The new series Hunters has dropped on Amazon Prime Video, starring Al Pacino and executive produced by Jordan Peele. Set in 1970s New York City (with a brutal opening sequence in Maryland), the show is about a band of Nazi hunters tracking down sleeper agents of the Reich. Pacino plays Meyer Offerman, leader of the pack, with a rag tag group of hunters, each with a specific talent.
The film locations are rich, many set in Brooklyn. Take a look at where Hunters films!
1. Kings Theatre
Photo by Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
Following the opening scene, we see Sherman, Arthurs and Jonah, the main character of the show played by Logan Lerman, at the Brooklyn Kings Theatre, one of the five Loews Wonder theaters in New York City. The three have just watched Star Wars and exit from below the theater’s marquee and cross the street. They discuss the relative merits of the various superheroes, Superman, Batman, etc. and the difference between a superhero and a villain.
The theater, located in Flatbush, had a spectacular renovation after falling into serious disrepair and abandonment for decades, reopening in 2015 as an event venue.
2. Jonah’s House
Photo by Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
You might be wondering where the location of the house is where Jonah lives with his grandmother, Safta (Hebrew for grandmother), said to be 4513 73rd Street. Thanks to a reader whose own grandmother lives on the block it was filmed it, we know that the house is at 33 Suydam Street in Bushwick!
Following the funeral of his Safta, Jonah meets Meyer Offerman, who says he was in the camps with his Safta, and offers Jonah his card. “Living well is the best revenge,” he says.
3. FBI Headquarters
Photo by Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
The actual exterior of FBI Headquarters in New York City is shown in Hunters, located in the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. We are introduced to Millie Morris (played by Jerrika Hinton) who is tracking organized crime cases in New York City.
In the scene above, she asks Detective Grimsby (played by James Le Gros) to assign her her own case, to which he offers the case of a NASA scientist killed in Cape Canaveral.
4. Coney Island
Photo by Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
Jonah, Sherman, and Arthur hang out on the boardwalk on Coney Island when Jonah spots the Hells Devils gang, and realizes that the gang might help him get some clues as to who killed his Safta.
In a later episode, they regroup at Coney Island, sitting on the steps leading down to the beach. In the background of the shots, we see famous landmarks like the Wonder Wheel, the Parachute Jump and the Nathan’s Hotdogs location along the boardwalk. Then there’s a dance sequence under the Wonder Wheel…
5. House of the Redeemer
Photo by Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
Jonah goes up to the house of Meyer Offerman which is filmed in the House of the Redeemer, the stunning mansion on the Upper East Side. The scenes inside Offerman’s house are also filmed here, partially in the spectacular library. Other shows that have filmed here include Billions.
The House of the Redeemer was built as the home of Edith Shepard Fabbri, the great granddaughter of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and wife of J. P. Morgan associate Ernesto Fabbri
In a flashback, Offerman goes to see a Jewish matchmaker. Her alleged “office” is filmed in the front parlor room of the Montauk Club, a film location also recently seen in Billions as the lair of a S&M madam. Let’s just say, the room has seen quite a bit .
Offerman asks Hilde, the matchmaker to help him find a band of Nazi hunters and she agrees, saying “let’s go find you these rascals.”
7. Williamsburg Savings Bank
Photo by Christopher Saunders/Amazon Studios
The Hunters track the US Nazis to a shady bank, where its head, Frederich Hauser, had been known to donate to the Nazi cause during World War II and created his banking empire through stolen Nazi loot. The interior of the scenes where Offerman meets with Hauser is in the Williamsburg Savings Bank in downtown Brooklyn.
The Hunters go in search of safety deposit box 630, but it’s not in its proper location. This means all the Hunters must go on an operation to see if it’s in a particular room with a steel reinforced door.
8. Seaman’s Retreat, Staten Island
There’s a quick shot in episode five of Hunters, that shows the fictional Tilda Sauer, a propagandist filmmaker (clearly modeled after the real Leni Riefenstahl), on a dolly shooting a scene. This scene said to be from Germany in 1935 is shot at the abandoned Seaman’s Retreat hospital, which sits within the operational Bayley-Seton hospital.
Built in the 1830s, the facility was a medical facility for retired seamen, and and was in fact, Staten Island’s first hospital. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of seamen passed through these doors for care over its nearly 150 year history. The main colonnade building in front of which the scene was filmed at the Seaman’s Retreat is an official New York City landmark, but sits abandoned.
If you’re wondering where the modern glass house is that belongs to Tilda in the 1970s, who is now Barbara Sukowa, it really is in Westchester. It’s located at 104 Marlborough Road in Briarcliff Manor, an hour or so north of New York City. It was built by architect Roy O. Allen, Jr., a partner at the firm SOM.
9. Eldridge Street Synagogue
Murray and Mindy’s daughter gets married inside the Eldridge Street Synagogue, where we see both the exterior and the stunning interior in the show. The parents know there is a risk to the wedding, due to the flurry of activity amongst the Nazis, but decide to go ahead anyway. The Nazis try to do something but are put off by the presence of the Cosa Nostras, the mafia presence hired by Offerman for the day.
The Eldridge Street Synagogue was built in 1887 as the first great house of worship by Eastern European Jews in the United States, on a street has has now become predominantly full of Chinese businesses. Still, the Lower East Side synagogue remains a stronghold on the street and the Museum at Eldridge Street holds regular exhibitions and tours.
10. Church of the Intercession
In a scene supposed to be in London during World War II, we see the child who will become Sister Harriet after she is sent away from Germany for safety. She is in a boarding school, which is filmed up in Hamilton Heights at the Church of the Intercession‘s crypt. There are actual burials here, but the crypt is also a popular event space for music.
The Church of the Intercession was built between 1912 and 1915, and the surrounding cemetery, Trinity Church Cemetery, is the final resting place for James John Audubon and many other people. It is one of the last places in Manhattan where people can still be buried. The church is widely thought to be the finest example of Gothic Revival style architecture in the city and is part of the National Register of Historic Places (a division of the National Park Service).
11. Grand Central and the Campbell Apartment
Photo by Elly Garcia for Untapped New York
A scene supposed to be in Philadelphia takes place in the Campbell Apartment, which though a gorgeous space, is a somewhat unusual location to be a sub for another city since it is so recognizable as part of New York. Nonetheless, for those not yet familiar with this hidden bar inside Grand Central Terminal, it was once the private office of business tycoon John W. Campbell, a friend of “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt who built Grand Central. The bar today today is known as the The Campbell.
The location choice is likely connected to the fact that there is a scene in episode seven filmed in Grand Central Terminal (mislabeled Grand Central Station in the show — the train part of the station is a terminal, the subway area is a station). The action does indeed go into the subway system, but the staircase Jonah runs down actually leads to the food court and the lower level tracks of the train station not to the subway area.
Lower level of Bowery subway station
Then, a scene purportedly taking place at the 42nd Street-Grand Central Terminal subway station is actually filmed in the abandoned portion of the Bowery subway station, a popular film location because it is one of the few the MTA allows film crews to use. Like other shows, the production team added signs to make it seem like it might be at 42nd Street. You can see the Campbell Apartment and other hidden places in our popular tour of the secrets of Grand Central!
12. Brooklyn Navy Yard
Meanwhile, the other half of the Hunters is tracking down a lead at a power plant, which then explodes shortly after the one in the subway does. The scene at the power plant, and the one next to the large ship that Katarina Löw is trying to get out of port is filmed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
You might recognize the foundations of Dock 72 in the scene with the ship — that’s the new WeWork building in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Then the show takes inspiration from the real 1977 Blackout.
13. Untermyer Gardens
When Murray returns in a dream-like scenario for Mindy, she meets the young Aaron again at the Untermyer Gardens up in Yonkers. Sprawling over 43 acres, the verdant, transcendent space is an example of Gilded Age horticulture at its finest.
The Untermyer Gardens were commissioned by Samuel Untermyer (1858-1940), a high-profile lawyer, Zionist activist, generous philanthropist and very enthusiastic Horticulturalist from New York. Charmed by Beaux-Arts architect William Welles Bosworth (a Rockefeller favorite), Untermyer hired the famous landscapist to craft “the grandest garden in the world.” The estate known as Greystone was a major undertaking: 60 gardeners, 60 greenhouses, 150 acres, one 29-room mansion, and even a living sundial. Untermyer Gardens is a popular filming location, seen recently in Billions and Mr. Robot.
Michelle is the founder of Untapped New York and the author of The Art Spy (HarperOne, forthcoming) Secret Brooklyn, Secret New York Hidden Bars & Restaurants, and Broadway. michelleyoungwriter.com
