When is the last time you hooked a left into an alley to cut across to the next street? Or to feed a feral cat? Or to stash a backpack? Or to hide from someone, right there, behind one of those dumpsters, crouched in a picturesque layer of fog? New York City is not a city of dark, dangerous, moody alleys, but that has not stopped Hollywood from portraying it as such. And because the vision being brought to the screen isn't a realistic one, when a production needs a New York City alley like this in New York City, they often hit up one of the only real options: Cortlandt Alley.
Located in Chinatown, the alley runs three blocks (between Canal and Franklin streets), and features old storm shutters on windows, rusty fire escapes, dock landings, graffiti on the walls, and doors that seem like portals to your own personal murder scene. Don't be scared to open them though — one leads to a very tiny museum, and another to a below-ground ping pong training center! And in typical Manhattan fashion, others lead to luxury apartments.
(Madeleine Crenshaw / Gothamist)
In 2011, location scout Nick Carr discussed the alley in an interview with CityLab:
The big thing I always get asked to find are dank dilapidated alleys, and New York City has, like, 5 alleys that look like that. Maybe four. You can’t film in three of them. So what it comes down to is there’s one alley left in New York, Cortlandt Alley, that everybody films in because it’s the last place. I try to stress to these directors in a polite way that New York is not a city of alleys. Boston is a city of alleys. Philadelphia has alleys. I don’t know anyone who uses the ‘old alleyway shortcut’ to go home. It doesn’t exist here. But that’s the movie you see. Your impression of New York is that it is the city of alleys, and then directors will come here, they’ve seen movies set in New York and they want their movies to have alleys. And it’s this self-perpetuating fictional version of New York that just kills me because movies are so much more interesting when you show a side of New York that actually exists but isn’t regularly highlighted.
Still, a ton of television shows, commercials, and movies have used the alley for purpose of visually portraying a dark side of a gritty city. In Gotham, Bruce Wayne's parents are mugged and murdered there. In Crocodile Dundee there's a street fight. And even Gargamel visits in the Smurfs movie. The below video delivers a (sped up) montage of clips, showing muggings, chase scenes, and other nefarious activity one may except in the fictional dark alleys of New York City.
Vampire Weekend filmed a video there, too, lightening things up a bit with confetti:
A LITTLE HISTORY:
- According to Forgotten-NY, "The alley goes all the way back to 1817, when local landowners John Jay, Peter Jay Munro, and Gurdon S. Mumford laid out the narrow lane through properties between Broadway and what would be Elm Street (which is now a part of Lafayette) and White and Canal Streets.The section between Franklin and White was laid out in the 1820s and lies 25 feet farther west than the original section."
- The stretch was named for the Van Cortlandt family, of course (just like the park).
- That luxury condo? The building was built in 1852, and was originally a corset factory.
- The Mudd Club used to be there (from 1978 to 1983).
