, distinctly in the background, mid-renovation to raise its roadbed. CGI has been used to superimpose a skyline that could resemble an industrial city in China.
Ward confronts Joy in Sutton Place Park along the East River, feeling betrayed by her decision to turn down the $100 million buyout from the Rand Corporation board. He also struggles with Joy’s admiration for him, with the secrets he’s been hiding about their father. Sutton Place Park has a view of the Queensborough Bridge and Roosevelt Island, with the new Cornell Tech Campus under construction.
Sutton Place Park also contains the “Wild Boar” sculpture, a replica of a 17th century work of art in Florence, Italy, which you can see in the corner of a shot in the show.
Photo: Cara Howe/Netflix
Most of episode 10 is shot at Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island, which stands in for the organization run by Bakuto that took in Colleen when she came back from Japan. Things start to get fishy quick however and Danny ends up getting rescued by Davos, who has been sent from K’un Lun. Colleen, with her loyalties tested, decides to help Danny out.
Snug Harbor in Staten Island was founded in 1801 by Captain Robert Richard Randall as a home for retired seamen. The retirement community opened in 1833 and remained open until the 1960s when it was moved to Sea Level, North Carolina. In 1965, Snug Harbor was declared a National Historic Landmark and reopened in 1976 as a cultural/art institution with a sprawling campus-like setting, including a botanic garden, a theater, a chapel, a farm, museums, cottages, and much more.
Snug Harbor was also recently the faux destination for the museum dedicated to the Staten Island Ferry disaster that never happened.
Photo: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
Ward heads to Harold’s penthouse in an attempt to convince Joy of their father’s duplicity but she resists, believing Ward to be crazy. Harold allows Ward to leave but Bakuto (who has now been proven to be the head of The Hand, battling for power with Madame Gao) shows up shows up, taking Harold hostage and shooting Joy. Danny is alerted by Bakuto in an attempt to draw out the Iron Fist and Danny shows up at the penthouse.
A fight ensues, continuing down the elevator and into the lobby of 570 Lexington Avenue. Danny, Colleen and Davos subdue Bakuoto’s men, as Bakuto escapes out the back door. In an incongruous, unbelievable jump, the scene goes from the streets of 570 Lexington Avenue on the East Side on 51st Street right into the staircase in Bethesda Terrace in Central Park.
Next, check out more film locations for Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil and Homeland in NYC.
Subscribe to our newsletter
