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It’s the fifth and final season of Billions the financial criminal drama on Showtime. An attempt at detente between Axe Capital head Bobby Axelrod (Damien Lewis) and US District Attorney Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) in season four ended back where we started and the first episode of season five reaffirms that while adding a new adversary for Axe: Corey Stoll playing another hedge funder, Michale Prince. Taylor Mason (Asia Kate Dillon) is playing both sides, working for Axelrod again but supposedly informing on him to Rhoades. Each season of Billions has seen more and more filming locations in New York City. We’ve discovered that there have been some inaccuracies in fan listed film locations we’ve seen elsewhere online, so consider this a definitive guide to film locations in Billions.
In the third season, Axe Capital moved its offices to Manhattan from Connecticut. The aerial shot of the building this season indicates that it’s still the same, at 855 Sixth Avenue, a building by COOKFOX Architects right near Herald Square. Taylor Mason’s team and the Axe Capital team are not getting along, at all. Wendy Rhoades, as usual, is trying to broker a peace between the two sides and in the opening of the season, hasn’t quite figured out how to do it. The appearance of WWE wrestler, The Man (aka Becky Lynch) is a first successful step.
Axe is still in the same apartment he’s been in for a few seasons in Tribeca, at 145 Hudson Street on the top floor duplex penthouse of the Sky Lofts building. The penthouse units were previously listed at $45 and $48 million. From his apartment, Axe can see the Art Deco-style AT&T Long Distance Building. In the first episode of this season, he summons Wags, Dollar Bill and Victor Mateo to discuss what to do about the sting operation by Chuck Rhoades on the crypto-currency mining operation in upstate New York.
Axe and Wags come back from a ayahuasca trip in Canada to a photoshoot for the Vanity Fair cover which takes place in Lightbox NY, a photo studio in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. The industrial building was built in about 1910 and is now also home to an office of the NYC Department of Social Services. The top floor is the photo studio and has not only the arched windows on three sides but also a glass roof that lets in natural light. Axe thinks he’s going to dominate the shoot and interview, with Wendy to get him in the right psychological place, until Michael Prince walks in.
The address of Chuck Rhoades’ townhouse is at 49 Pierrepont Street, which would be in Brooklyn Heights. The actual exterior film location for the townhouse is at 49 8th Avenue, in Park Slope. Chuck has been there since the first season, but in this season, Wendy has moved out (for good it seems). There is no building at 49 Pierrepont Street, but the closest townhouse is another corner one at 43 Pierrepont which is a multi-unit rental. The 8 bedroom, 5 bathroom townhouse at 49 8th Avenue was last sold in 2010 for $2.691 million. As far as townhouses goes, it’s a stately one. It’s 6,500 square feet, 25 feet wide, and even has a ballroom.
Lauren Turner (played by Jade Eshete) is the communications manager and love interest of Taylor Mason. She offers Taylor a ticket to the Rage Room, a place in New Jersey like the Wrecking Club and other places, where you can go and destroy things for fun. The room Taylor goes to is set up like an apartment, with television, glass displays, coffee table, couch and more — which can all be destroyed with a bat.
In the opening scene of the second episode, we see Michael Prince take off in a seaplane. The only spot to do this in Manhattan is at the Skyport Seaplane Terminal (formerly the Marine Aviation Terminal) located at 23rd Street and the East River. BLADE has an “Aqua Lounge” inside where you can wait before you fly off to the Hamptons, Shelter Island, or Nantucket.
Axe meets with Manhattan District Attorney Mary Ann Gramm, played by Roma Maffia, to offer her some dirt on Chuck Rhoades. “I care about the crime, and not the criminal,” she tells him. She also tells him the myth of mangu, a Dominican dish. Cibao Restaurant is located on the Lower East Side at 72 Clinton Street serving Cuban and Latin American fare. It’s simple, take-out feel is a reminder of a simpler era of the Lower East Side.
Michael Prince is hosting his annual convention, MIKE, at historic Mohonk Mountain House in the Hudson Valley. Located in the town of New Paltz, Monhonk Mountain House is set on Mohonk Lake. Axe plans to take Prince down a notch on his home turf, but Prince is playing a game too. You’ll see who comes out on top!
Connerty shows up at the Assembly Bar in Glendale, Queens to find his brother who is clearly mid-harassing someone in the Irish bar. Connerty helps out, the two go outside, and his brother calls him out – he must want something. Connerty wants his brother, implied to be a talented safecracker, to open the safe in Chuck Rhoades Sr.’s apartment and get that contract he heard about over the wiretapping.
Lauren arranges for Taylor to meet Landry Bensinger at the Kellogg NYC Store that has an all-day cereal cafe. It’s located in Union Square at 31 E. 17th Street. The meeting goes well (he likes Honey Smacks, she likes Frosted Flakes) and he agrees to introduce her to his father.
Fight Night takes place in Capitale on the Bowery, the banquet hall and former banking hall designed by famed architect Stanford White for the headquarters of The Bowery Savings Bank at 130 Bowery. The building has been heralded by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission as one of the first examples of “new classicism,” a style established at The World’s Columbian Exposition, at Chicago in 1893 and that it “is a fine, dignified expression of a New York banking house and that in its skillful use of site, its good proportions, fine detail and sculpture, it reflects credit on the well-known architectural firm which designed it.”
At the time of its construction it was one of the city’s first savings banks and at the time of its landmark designation, it was reputed to be the only bank in New York which retained a branch on the site where it first started business. Today the former bank has been repurposed into Capitale, a restaurant and event space.
Axe Capital sponsors the New York Stock Exchange tree lighting ceremony taking place on Broad Street. Stacy Cunningham, President of the Stock Exchange plays herself in the scene and introduces Dollar Bill and Wags to the temporary stage that’s set up for the event. Wags introduces Dollar Bill as the fighter for the charity boxing match, where he’ll be going up against Mafee.
Also in this episode, Wendy and Bonnie go for a run in Brooklyn Bridge Park and sit on a bench with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. When Chuck and his team go to the Board of Elections office to see Hap Halloran, along with Kate and Connerty, it appears to be filmed in the Surrogates Courthouse next to City Hall, the Division of Old Records (the real location of the Board of Elections office is on Varick Street, in a less historical looking building. And Bobby goes to the NASDAQ tower in Times Square to film the Halftime Report on CNBC.
Taylor gets their father an apartment in One Madison, at 23 East 22nd Street, an apartment that overlooks Madison Square Park. First, they and their father share Chinese food in the empty apartment and later Wendy Rhoades meets with them there. Except, Taylor catches Wendy’s play – ending the uneasy game that has been going on. Earlier in the episode, Taylor and Wendy meet at Poliform furniture showroom located at 112 Madison Avenue and 30th Street, not far from Madison Square Park.
Bobby’s favorite pizza spot from childhood is Cappanello’s and in season one, he buys the building to help out the owner, Bruno Capparello, whose rent had been raised. The pizza joint is supposed to be in Yonkers, but the real film location is at Rosa’s Pizzeria in Middle Village, Queens on Metropolitan Avenue. Middle Village is between Ridgewood, Forest Park, Rego Park and Glendale.
Cappanello’s is a regular spot on the show. In early seasons, it’s where Bobby goes to unwind (sometimes with his wife, Lara) and also where some shady deals are attempted to be brokered. In this episode, Bobby gives owner Bruno Capparello what he wants: the ability to retire. The core Axe Capital team is there to celebrate.
Shelby gets picked up by Chuck’s people for an “old fashioned rousting,” on W 58th Street just south of Central Park West near Faust Harrison Pianos, a showroom for piano sales and rentals. Shelby has been trying to get $200,000, instead of the $100,000 he agreed on, from his dog getting accidentally killed.
Wendy and Taylor meet up on Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, a Louis Kahn-designed memorial to Roosevelt’s famous Four Freedoms speech built after his death. They talk about the documentary My Architect: A Son’s Journey, made by Louis Kahn’s son as a way to find who his father was. They stand in “The Room,” the southern tip of the park (and of Roosevelt Island). Discover the secrets of Four Freedoms Park, a park we documented over the years while it was under construction.
Taylor, their dad, Mafee and Sara Hammon have a celebratory dinner at Sugarcane Dumbo, a restaurant inside Empire Stores. The restaurant design by CetraRuddy Architecture used much of the building’s original raw elements – from brick walls to steel columns. In other food-related stops in this episode, Axe meets Victor Mateo at Haandi, an Indian-Pakistani joint at 113 Lexington Avenue in Murray Hill. Mateo says his father used to take him here. As it’s a popular yellow-taxi joint, the show is possibly suggesting that Mateo’s father was a cab driver.
Chuck takes a backroom meeting with Judge DeGiulio at Economy Candy, said to be New York City’s oldest candy store. The shop is located at 108 Riving Street on the Lower East Side, and has been in operation since 1937. DeGiulio lets Chuck know that Connerty came looking for a wire to be placed on him, hoping to get him and Chuck Rhoades Sr. for the Elysian Fields deal. DeGiulio tells Chuck he dismissed the request “as an ordinary matter of law” and he’s letting him know as an “extraordinary matter of friendship.”
In another private food experience (see the next entry for what happened in episode 5), Wendy Rhodes invites Taylor to Morgenstern’s Finest Ice cream on the Lower East Side to talk. Wendy is looking for empathy, for someone to talk to about Chuck’s public admission. Neither are sure they can talk to each other, but Wendy opens up honestly (or is she?) as to why she wants to talk to Taylor.
Nick Morgenstern, the founder of the ice cream parlor, makes a cameo in the episode to explain briefly the history of the speakeasy. Wendy and Taylor come to an agreement about becoming confidantes. Morgenstern Ice Cream also appears in Master of None, on Netflix.
Axe, Rebecca, Chuck and Wendy go on a double date at Una Pizza Napoletana on the Lower East Side, where the restaurant is closed off for them. Pizza guru Anthony Mangieri appears as himself in the show (much like other chefs who have appeared in the show like Salt Bae). He heads the restaurant with Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske, who run the Michelin-star restaurant Contra, and Wildair, both also on the Lower East Side.
Chuck gives a proper sendoff to Blackjack Foley, literally stealing the stage of Governor Bob Sweeney at Foley’s funeral to launch what will be an orchestrated sting against the corrupt in the state assembly. The dramatic arrest is completely Chuck style. The scene is short in the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, a Roman Catholic church at 152 W 71st St on the Upper West Side, built between 1914 and 1920.
The Office of the New York State Attorney General is (funny enough) truly located in the One Chase Manhattan Bank building at 28 Liberty Street and Nassau Street, across from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. We see Connerty approach Chuck on his first day as Attorney General, stopping him on the elevated plaza before the entrance. Fun fact: this building was also shown in Iron Fist, as the headquarters of RAND Enterprises. There are two major outdoor art pieces commissioned for this building: Sunken Garden by Isamu Noguchi and Group of Four Trees by Jean Dubuffet.
Chuck makes his speech at the historical Fraunces Tavern down at 54 Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan. Holding both the title of “Manhattan’s oldest building” (though there is some debate over this) and “New York’s oldest restaurant,” Fraunces Tavern played a crucial role in the American Revolution and even housed several federal offices afterwards. In 1783, the then-general George Washington chose to bid farewell to his officers inside its historic halls. Located at the corner of Pearl and Broad Street, the legendary tavern now functions as both a museum (on the second and third floors) and an expansive restaurant (taking up the first floor).
Chuck breaks the news to Wendy that he is going to have to drop out of the attorney general race or risk Foley revealing their S&M secrets. They sit on a bench in Madison Square Park, you can catch a glimpse of the Metropolitan Life North Building, where the 3-star Michelin restaurant 11 Madison Park is located.
They have a heated debate. Chuck is obviously loathe to drop out of the race. Wendy is hard-lined – she won’t have this out in the public sphere. Earlier episodes in this season have set up her growing discomfort with their sex life and the reluctant role she now plays in it. Chuck says to tune in at 5 to see him make his speech.
Chuck and his father go to “Elysian Fields,” a development parcel in Greenpoint that is a popular film location site in New York City (when one needs a waterfront site that looks appropriately undeveloped for either criminal or real estate purposes, or both). Chuck calls the vision “grandiose” and his father says “The name should invite dreams. This development is my legacy, hell, it’s your legacy. Generational wealth sonny, beyond you, beyond your kids even. As long as certain expedited approvals come through…and I’m counting on you for that.” His father is putting on the pressure for the attorney general race, while Chuck is facing pressure from Black Jack Foley who has plans to reveal Chuck’s S&M habit.
This large parcel of land sits on Bushwick Inlet, just north of Williamsburg next to the former Greenpoint Terminal Market. Halcyon Development plans to build three large buildings here. Billions never fails to produce story lines inspired by real-life people and events in New York City, although Chuck Sr. wants to build sixteen buildings.
While walking along 5th Avenue next to the New York Public Library Stephen Schwarzman Building at Bryant Park, Axe gets a call from his contact at a Baton Rouge natural gas facility that an explosion will happen imminently. He stops in front of the Andaz 5th Avenue hotel (convenient product placement with the hotel sign just behind him). He calls Dollar Bill Stern right away who is in the Axe Capital office to “get out of natural gas,” setting off a series of events that take the company all day.
But first, Axe Capital discovers its system have been hacked by none other than Grigor.
Although there’s a Resorts World right in New York City, in Jamaica, Queens, episode three’s scenes at the new casino in “Kingsford” New York (starring also Michael Bolton) were filmed at the Resorts World Catskills location in Monticello, New York. The location opened up just last year, in February 2018. For those familiar with the Borscht Belt resorts, made more recently famous in the latest season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Resorts World Catskills was built on the site of the former Concord Hotel, one of the area’s famous resorts.
Journalist Lucien Porter of the fictional “Eastern Sun Times” confronts Brian Connerty (with Kate Sacker by his side) outside the steps of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, one of the Cass Gilbert designed buildings in New York City. Gilbert is probably most famous for the Woolworth Building. The building you see in the background of the shot, with its Greek pediment and Corinthian columns is the New York County Courthouse. The Thurgood Marshall Courthouse is located in Foley Square, just north of City Hall.
The annual Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy is one of New York City’s largest events is in its 93rd year in 2019. The festival, which runs along Mulberry Street from Canal Street in Little Italy to Houston Street, is an 11-day salute to the patron saint of Naples. From cannoli eating contests, musical performances, religious blessings of the food stands, and celebrity appearances, it’s not surprising that Chuck and Police Commissioner Richie Sansome (actor Michael Rispoli who you’re also seeing in The Deuce), would announce his candidacy for New York State Attorney General at the Feast of San Gennaro. Based on how this scene is shot close in, it appears that the aerial shot of the Feast was taken last September during the actual 92nd annual festival but the scene itself and closeups may have been recreated later.
Axe takes out Rebecca Cantu, a billionaire private equity investor to the Broken Shaker tiki bar. Axe has something up his sleeve, a complicated series of chess moves that everyone close to him believes is just about revenge against Taylor. But clearly Axe has an interest in Rebecca that goes beyond business. The Broken Shaker is located at 23 Lexington Avenue at 23rd Street inside the Freehand Hotel.
The scene where Wendy Rhoades goes to look for Troy, the dominatrix, is filmed inside the Montauk Club, located in Park Slope, Brooklyn. This scene is filmed in the parlor reception room, when you first enter the club, which features a blue-tiled fireplace, wood panel details, and stained glass windows. The Montauk Club was founded in 1888, in the tradition of private clubs at the height of the Gilded Age. It was designed by Frances H. Kimball, a notable architect whose famous buildings still stand in New York City today
Chuck meets Police Commissioner Sansome in City Hall Park, next to the Jacob Wrey Mould Fountain to tell him he doesn’t have quite what he’s asked for in his independent investigation of what’s happening in the police pension fund. Meaning, he can’t touch Raul Gomez (whom Chuck meets in the oft-used film location along Newtown Creek) due to Axe’s secret involvement in the fund, but they can all agree that Panay can be sacrificed.
Another scene in episode 4, Mafee meets with Rudy the second time in the episode at Walter Foods, a restaurant and bar on Grand Street Williamsburg. Rudy is desperately looking for a job after he’s fired by Axe for “fraternizing” with the enemy, brought down by an Instagram post.
Chuck catches Commissioner Samsone at a talk he’s giving at the High Line Hotel’s ballroom. The High Line Hotel is located at 180 Tenth Avenue in Chelsea, close to the High Line. The historic building was originally built as a dormitory for the nearby General Theological Seminary, and this building was completed in 1899. The building was sold in 2010 and converted into a hotel.
We had a first glimpse of the offices of Taylor Mason Capital in the third season in the new Empire Stores, a converted coffee warehouse in Dumbo that is home to places like the West Elm corporate office, the offshoot location of the Brooklyn Historical Society, and restaurants and bars for the public. In the beginning of season four, Taylor is still in this office space, struggling to hire staff, though she has a hard core chief of staff on board who was trained at Annapolis. Axe’s team has Taylor’s head of human resources on payroll however, so there is going to be some shifting around. You can see inside the construction of Empire Stores here, on a tour we did with architect Navid Maqami, founder and principal architect at S9Architecture.
The exterior and interior shots that show the Embassy of Qadir, where Wax is taken hostage, Axe goes in search of his dutiful right hand man, where the Sheik of Qadir is supposedly inside, and where Andalov shows up in the library are all filmed at the House of the Redeemer, at 7 E. 95th Street on the Upper East Side. The stunning house was originally built for the great granddaughter of Commodore Corenilus Vanderbilt, Edith Shepard Fabbri. The architect was Grosvenor Atterbury, who designed Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate in the Hudson Valley, Forest Hills in Queens, and more.
Located on the Upper West Side at 541 Amsterdam Avenue and 86th Street, Barney Greengass The Sturgeon King is a New York City institution. The Jewish deli has been open since 1908. Chuck heads there first on his mission to gain influence with police commissioner Richie Sansome, who rebuffs his offer. Chuck needs to get a gun permit for Brogan, which sets of a chain of maneuvers across a day. Little does the police commissioner know that Chuck had been listening in on his plight about a little league pitcher’s age.
Next, he heads to the Upper East Side to E.A.T., the deli and restaurant by Eli Zabar (one of the three Zabar brothers) to catch Freddie Eisen at breakfast to see what he might want, in order to get an introduction to the ambassador from the Dominican Republic. Turns out, Eisen wants tickets to the Central Synagogue’s Hanukkah show, so from there, Chuck goes to Michael’s at 24 W. 55th Street to meet Donnie, who can help Chuck get the tickets. But Donnie wants first tracks at Deer Valley, the ski resort near Park City, Utah. So from there, Chuck heads to.
Wendy and Chuck take a lunch at the iconic (but recently renovated and newly operated) Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building. There they (technically, Wendy) catch Steven Birch, who gives up his Deer Valley spot for a session with Wendy. The restaurant is now known as The Pool. Another short scene is actually filmed in the restaurant in the adjoining room, when they meet with Eisen’s friend who can technically make the introduction.
With everything in place, Chuck heads to Sparks Steakhouse at 210 E. 46th Street in Midtown where he first runs into Connerty and Kate. He finds the police commissioner and has a blank birth certificate from the ambassador of the Dominican Republic. Axe had to get involved to make this last piece happen.
Sparks Steakhouse is the real-life location of a famous mob hit, which Chuck and the commissioner recreate that night. In 1977, John Gotti used the location to make a power move for the Gambino crime family. With tensions already high between him and Paul Castellano, Gotti ordered his death in December 1985: both Castellano and his bodyguard were mowed down in front of the restaurant.
Last season, Axe Capital moved its offices to Manhattan. The aerial shot of the building this season indicates that it’s still the same, at 855 Sixth Avenue, a building by COOKFOX Architects right near Herald Square. What’s different is the vibe inside – strict non-compete clauses are being enforced, loyalty is being tested and monitored. And of course, Taylor Mason isn’t here anymore.
Season three opens with Rhoades and the Attorney General meeting in a hotel room. The AG wants Rhoades to take it easy on prosecuting Wall Street, which Rhoades is clearly uncomfortable with. After their face to face, the two head down to the ballroom of the Roosevelt Hotel, where members of the Rhoades’ team are waiting. The Roosevelt Hotel, locate at 45 E 45th Street, is one of the hotels originally built for Grand Central’s Terminal City complex.
Axe Capital has moved its offices to Manhattan and its employees are going to the office but all the company’s assets are frozen. Taylor is the new CFO and they are trying to keep things at bay, to mixed success at first. The new offices are located (on the exterior) 855 Sixth Avenue, a building by COOKFOX Architects right near Herald Square. that has Nordstrom Rack as its anchor tenant. A residential building,the EOS Nomad, with an address of 100 W 31st Street is attached. Later, when Axe drives his car right up to the office, that location is the entrance to 855 Sixth Avenue.
Rhoades meets with Oliver Dake to finesse some aspects of their deal – namely, overlooking Wendy Rhoades’ short of Ice Juice on the day of the IPO. They meet in Keens steakhouse, located at 72 West 36th Street, one of the iconic old school steakhouses in the city.
Bryan Connerty and his girlfriend take a stroll down Cadman Plaza in downtown Brooklyn, along the United State Post Office and courthouse building. You can see the arches of this Romanesque Revival-style building on the left above. They aren’t far from the Kings County Supreme Court and Brooklyn Borough Hall. You may remember in an earlier season, Lonnie Watkins is sent to work here at the Eastern District before he gets called back to Rhoades’ office. This is the district that Connerty and Dake are working out of.
Rhoades can’t sleep, so he tells Wendy he’s going to take a walk. It would have to be a pretty far walk, as he goes from Brooklyn Heights all the way to the East Village. He walks into the 24-hour Ukrainian joint, Veselka, at 44 2nd Avenue on the corner of 9th Street, where he finds Ira.
Ira isn’t pleased to see him and it becomes clear quickly Rhoades isn’t really here because he feels bad for what he did to Ira. He’s here because he wants Ira to keep quiet about Ice Juice. Ira agrees but says they’ll never speak to each other again. Veselka has been serving the East Village since 1954.
If you were wondering if this was a real place, it is indeed. Wang Chen Table Tennis Club is located at 250 W 100th Street just off Broadway. Axe’s fixer/lawyer Orrin Bach meets Connerty there to try to pressure the Attorney’s General office to ease off, but admits that has nothing to offer. Connerty feels that soon Axe will be willing to give up his ability to trade. The club is led by Wang Chen, a 2008 Table Tennis Olympian, who placed 5th – America’s best place in history at the sport. All levels of players are welcome and there are two additional locations in New Jersey.
Axe is nervous about the big hedge fund dinner that’s going to take place at the restaurant, Del Posto at 85 10th Avenue in Chelsea and Taylor has been motivating the troops to come up with one big idea that can show that Axe is still in the game. In the end, Taylor shows up with an idea about a tech component made in Thailand.
Dake and Connerty go to find their judge fate, which is done through the random selection of a piece of paper, very old school style. They walk through a beautiful lobby with murals. This is the Bronx County Courthouse on the Grand Concourse, with WPA-era murals by James Monroe Hewlett. The exterior of this building is often used in television shows, like Gotham, Daredevil, The Punisher, and previously on Billions, when Bobby picks up Boyd, out on bail.
Rhoades and Dake meet up at Kossar’s Bagels and Bialys on the Lower East Side located at 367 Grand Street. Rhoades wants Dake to pressure Judge Funt to step off the Axelrod case. Dake only likes to play by the book so won’t agree so Rhoades meets with Wendy next to figure out next steps.
Rhoades meets Wendy at Corlear’s Hook, also on the Lower East Side, along the East River Promenade. The spot they’re standing in is actually in the process of becoming a new NYC Ferry stop. She basically tells him to man up and collect on the debt that Judge Funt owes him.
Axe meets his suited techies, John and Timmy, at WNYC Transmitter Park in Greenpoint. Axe wants the $2 billion moved, which John and Timmy say can be done – but only once through the method they’re going to use. Transmitter Park is a popular film locations, seen also in Homeland.
Ira makes two attempts to propose to his girlfriend at Craft, the restaurant by Tom Colicchio located at 43 E. 19th Street. The first, after his girlfriend gets 20 grams of truffle on her pasta, shown in painful slow motion, is a failed affair. He hopes that maybe she’ll marry him for love, rather than money, but she wants the status wedding. Why he tries again is anyone’s guess, as she seems pretty terrible. But after selling his soul to Axelrod, he returns with a ring. We’re pretty confident this isn’t going to end well for Ira – who should know better than to underestimate Chuck. You’ll recognize Craft from the terra-cotta columns and exposed bulb lighting that hangs from the ceiling, a design by Bentel & Bentel, that melded original details with modern design.
Axe’s new apartment is in Tribeca, at 145 Hudson Street on the top floor duplex penthouse of the Sky Lofts building. From his apartment, Axe can see the Art Deco-style AT&T Long Distance Building. The penthouse units were previously listed at $45 and $48 million.
Axe stalks Ira to Gray’s Papaya, the iconic hot dog and papaya juice spot on 72nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side. Axe suggests Ira go for the “Recession Special,” a long running offer of two hot dogs and a drink, now at $5.95 (up a dollar since we reported on it in 2013). Gray’s Papaya has been in business since 1973.
Axe meets up with Michael Panay at one of the Whitney Museum‘s outdoor terraces. The Whitney Museum. The museum, which was formerly located on the Upper East Side, moved down to the Meatpacking District in in 2015, in a new building designed by architect Renzo Piano. Panay admits his fund is on its last legs and Axe offers him the $2 billion in change he wants to secretly invest. All this comes at a cost, of course, for Panay.
Axe meets with Minor Welles, a board member of the Axelrod Foundation at the King Cole Bar, in the St. Regis Hotel. The King Cole Bar is most famous for being the birthplace of the Bloody Mary. The mural, which is referenced in Billions, was painted by illustrator Maxfield Parrish, was originally commissioned by John Jacob Astor IV in 1909 for his Knickerbocker Hotel in Times Square. Welles says that King Cole is supposedly “releasing his royal air” in the painting, which is why he smiles and the jesters have to take it. Welles wants Axe to know it’s a “gesture of respect” that he was alerted in advance of his removal from the board. Axe threatens Welles with his knowledge of the unscrupulous behavior of the board. “Fart in my f&$%ing presence and you will meet a swift end,” Axe says.
Wags is gunning to get the last burial plot in Manhattan (a claim which is not quite true, since both Old St. Patrick’s and Trinity Church’s uptown location still offer burials). In Billions, the last spot is shown to be at the Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection, located at 59 E 2nd Street in the East Village, located in the former Olivet Memorial German Reformed Church, a building designed by Josiah Cady. In real life, the cemetery across the street is actually the New York Marble Cemetery, which operates separately from the church and is only accessible a few times a year.
Donahue’s Steak House, located at 845 Lexington Avenue, is another New York City institution. Founded in 1950 the steakhouse is still run by the Donahue family and known for the down to earth experience and reasonable prices. In 2015, a long time customer left two $50,000 tips in his will for Maureen Donahue-Peters who runs the place and her niece, also named Maureen. In 2017, Eater reported that Donahue’s would be staying put at least for another decade.
Chuck meets with Black Jack Foley there to discuss how his father is going to turn him in, hoping to get Foley’s help in strong arming his father not to. Later Chuck Rhoades Sr. meets with Senator Joe Sclari who tells him that the Kinsgford land, which Rhoades wants to build the casino, might be reassigned as a natural conservation area, which would render the land worthless.
Ghenet is an Ethiopian restaurant at 348 Douglass Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Taylor meets up with Axe there along with Oscar Langstraat. Taylor lets Axe know they got the message about the solar panel manufacturing investment, and they lets Axe know that the short on Farpoint paid off.
Chuck agrees to a double date dinner with Lonnie Watley and his girlfriend, a concert pianist. They go to KEFI, a Greek restaurant run by chef Michael Psilakis at 505 Columbus Avenue near 86th Street. The dinner does not go well, with Lonnie pushing Chuck’s buttons about the cases he’s pursuing (due to pressure from Attorney General Jock Jeffcoat) and Chuck leaves the dinner quickly in anger.
John Malkovich appears in Billions this season as ruthless Russian oligarch Grigor Andolov. Axe and Andolov first meet at an ice hockey rink, which is shown to be home of the Islanders. Technically, the Islanders currently play at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn but this scene was actually filmed at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. There has been talk of the Islanders moving back to Nassau Coliseum, so shooting there keeps it all in the family.
Axe gets a text from Todd Krakow, now the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and meets him at the fictional art storage facility “Devon & Baker.” If you’ve been Googling the name trying to locate the Art Deco building, you likely found yourself out of luck. The building is actually the Stella Tower (formerly the AT&T Building), the Stella Tower at 435 W. 50th Street was designed by Ralph Walker, who also did the New York Telephone Building downtown (home to 100 Barclays) and 60 Hudson Street. The set designers swapped out the Stella Towers sign and replaced it with “Devon & Baker,” while also hanging a banner.
Chuck heads up to the city of Buffalo to sweet talk Mayor Bob Sweeney, whom he formerly got to drop out of the race by threatening to reveal that he sent his son to gay conversion therapy. Chuck offers him the written confession in exchange for support of his governor candidacy and dirt he can get on Jack Foley. All of these political machinations comes to naught however, as all viewers will discover.
Axe and Andolov go to the Russian Tea Room, down some caviar, and meet with Todd Krakow in the kitchen to finalize the backhand deal.
Axe goes to play tennis, with none other than the real Maria Sharapova (who kicks his butt), at the Randall’s Island Tennis Center, a privately run tennis center connected to John McEnroe who runs a tennis academy there. Randall’s Island is located between Manhattan and Queens.
Last season, Billions filmed in the lobby and on an upper floor of the Union League Club to simulate the Yale Club. This season, they filmed the meeting between Chuck and Jock Jeffcoat in the library.
Axe has an aggressive plan for a big capital raise, but it’s put in jeopardy when Andalov backs out. With no other option, Axe and Wags go up to the restaurant Sammy’s Fish Box on City Island to meet with Frotty Anisman, a gauche potential investor. Anisman asks for pretty outrageous things, like becoming partner and getting his name on the Axe Capital company. Axe and Wags watch Anisman slurp oysters (if you’ve seen the episode, you’ll see why they find this pretty gross). City Island is situated off the Bronx, with the feel of a seaside town rather than a part of New York City. Check out the secrets of City Island and see a guide here.
Oscar Laangstraat invites Taylor to a date/business dinner where he’s celebrating an investment with Peyton Breen, who started Genomtech Atlas, an app that can map a person’s genome. Taylor asks Axe to make the reservation at The Nomad, so they can get special treatment (like a bottle of Dom Perignon P2, for example).
Later, Taylor finds out that Axe has swooped in and bought half of Breen’s company from under Langstraat. We see a scene that takes place in The Library Bar at The Nomad where Axe meets with Breen and asks what it would take to break the letter of intent with Laangstraat. When Taylor confronts Axe that he “sold out her relationship,” he tells her:
“Bought 50 percent of Breen’s company, at 200 million, which placed its paper value at 400 total. NASDAQ have already confirmed they are ready to accept our public offering at a valuation of 2. 4 billion. That is a billion added to the value of our balance sheets and 800 million in gains this month. It basically solves our problem.”
If you’re wondering who the chef was with the dark sunglasses salting steak with aplomb, that was The Salt Bae, aka Nusret Gökçe, at the New York City spot of his steakhouse chain Nus’r Et. Based on reviews, The Salt Bae is more famous for his antics that go viral than the food itself. Nus’r Et is located in Times Square at 60 W 53rd St n the former China Grill space
Chuck and Kate Sacker go for dinner there, and run into Ira Schirmer. Chuck takes the opportunity to sit with him when his guest goes to the bathroom, where they basically call it even. Chuck gets a suspicion that Ira’s new wife is doing something shady with her new company and starts a behind the scenes investigation.
When film scouts need a shady motel in New York City, they head to Metro Motel located in Woodside, Queens right on Queens Boulevard. True to form it has pretty horrific Yelp reviews. Chuck and an FBI contact of Sacker track down the Jeffcoats’ “financial adviser” who is fleeing to South America. Chuck convinces him to turn on Jeffcoat in exchange for the opportunity to leave the country. The Metro Motel was also a film location The Deuce, standing in for a seedy motel located in New Jersey just outside the Lincoln Tunnel.
Taylor has to break the news to Oscar about Axe’s devious moves. She meets him at Bubby’s, a comfort food spot in Tribeca at 120 Hudson Street (there’s another location next to the High Line). There’s no dialogue audible in this scene but he looks up, excited to see her, until she tells him what happened. The scene cuts to her walking alone, upset.
Taylor has a lot to be upset about. Not only has her relationship been compromised by Axe’s actions, he won’t give her the raise she wants and has taken her off the raise team at Axe Capital. She heads to the SeaGlass Carousel in the Battery, designed by WXY Architecture, for solace. Wendy, who knows something is up, meets her there and promises to put in a word with Axe. Taylor is starting to make other plans however.
The Spartan-Ives Capital Raising Introduction takes place CitiField in Flushing, the latest home of The Mets. Each investment company gets a box, and Axe is having Taylor make the pitch. On the way, Axe runs into Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx (playing herself on the show) who says she’s not interested in having investors still but Axe says he wants first dibs.
Taylor has started their own firm, Taylor Mason Capital, and meets with Andalov first. This location, with brick interior walls and a view of the Manhattan Bridge is the new Empire Stores, a converted coffee warehouse in Dumbo that is home to places like the West Elm corporate office, the offshoot location of the Brooklyn Historical Society, and restaurants and bars for the public. You can see inside the construction of Empire Stores here, on a tour we did with architect Navid Maqami, founder and principal architect at S9Architecture.
The DA’s office loves their dive bars, and we see the Barrow Street Ale House in Greenwich Village throughout multiple seasons. Kate brings her team here to celebrate and Connerty seems to always know she’s here for his next confrontation. Barrow Street Ale house dates to the 19th century.
Chuck meets up with the attorney general that’s going to file the case against Jeffcoat’s brother, and they scheme and try to predict Jock’s next moves. They meet at Foot Heaven, located at 16 Pell Street in Chinatown, a location that gives foot massages.
Axe takes out the company to celebrate the successful capital raise at the Cutting Room with a performance by the band The Hold Steady. The Cutting Room, with its sumptuous proscenium over the stage, is located at 44 E. 32nd Street.
We get a great aerial view of lower Manhattan in the opening of season 1 (after the S&M scene between Rhoades and Wendy, of course). Behind the Manhattan Municipal Building is the U.S. District Attorney’s office, a mid-century Brutalist building located next to St. Andrews Roman Catholic Church, a congregation formed in 1944. The Neoclassical style church has the words “Beati Qui Ambulant In Lege Domini (“Blessed are those who walk in God’s law”) inscribed on the front. Many justice institutions are centered at this location, just near City Hall and the Municipal Building.
Bobby’s favorite pizza spot from childhood is Cappanello’s and in season one, he buys the building to help out the owner, Bruno Capparello, whose rent had been raised. The pizza joint is supposed to be in Yonkers, but the real film location is at Rosa’s Pizzeria in Middle Village, Queens on Metropolitan Avenue. (h/t @LRM_Exclusive). Middle Village is between Ridgewood, Forest Park, Rego Park and Glendale.
Cappanello’s is a regular spot on the show – not only where Bobby goes to unwind (sometimes with his wife, Lara) but also where some shady deals are attempted to be brokered. Brian Connerty, who works under Chuck Rhoades in the DA’s office, takes a meeting with Orrin Bach, his former teacher in law school who also happens to be Bobby’s lawyer at Axe Capital.
Axe Capital is headquartered in Westport, Connecticut near many other hedge funds, but the actual set of the office is in Orangeburg, New York. According to Variety, it’s the former office building of Olympus Surgical & Industrial America, “an offshoot of the camera giant that had been sitting empty for years before location scouts found it for the “Billions” pilot shoot in 2014.” The industry paper also reports that the computer terminals in the office were donated by Bloomberg financial news service. Orangeburg is also a film location for Orange is the New Black, which uses an abandoned portion of the Rockland Psychiatric Center for the outside of the prison.
A lot of the legal action takes place in the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse at 40 Centre Street on Foley Square, just next to the New York Supreme County Courthouse. The court functions as the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Southern District of New York, the latter of important to Billions. In the first episode of the first season, Assistant D.A. Kate Sacker runs into Rhoades and Connerty on the steps and reports that she heard that Axelrod is trying to buy an $83 million beach house in the Hamptons.
The courthouse was designed by Cass Gilbert, who also designed the Woolworth Building and the Alexander Hamilton Customs House at Bowling Green. The building with the mansard roof in the shot above is the Surrogate’s Court, home to the New York City municipal archives and another popular film location seen in Gotham and other shows.
The $83 million dollar house (which Bobby ultimately pays $63 million in cash for) is used as a test by Rhoades, who believes that if Bobby is innocent of insider trading and other financial fraud, he will listen to the advice of his lawyer not to buy it. But if he is guilty, he’ll want to buy it to show that he’s not guilty. Rhoades gets a friend to put a bid on it in order to goad Bobby, who falls for it. The house here is in Southampton, located at 1610 Meadow Lane. As Curbed Hamptons reports, it’s owned by media executive Michael Loeb who built the house on a 9-acre property he bought for $21 million. The mansion has 12 rooms and 12 bathrooms and many amenities including pool, tennis court and media room.
As we see in season two, the address of Chuck and Wendy Rhoades’ townhouse is at 49 Pierrepont Street, which would be in tony Brooklyn Heights. The actual exterior film location for the townhouse is at 49 8th Avenue, in Park Slope. There is no building at 49 Pierrepont Street, but the closest townhouse is another corner one at 43 Pierrepont which is a multi-unit rental.
The 8 bedroom, 5 bathroom townhouse at 49 8th Avenue was last sold in 2010 for $2.691 million. As far as townhouses goes, it’s a stately one. It’s 6,500 square feet, 25 feet wide, and even has a ballroom.
Connerty meets Orrin Bach at a vintage barbershop to deliver the warning to Axelrod about the Hamptons house. Bach tries to convince Connerty to work for him for a lot more money, a theme that comes up throughout the show. The barbershop used as the location is Ludlow Blunt in Williamsburg.
Ludlow Blunt is named after Commodore Ludlow & Cornelius Blunt, who opened the first Ludlow Blunt store in the Windsor Arcade, a high end shopping destination considered one of America’s first malls. It was built in 1901 but is one of New York City’s shortest lived buildings, demolished just 10 years later.
Chuck Rhoades Sr. is Chuck’s meddlesome father who sees Chuck’s career as a way to make up for his own unfulfilled political aspirations. It’s clear through incidental conversation that Chuck Rhoades Sr. is also very wealthy and influential in New York City. He has a Hamptons house not far from Axelrod’s new mansion and he lives on Fifth Avenue, at supposedly 10101 Fifth Avenue.
There has been a little trick in the address here. The real location is 1010 Fifth Avenue, one of those pre-war Upper East Side co–op apartment buildings. This one happens to be located just across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A sale of one of the larger units, which we assume would be what Rhoade Sr. would own, went for $13.75 million in 2011.
Axelrod does a panel discussion at an event called “Delivering Alpha” with another hedge funder Steven Birch (played by Jerry O’Connell). The scene is shot in The Times Center, the theater inside the New York Times Building on 8th Avenue and 40th Street. Axelrod has already fed Financial Times reporter Michael Dimonda information about Birch’s financial wrongdoings, hoping to deflect attention from Axe Capital. Meanwhile, Rhoades is also speaking but he and his assistant DAs show up a little early during the talk.
The Axelrods share a little Pax on the fence of Bowling Green, New York City’s oldest public park which is across from “Ellis Eads Hall,” a symphony hall in the show. The fence dates back to before the American Revolution, originally constructed to protect the statue of George III at Bowling Green, which was subsequently knocked down by a mob of soldiers and civilians in 1776. The fence ornaments were melted down for ammunition. The Bowling Green fence is one of New York City’s more surprising landmarks.
Bobby tells Lara, “Look at that. That is such a shitty name on such a great building,” which sets up some of the action for the episode. As we’ll discover, Bobby has some axe to grind with the Eads, who have the naming rights to the symphony hall in perpetuity.
The exterior of Ellis Eads Hall is actually the Alexander Hamilton Customs House designed by Cass Gilbert, and also home to the Museum of the American Indian. The hall name sits below one of the four sculptures by Daniel Chester French, who also sculpted Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.
The interior is another location all together, but not far – Cipriani’s Wall Street, formerly the New York Merchants Exchange. There, Penn from Penn & Teller does some sideshow tricks, swallowing fire and setting the stage for a literacy fundraiser.
Chuck takes his kids to the park and gets them donuts at a food truck. On the line, he sees someone he prosecuted for mail fraud also with his kids knowing that the man would be going to jail soon. In a spark of pity, he gives the food truck vendor $20 to pay for the other man’s donuts. The park is Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, with rusticated gates similar to Central Park as the park was also designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. One of the giveaways is that there is a row of brownstones visible from the inside of the park in the scenes, an urban condition that is not quite the same at Prospect Park.
The man follows Rhoades into the park and hits him with a donut. Turns out the man is going to prison tomorrow and has taken the day off to be with his kids. He asks Rhoades “How do yo live with yourself?” to which Rhoades answers, “I think long and hard before any prosecution in my office goes forward. And I’m proudest of the cases I choose not to prosecute. But when I go forward, it’s full guns,” a line he later admits to Wendy is a bit of a standard line.
Bobby interrupts a dinner between Kenneth Malverne and Garth, whom both are trying to get to invest in their funds. Bobby accuses Kenneth of poaching clients and the rivalry is obvious between the two of them. Kenneth is very risk averse and is proud of the length of his career. Garth tells Bobby on the side that he needs both returns and good optics, referencing Bobby’s recent legal and media troubles. Bobby still seems to win this round but he later calls Kenneth up when he needs some funds to tide him over on a short.
The scene is shot at the Hunt & Fish Club, a 10,000 square foot steakhouse in Times Square with interiors designed by Roy Nachum and Studio Iyor. According to the restaurant’s website, the space contains 50,000 pounds of marble and a “40’×20′ reflective chrome light installation,” in the White Room, which you see in the scene in Billions. The building is the former Hotle Gerard, built in 1893 and a New York City landmark.
In one of the few scenes where you see the Rhoades’ actual dog, Chuck is walking it on the Brooklyn Heights promenade. This make sense since the Rhoades supposedly live in this neighborhood on Pierrepont Street (though as noted above, the actual house is in Park Slope).
Rhoades gets upset at a fellow dog walker who hasn’t cleaned up after his pup and pressures him into literally picking up the poop with his hands. The scene shows how Rhoades does not compromise for anything, in any scenario, when he feels he’s in the right. Before the incident, you see the camera pan over Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Tara, an admin in the DA’s office is blackmailed to offer information to Axelrod’s fixer, Hal, based on a girl on girl hookup session she had, which was secretly recorded. Hal arranges to meet Tara along the East River at the end of Wall Street, but by this point Tara’s duplicity has been discovered by the DA’s office who hope to use her to get information from Axelrod’s camp. Hal gets spooked and he doesn’t take the bait.
Not far from another hotspot of the justice system in Downtown Brooklyn, the Financial Journal reporter Dimonda tracks down Lonnie Watley, a DA with Eastern District who used to work with Rhoades, at a food truck. Columbus Park is named for one of the city’s Christopher Columbus statues which was a gift to the city but was lost for decades and rediscovered in a maintenance facility in Central Park. It was in Columbus Park in Chinatown for some time, and then moved to Brooklyn’s Columbus Park in front of the courthouse, where Watley works.
In the scene, Dimonda says he lives nearby in Cobble Hill and says he’s working on a story about Rhoades. You can see Brooklyn Borough Hall in the background of the shot.
With Axe Capital at a standstill with Bobby’s faux breakdown taking place, Wendy plays hooky from work and decides to “second-act” a musical by sneaking in after intermission. She goes to check out On the Town playing on Broadway at the Lyric Theater at 214 West 43rd Street.
Bobby arranges a meeting with Wendy at Aire Ancient Baths in Tribeca, a film location also recently featured in Homeland. This spot is a beautifully designed Roman-style bath that melds in distinct New York City architecture in a cast-iron building. There are plenty of nooks in this space, perfect for the scheming Bobby has in mind. They get into the pool that is the hottest in the baths. Read our previous article about the history and renovation of Aire Ancient Baths.
Wendy and Chase, a head hunter, meet up at Chef’s Club in Soho at at the Puck Building. The restaurant entrance is at the intersection of Mulberry Street and Jersey Lane. Chase has a potential job at a blue chip consulting firm with clients that include thought leaders, innovators and Fortune 500 leaders.
Chuck and Wendy take their kids to the Big Apple Circus, where they run into Bobby Axelrod. The scene is filmed inside the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, the one in Williamsburg off the bridge (vs. the tower in Downtown Brooklyn). The bank was restored in 2013 and is now used as the event space Weylin B. Seymour’s. If you’re wondering why Williamsburg has an “h” at this bank, learn all about it here.
The characters in the show have a funny accuracy with Asian foods, particularly Connerty who corrects Chuck on the type of noodles (Taiwanese noodles, in one case). Chuck meets Dimonda at Saigon Vietnamese Sandwich Deli at 369 Broome Street in Little Italy to leak him the redacted chapter from a book by the widow of a 9/11 victim, formerly Bobby’s partner. The chapter is damaging to Bobby’s 9/11 narrative he has told, showing that he made a large profit by betting against certain stocks following the attacks on the World Trade Center. Dimonda has goi bah, a Vietnamese cabbage dish while Chuck has a banh mi sandwich.
Although other websites have stated that this is the Yale Club, it is in fact the Down Town Association of the City of New York Club, a private club founded in 1859 in the Financial District. It’s located at 60 Pine Street, just down the street from the Art Deco skyscraper 70 Pine. The building was built in 1887 and is a New York City landmark. It is considered the oldest club in New York City still occupied by its members and originally built for them. Charles Wetmore, who designed Grand Central Terminal, was responsible for an addition.
The members of the Down Town Association have included Franklin D. Roosevelt and its memberships are often from the legal and financial elite. It makes sense that Chuck would meet a partner at Hovarth, one of the premier legal firms to discuss as potential job here at this club. See photos of the inside of the actual Yale Club.
Connerty and Chuck meet up in Battery Park, with the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty, Governors Island, and the Staten Island Ferry. Connerty tells Chuck that he ended up doing what Chuck suggested to save his source inside Axe Capital: framing another worker.
Shortly after the meet up in Battery Park, Chuck and Connerty head to Barrow’s Pub, a dive bar, in Greenwich Village at 463 Hudson Street. With a nondescript brick facade and classic neon lighting on the windows, Barrow’s Pub is everything you want from in a dive bar with an interior walls lined with sports paraphernalia and Happy Hour beginning at 11 am. One of the special drinks: the “Bin Laden Special.”
Chuck and Wags meet up with Hal, the fixer, at the American Dream Diner, which is also located on Orangeburg, NY (where the Axe Capital Office headquarters film location is). The place is no longer open in real life, however.
In an earlier episode, when Dimonda tracks down Lonnie Watley in Columbus Park, Downtown Brooklyn he tells him “Brooklyn is Paris now, if you know where to look. But this is a strange land to you, right? You’re from the Upper West? What a shitty commute, to the Eastern District no less? That’s like being traded from the Pats to the Titans.”
Chuck visits Lonnie at his apartment at 194 Riverside Drive between 91st and 92nd Street, when he decides he needs to play a similar game that the hedge fund managers are playing – ensuring that no matter how the market goes, they’re covered. Lonnie and Chuck talk about the problems with Judge Wilcox, as Chuck has reconsidered his stance on the judge. “Look into Wilcox, go wherever it leads,” he instructs Lonnie.
Turns out that the DA’s informant within Axe Capital, Donnie, has been only pretending to feed the government information in exchange for $40 million from Bobby. Donnie is dying of pancreatic cancer and wants the money to make sure his partner and kids are set for life. Donnie’s funeral takes place at Wave Hill, a historic villa in the Bronx that overlooks the Hudson River.
Wave Hill House was built in 1843 by William Lewis Morris, grandnephew of Lewis Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amazingly enough, the panoramas of the Hudson River that the Morris family enjoyed in the 1800s are still undisturbed today. One of its well-known visitors was Theodore Roosevelt and his son.
Chuck meets up with Lonnie in Central Park, where Lonnie delivers him the goods on Judge Wilcox. Wilcox invested in a private prison company fund about seven years back and has been giving sentences primarily to poor African American and Hispanic people who have public defenders. They walk by some of the exposed Manhattan schist you can see Central Park as well as the Bow Bridge, which you can see in the background.
Chuck can’t reach Wendy, who say she has to stay late at work. This is true, but she’s also giving a special therapy session to Bobby who is a in a rut. Chuck meets his lawyer friend Ira, who is perfectly cast as a Eric Weiner, before getting caught, at GoldBar. Ira only goes to swanky, hip places to pick up younger women. This extremely over the top bar in Nolita at 389 Broome Street has gold skulls, a plethora of chandeliers, gold chains, gold themed drinks…you get the idea.
Sacker and Connerty start to hookup in Chuck’s office but find it cliché, so they head to Coney Island to do something a little out of the boundaries of their daily routine. Armed with sparklers, they set them off in front of the Thunderbolt roller coaster, located in Luna Park.
To thank Wendy for getting him back on track, Bobby gifts her a Maserati. He finds her outside of her SoulCycle class in Soho on Crosby Street (across from the back entrance of Bloomingdale’s). The above photo is from season 1, however.
Bobby then heads uptown to meet up with Wags, as they head to pitch for new funds in a new capital raise round. Bobby is not happy with the reception and decides to ditch the suit, halfway down 42nd Street next to Bryant Park. They pass the Grace Building, the curved skyscraper, and he grabs an outfit way more comfortable: a hoodie and a jersey henley.
The Explorer’s Club stands in for the Yale Club, where Chuck is staying after he gets kicked out of the brownstone by Wendy. Located on the Upper East Side, the gothic building that houses The Explorer’s Club is filled with artifacts from explorations by its founders and members, including Teddy Roosevelt, Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, and Edmund Hillary. One of the scenes where Wags and Bobby attempt to raise money for their new capital round take place inside the Explorer Club library. Check out our photos from inside the Explorer’s Club.
In the first episode of season two, Bobby meets his lawyer Orrin Bach at the Yonkers Raceway. “In many ways this place made me. There’s nowhere that the stark difference between winners and losers is more clear.” He’s looking for ways to bring down Chuck.
Chuck and his team are at an event where Chuck is speaking. The topic on everyone’s minds is who will be tapped as Head of Crim. This event takes place in Battery Gardens, a restaurant and event venue in Battery Park.
At the Battery Gardens event, Chuck tells his team about a recent incident he had in Washington Square Park, while playing chess. We know from season one that Chuck was once a champion chess player as an adolescent, but couldn’t handle his own internal rage which would mess up his game.
In a game in Washington Square Park, he notices that his opponent cheated. But instead of calling him out, he tells him quietly that he knows what he did and that the move takes practice. He won’t make life difficult for him but the player has to promise not to use the move again and to make sure his next opponent, a small child, has a very good time. Shortly thereafter, he meets up with Spyros from the SEC in the park. Spyros gives Chuck a heads up that his office is going to be investigated.
Chuck needs some money, because his funds are tied up in a blind trust, so he sells his collection of Winston Churchill books to Chartwell Booksellers, a bookstore on East 52nd Street that specializes in the writings of Churchill. One of Chuck’s comes with an inscription to General Montgomery and an autograph.
We see later in the episode that Bobby buys the collection and instructs his new chief of state to buy up all the books she can get.
Bobby is trying to buy a franchise NFL team that is up for sale and he heads to MetLife Stadium, the New Jersey home of the New York Giants to talk to Steve Tisch, the chairman and Vice President of the Giants (he’s also a film and tv producer). He plays himself in the show.
Chuck asks to meet Lawrence Boyd at a place of his choosing, so they meet at the Lotos Club, a private literary club. The Lotos Club is one of the city’s oldest private clubs and counts as a member Mark Twain, who called it “The Ace of Clubs,” a member. It has traditionally had a more inclusive outlook, including Ladies Days starting in 1872 before women were allowed. Its “State Dinners” have played host to U.S. Presidents, explorers like Amelia Earhart, artists like Leonard Bernstein and Roy Lichtenstein and even athletes like Joe DiMaggio. The current building on East 66th Street was a mansion built for the daughter of William H. Vanderbilt. The Lotos Club was originally located on Irving Place and moved several times.
Lara needs to get a leg up on a close competitor to her new business venture, the IV drip business she’s been peddling with her cousin to hedge fund traders. She meets up with friends of her brother, who died in 9/11, at Cullen’s Tavern in the Bronx. Located in Wakefield, across the Bronx River from Woodlawn (the “Little Ireland” neighborhood and Woodlawn Cemetery.
Sandicot is a purely fictional town supposedly on upstate New York, where Marco Capparello (nephew of the Bobby’s pizza joint owner) is hoping Bobby will invest to help turn around the town. All hinges on a casino deal…
Connerty asks Dake for a meeting, and the location is at the Battery Park World War II Memorial. The memorial, of gray granite slabs, is dedicated to 4,601 American servicemen that lost their lives in the Atlantic Ocean. It was dedicated by President John. F Kennedy and commissioned by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) within the U.S. Government. The bronze eagle in the center is sculpted by Albino Manca. Dake hopes to turn Connerty at last but comes up empty.
Bobby and Lawrence Boyd go on the Street Scoop show to influence the Nigerian currency devaluation. This scene is show inside the Thompson Reuters building in Times Square, between 42nd and 43rd streets. Outside the window, you can see the sign for the Hard Rock Cafe, located inside the Paramount Building. After the segment ends, Chuck’s team comes into arrest Boyd, with evidence from the recording.
After the arrest, Chuck gets a pastrami sandwich at Mile End Delicatessen, the location Boerum Hill, Brooklyn just off Atlantic Avenue. Mile End serves Montreal-style Jewish fare, has an outpost in Manhattan in the Helmsley Building and delivers nationwide.
Bobby picks up Boyd, out on bail, in front of the Bronx County Courthouse, an Art Moderne building elevated atop multiple flights of steps. This location has also been a film location in the television series Gotham and Daredevil. The Bronx County Courthouse is one of the numerous notable buildings on the Grand Concourse.
Wags accepts an invitation with new Axe Capital psychologist, Gus, to Sushi Nakazawa in Greenwich Village, the omakase sushi restaurant in New York City opened by the disciple of Jiro, from Sukiyabashi Jiro, the 10-seat Japanese restaurant in the Tokyo subway and the subject of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
There, Wags loses his cool to younger finance bros who are talking on a cell phone and dipping the sushi into a “bath” of soy sauce, with ginger on top. “It is already precisely sauced,” he says, and emphasizes that the ginger is used to “clean the palette” between pieces. A fight nearly ensues, with one of them saying “Chill out Mr. Miyagi.” Wags explains that he won’t to the “f*cking heathens.” And in a reference to Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Nakazawa himself who is in the scene, Wags says, “This man is an artist. He had to spend 10 years how to make the tamago, the egg. THE EGG. Your expense accounts don’t entitle you to f*ck his art up the ass.” The fight stops when the bros realize its Wags from Axe Capital and apologize.
After Wendy meets with Ira and learns that Chuck is struggling under the weight of the lawsuits, she arranges to meet Bobby at Pier 62 in Hudson River Park. She offers to come back to Axe Capital in exchange for a salary bump and the dropping of the lawsuits against Chuck. Bobby agrees to the deal.
As per tradition, Chuck takes his potential Head of Crim to lunch at Keens Steakhouse. But Chuck uses it as an opportunity to get Connerty to admit he called the investigation on the him. Still, he gives Connerty the chance to prove his loyalty and leaves the position open for the near future.
Keens Steakhouse, located on 36th Street near Herald Square has been a staple in New York City since 1885, and known, as Chuck reinforces repeatedly over the meal, for mutton chops. The ceiling is also notable – filled with churchwarden pipes. In fact, Keens has the largest collection of these pipes in the world.
Chuck meets Judge DeGiulio at Peking Duck House where they get the classic – carved Peking duck. This restaurant, located at 28 Mott Street in Chinatown, has a wall of fame on the lower level – conveniently on the way to the bathroom. You’ll see there a photo of French President Jacques Chirac, a known glutton.
Chuck is now gunning for political office, prodded on by his father, who says that he needs to get the niece of Black Jack Foley a clerkship. DeGiulio is resistant, because he has a new lease on the law now that he is in a position to do good. Chuck reminds him that it was political machinations that got him the judgeship in the first place.
Chuck heads to Glen Oaks in Queens to see if he can get Bob Sweeney, potential competitor for the governor race to become his running mate. In an earlier scene, it’s mentioned that Sweeney, in addition to his political roles, works as a volunteer fireman. He finds Sweeney at the Glen Oaks Volunteer Ambulance Corps, a non-profit organization founded in 1973 that serves areas of northeast Queens.
Wags tells Mafee to take a meeting with a competing investment bank to Spartan & Ives. As usual Wags has something up his sleeve, but it’s not clear until the story progresses exactly what. The competing firm takes Wags and Mafee to Wolfgang’s Steakhouse (in the former Della Robbia Bar), an interior landmark that is the “lone remnant of an interior ensemble destroyed in a 1960s modernization of the former Vanderbilt Hotel into a multi-use building,” write Gura and Wood in Interior Landmarks: Treasures of New York. Guastavino tile, like those in Grand Central Terminal, are brightly colored here.
The Vanderbilt Hotel was part of a larger grand plan around Grand Central Terminal, known as Terminal City. The Della Robbia Bar is also an example of preservation and landmarking by means of community, grass-roots efforts. In the case of the Della Robbia, the organization Friends of Terra Cotta campaigned for its designation.
In yet another stand-in for the Yale Club, the Union League Club at 38 East 37th Street serves as the interior film location. The notable entrance and double staircase is hard to miss – part of the overall landmarked interior. The building, the fourth headquarters of the Union League, was designed by Benjamin Wystar Morris.
The Union League was first formed during the Civil War to advance the preservation of the Union and its history includes being part of the movements to establish the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the installation of the Statue of Liberty, and bringing down Boss Tweed. Members have included Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan and John Jay.
In quite the episode, framed as a failed investment by the Rhoades family (and Ira), we come to realize by the end of the episode that Chuck has used his trust fund in the hopes that Axelrod will be motivated by personal vendetta to short the stock of ice juice. In a complicated maneuver, Axe’s grunt man, Hall, has hired anonymous folks to take a small dose of a virus and get sick inside Ice Juice shops. He’s also hired Ronnie, the manager of the Ice Juice facility to make the production line look contaminated.
Hall meets Ronnie outside the Ice Juice facility which is located in Industry City in Sunset Park, home to six million square feet of workspace for office and light manufacturing, as well as commercial and event space. Industry City has also been featured in Jessica Jones on Netflix.
Connerty turns up outside Taylor’s new “swanky” condo, The Milan. Taylor is carrying $250,000 in cash from Dollar Bill Stern, who gives it to her as an insurance policy and as a thank you for her help on the Klaxon deal. The Milan is located on East 55th Street in Sutton Place.
Connerty lets Taylor know that Axe offered him a job and an apartment like this one, but he turned it down to have a clean conscience. He then warns Taylor to “think about what you’re really trading on to live here, work there, be who you are.” In retrospect, it’s a warning that something is really coming but Taylor thinks too little of Connerty to take it seriously.
In the final bait and switch, we see Oliver Dake return. He’s been offered a job as the interim U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District by the Attorney General. When he emerges out of the escalator at Penn Station, after getting off the Amtrak from Washington D.C., Chuck Rhoades is there to meet him with a car on 7th Avenue. This is a particularly nice exit, in Penn Station standards, which comes out of the NJ Transit area and has references to the original Penn Station using old photographs, marble and other details. Join us for a tour of the Remnants of the Original Penn Station: Tour of the Remnants of Penn Station
The season finale isn’t the first time Rhoades meets with Oliver Dake at the Saint Stanislas Kostka Church on Driggs Avenue and Humboldt Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Saint Stanislas Kostka is a Polish Catholic church, founded in 1896 during a time when Greenpoint was heavily settled by German Protestants. The church was constructed in 1903 at a sum the historical account of the church considers “staggering” at $75,000. Some key interior details were added in 1914, which included the marble pulpit, the painting of the church itself, and others.
In this scene, Rhoades tries to convince Dake to ignore his family’s role in the Ice Juice investment to no avail and when Dake clearly won’t have anything to do with him, Rhoades warns him to have a lot of body bags when he goes to arrest Axe.
Unsurprisingly, Dake needs some help tracking down Axe for the arrest and goes back to Chuck for advice. Chuck knows that Axe will contact Wendy, and they track her to the 9/11 Memorial where Axe shows up to meet her. It’s an important spot, considering it’s where Axe’s career started. In the background of the memorial we also see Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub. The FBI turn up to arrest Axe, with Chuck looking on from the other side of the memorial.
Next, check out the NYC Film Locations for Homeland and other shows.
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