On Halloween Eve, teams of New York City architects will go “gourd-to-gourd” to create the most impressive work of pumpkin
Atlantic City’s coveted real estate properties of Boardwalk, Park Place, and Atlantic Ave featured in the classic MONOPOLY board
With peak foliage season soon approaching, it’s the perfect time to book a cruise up the Hudson River and
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
Succession, the drama series on HBO is one of those shows that grows on you and suddenly hits you with a bang, making that two-day binge session worth it. The show certainly packs a lot of star power behind the scenes and in the cast. Succession is executive produced by Oscar winner Adam McKay (The Big Short), Frank Rich (HBO’s “Veep”), Will Ferrell, Kevin Messick, Jane Tranter (HBO’s The Night Of) and Mark Mylod (HBO’s “Entourage”), and created by Oscar winner Jesse Armstrong (In the Loop), who is also the series’ showrunner and an executive producer. The music is written by two-time Oscar nominee Nicholas Britell, who also composed the soundtrack to The Big Short and Moonlight.
The cast of Succession is led by Shakespearean actor Brian Cox, who plays the patriarch Logan Roy of the Roy family behind the media and entertainment company Waystar Royco. The parallels to the Murdoch family are impossible to miss, down to the “ATN Network,” clearly a stand-in for FOX News and storylines drawing on the current political upheaval in the United States. Other notable actors on the show include Kieran Culkin, who plays Logan’s waywardly youngest son Roman, Matthew Macfayden as Tom Wamsgams, fiancé of Logan’s daughter Siobhan “Shiv” Roy, and Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy, Logan’s second son who appears to be the heir apparent of Waystar Royco at the opening of the season. Kendall is the emotional heart of the show, whose characters often ply the border between satirical, horrifying, and oddly empathetic. Succession is not an easy watch, but it sweeps you in with excellent screenwriting and strong performances.
Succession films mostly in New York City (with forays to Washington D.C., Long Island, New Mexico and even England), embodying the locales of the rich and powerful. Influence is the name of the game here, but Machiavelli and Shakespeare are ever-present.
The second season of Succession begins on August 11th, continuing from the dramatic season finale of the first season. According to an HBO press release, “season two follows the Roy family as they struggle to retain control of their empire, and while the future looks increasingly uncertain, it is the past that threatens to ultimately destroy them.” Read on to see where Succession films!
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
Logan Roy and his third wife Marcia “Marcy” Roy live in a sprawling Fifth Avenue townhouse. The lobby of the townhouse is filmed in the American Irish Historical Society at 991 Fifth Avenue located across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The upper floors of the townhouse are created on a soundstage at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City. Production designer Stephen Carter tells Architectural Digest that he was inspired by the homes of Edgar Bronfman and Charles Bronfman, who had townhouses on the same section of Fifth Avenue as Logan Roy’s is. There is a real vintage elevator in the American Irish Historical Society, so the set recreates this interior experience.
Lobby of the American Irish Historical Society
The upper floors of the American Irish Historical Society do not appear in the show, but are quite stunning. According to Christopher Cahill, a poet and the director of the AIHS, the main floors of the townhouse are one of the “least altered interiors,” still extant from a 1911 renovation by the architect Ogden Codman, Jr. known for co-authoring Edith Wharton’s first book, The Decoration of Houses.
When Logan impromptu proposes that “it’s time to play the game,” as his 80th birthday lunch, we soon see that it involves taking several helicopters from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport located on the East River near Wall Street. The heliport services several helicopter companies as well as government helicopters. [We recently took a Marine Osprey helicopter from the downtown Manhattan Heliport during Fleet Week to visit the USS New York.] You may also recognize the heliport from the movie Wolf of Wall Street.
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
When Logan suffers a stroke on the helicopter ride back from the family estate, he is whisked to Bellevue Hospital. The hospital on Manhattan’s East Side also recently appeared as a shooting location for the NBC medical drama New Amsterdam. He clearly gets a pretty swanky suite at the hospital, which may be a set, but the scenes where the siblings talk in an amphitheater are located in Bellevue Hospital, and you see some scenes just outside the hospital on the street.
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
The Waystar Royco offices are filmed at the World Trade Center in both 4 WTC and 7 WTC, where you can see Manhattan skyline views of Tribeca, Midtown and Lower Manhattan, but also on a soundstage. When a television studio set is needed, the production uses the studio of SNY, the online sports channel, headquartered in 4 WTC. In season two, you see Kendall arrive by motorcycle to the street in front of 28 Liberty Street, across from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This building has been appearing a lot recently in television shows including Billions and Iron Fist.
Set decorator George DeTitta, Jr. told Architectural Digest that he took cues from the Murdoch offices: “I looked online at the Murdoch media offices for inspiration and went for a more clean, modern approach.”
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
Logan Roy is honored at Waystar Royco’s annual company gala in the Cunard Building, the former shipping company turned banquet hall on Broadway in Lower Manhattan. The Cunard Building was designed by the architect Benjamin Wistar Morris along with the architectural firm Carrere & Hastings. Morris worked with muralist Ezra Winter to create a decor plan that focused on marine and shipping themes for the building. The building’s lobby served as the business’s ticketing hall, which was 183 feet long with a 68 foot dome, until 1968.
The ticketing hall is now owned by Cipriani S.A. as an event space, and has been featured in many television shows including Gotham and The Blacklist. Though the Cunard building is rarely open to the public, except for private events, Untapped Cities partnered with the show D.S. Destiny to offer access inside the ticketing hall last year.
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
Kendall, Roman, Frank Vernon (Logan’s long time friend and board member of Waystar Royco), and Waystar legal counsel Gerri, meet at the Chelsea Square Diner located at 368 W. 23rd Street at the intersection of 9th Avenue to plot out the final moves in the planned no-confidence vote against Logan. Gerri mentions that she feels sure nobody will recognize them in the diner, which proves true, but things don’t go as planned afterwards.
On the way to Washington D.C. (we assume she’s taking Amtrak and will get out at Union Station), Shiv calls Tom from the new Penn Station entrance in the Farley post office building across from Madison Square Garden. It leads to the West End concourse, a generally more pleasant way to get onto the Long Island Railroad than the normal entrances to Penn Station.
If you’re a transit fan, join us for an upcoming tour of the Remnants of Penn Station where you’ll see what’s left of the original, grand station that once stood here:
Tour of the Remnants of Penn Station
Tom Wamsgams has, for some reason, selected Roman Roy to plan his bachelor party. You never know where Roman’s loyalty really lies, but like the rest of the Roy children, getting on Logan’s good side tends to trump everything else. So, instead of going to Prague, he jumps at an opportunity offered by Stewy, Kendall’s financier friend who gets on the board of Waystar Royco during the first season. Stewy says that Sandy Furness attends the underground Rhomboid parties, and Furness controls fifty local television stations that Logan wants to acquire. Stewy plants the seed that Roman could help enable Logan’s “dream deal,” and with that, the bachelor party gets moved to the upcoming Rhomboid party.
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
The bachelor party shows up at a railroad track and walk into a tunnel. This is filmed at the abandoned East New York Freight Tunnel (the actual party is filmed in a warehouse in Sunset Park, Brooklyn). Though built for freight, it was part of a route by the Pennsylvania railroad to connect New Jersey to the northeast going from Bay Ridge to New England, there was also passenger train activity and a station here. Today, this is evidenced by an abandoned platform that once was part of the New York and Manhattan Beach railway, a line that went from Long Island City and Bay Ridge to the luxury resorts on Manhattan Beach. This is a pretty great filming locations that we haven’t seen in previous shows, and demonstrates that the film scouts know New York City very well!
Photos: Colin Hutton/HBO
Shiv and Tom get married (not without the characteristic cringes, awkwardness, and tragedy that comes with anything connected to the Roy family) in England, an attempt by Shiv to placate her mother who lives and is from the country. They are married in what is purported to be her mother’s family’s estate, and the wedding is shot at Eastnor Castle, a medieval-castle in Herefordshire that was actually built in the early 1800s. It has appeared in many television shows and films over the years for period dramas, as well as for more modern-day uses as an off-roading test track for Land Rovers and in an episode of The Amazing Race.
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
Following the aftermath of Shiv’s wedding, Kendall’s accident, and his failed takeover of Waystar Royco, Logan calls for another family summit. This time, they are at what appears to be a new acquisition, or at least, a new renovation: a mansion in the Hamptons. This real-life 42-acre estate, originally built for the Ford family is known as Jule Pond, located in on Mecox Bay in Southampton. Currently for sale, it was originally listed in 2017 for $175 million, and recently dropped to $145 million. It is said to have the “largest ocean frontage” in all of the Hamptons and was originally an astounding 235-acre property called “Fordune.” Like other Gilded Age mansions in America, much of the interiors were shipped over from Europe’s chateaux and castles.
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
Kendall goes in Logan’s stead to meet Stewey and Sandy Furness. If viewers recall, Kendall was working with Stewey and Sandy to take over Waystar until his accident. Kendall goes to the downstairs room of Del Posto at 85 10th Avenue. Stewey, a long time friend of Kendall knows more is going on. Kendall sticks to the line fed by his father, and Stewey gets increasingly angry. Kendall then delivers a very dramatic picture of what will happen next to Sandy and team if they move forward. This location was also seen in Billions.
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
The office of Vaulter, which Kendall is about to gut on behalf of his father, is located at One Hudson Square (aka 75 Varick Street). In Tribeca, just off Canal Street near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, this building (and the neighborhood) is home to many real media and advertising companies including Horizon Media, Edelman, and more. This makes the film location pretty fitting for the fictional Vaulter company. Incidentally, this office building is just a stone’s throw from the apartment inhabited by Bobby Axelrod in Billions, located at 145 Hudson Street.
Photo: Peter Kramer/HBO
The annual corporate retreat for the board of Waystar Royco supposedly takes place in Hungary, but is actually filmed at Oheka Castle in Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. The Gilded Age mansion of Otto Kahn, now often used for weddings, the 127-room estate is the second largest private house in the United States. During the heydays of the Gold Coast of Long Island during the 1920s, Kahn used the lavish estate to host extravagant parties, and entertain royalty, heads of state, and Hollywood stars.
Next, check out the filming locations for Billions on Showtime.
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