Places & Spaces: The Royal Tenenbaum House

In my quest to see NYC-things before I leave NYC, I spent this Saturday cavorting around the city. I went to the Whitney, but that only paled in comparison to the pilgrimage I took with my friend George to see the house where Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums was filmed. The house (not on Archer Avenue, not in an inconspicuous city) is actually on 144th and Convent Ave in Harlem.

“Though we never call it New York in the film, I was looking for a certain feeling of living in New York, not the real New York, more a New York of the imagination.” — Wes Anderson, mooviees.com

One thing I discovered on my trek was that Alexander Hamilton also lived on Convent Ave (his house is a National Monument, btw). (So, the Tenenbaums & Hamiltons lived on the same street in Harlem — who’d of guessed?!)

Actually, the weirdest thing about the trip was Harlem itself: I’ve never been that far North! At that point, Manhattan starts to feel as small and level as the other boroughs. Some of it is bedraggled, but when you get to just around the point where the fake Archer Avenue stands, it becomes suddenly very dainty and cute (it’s known as “Hamilton Heights”). In this way, you feel doubly out of place, and doubly not-quite-in-Manhattan.

“It was apparent that the house was one of the characters in the movie.” — David Wasco (production designer for RT), mooviees.com

If you want to visit, you can take the A, B, C, or D to the 145th Street stop or the 1 to the 145th Street stop (way up there, the 1 isn’t even underground yet!).

As a warning, this is not some kind of *actual* landmark, and you can’t go inside! According to our friends at The Rushmore Academy (if you want to visit more Wes Anderson or Tenenbaum landmarks, that’s the site to check!), it’s a private residence so don’t go insane or hold a seance.

After the jump, some pictures of the house from the beginning of the movie, and a few other treats for Wes Anderson fans!

The mooviees.com article I keep quoting has some pretty good info about how Wes chose some of his filming locations.

“…somewhere along the line I decided that we had too much fantasy and that we should go in the opposite direction to ground the story in the fact that the house really existed, that the streets really existed. So ultimately we decided to shoot entirely on location in New York. You might not necessarily recognize it as New York but you’d know that the place is real and the characters existing in it are real.” — Wes Anderson, mooviees.com

Finally, a randomly related update: the best Wes Anderson fan site (The Rushmore Academy) has just gotten a new banner from one of my favorite artists, Ian Dingman, who also designed the Criterion Collection art for Bottle Rocket, and who we once interviewed with great gusto here on S&D.

Other Posts You Might Like:
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2. Places & Spaces: Economy Candy!
3. Places & Spaces (mini-edition): Lounging in Times Square
4. Places & Spaces: Serendipity 3 (cute dessert!)
5. Places & Spaces: Dylan’s Candy Bar

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