Amanda’s House from “The Holiday”

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I thought I’d mix it up a bit today by forgoing blogging about one of the many Pacific Northwest locations that I stalked while in Vancouver and Seattle two weeks ago, in order to write about a residence that can be found right here in the San Gabriel Valley – the mansion which belonged to Amanda (aka Cameron Diaz) in the 2006 romantic comedy The Holiday.  I found this location thanks to fellow stalker Nick, who had done some research on the subject and had managed to discern that the home featured in the movie was located somewhere in San Marino and had been designed in 1928 by legendary Los Angeles architect Wallace Neff.  According to Nick, Neff, along with his family, had even lived in the property at one point during the 1930’s.  So, I immediately headed over to my friend, and fellow stalker, E.J.’s website – The Movieland Directory – which has an entire page dedicated to Wallace Neff-designed homes in the L.A. area.  The Movieland Directory listed a total of three San Marino residences that the famed architect had once called home.  Because I had never seen The Holiday, I sent all three addresses to Nick to see if one of them was the mansion featured in the movie and, sure enough, one was!  YAY!  So, I immediately ran right out to stalk it and, then yesterday, finally sat down to watch The Holiday for the first time.  And I have to say that I absolutely LOVED it!!!  I have NO idea how I missed it when it first came out four years ago.  But I digress.

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In person, The Holiday mansion is absolutely beautiful and absolutely humongous!  The Tuscan-style villa boasts 9 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, and a whopping 10,324 square feet of living space!

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The residence pops up quite a few times in The Holiday, especially the front entrance and second story balcony areas.

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And while, for the most part, the mansion looks much the same as it did in the movie, there have been quite a few changes, including the front gate, which is now wrought-iron instead of wood . . .

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. . . the front door which is now recessed . . .

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. . . and the driveway area, to which a fountain had since been added.

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And while I was fairly certain that the real life interior of the mansion had been used in the filming, according to IMDB’s trivia page for The Holiday, all of the interiors of the house were actually just sets that had been built on a soundstage and had cost a whopping $1 million to construct!

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But as you can see in the above screen captures and aerial view, the home’s real life backyard and pool were actually used in the flick.

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On a side note – Sadly, the picturesque English cottage which belonged to Iris (aka Kate Winslet) in The Holiday does not actually exist in real life.  Both the interiors and the exteriors of the adorable little home were built solely for the filming of the movie.  You can see photographs of the construction of Iris’ cottage on fave website Hooked on Houses here.

Big THANK YOU to Nick for finding this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Cameron Diaz’s mansion from The Holiday is located at 1883 Orlando Road in San Marino.

Charlie’s Apartment Building from “Monster-in-Law”

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The third and final Monster-in-Law locale that I set out to find this past weekend was the supposed Venice Beach area apartment building where Charlie Cantilini (aka Jennifer Lopez) lived in the flick.  Fellow stalker Nick had already determined that the Spanish-style building was located somewhere in Hollywood, so from there I set out on a Google search using the terms “Mediterranean”, “apartments”, and “Hollywood”.  And I have to say that I got REALLY lucky on this one, because the first thing that popped up was this  link to a complex named “Mediterranean Apartments” on North Sycamore Avenue.  After looking at an aerial view of the building, I quickly determined that it was not, in fact, the Monster-in-Law locale that I had been searching for, but I did notice another apartment complex just a few doors down that looked an awful lot like Charlie’s. And sure enough, it was!  The stalking gods were definitely smiling on me during this search, because, honestly, what are the odds of tracking the building down so easily???  And, let me tell you, I almost fell over when I realized that not only had I already stalked Charlie’s apartment a few years prior, but I had even blogged about it!  More on that later, though.

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In real life, Charlie’s apartment building is known as the El Cadiz and it is located in the heart of Hollywood, a good fifteen miles away from Venice Beach, it’s purported location in Monster-in-Law.   The building was constructed during the height of the Great Depression in 1936 by architect Milton J. Black and was named after the province of El Cadiz in the south of Spain.  According to the book Courtyard Housing in Los Angeles: A Typological Analysis, the complex has the distinction of being the very last Spanish Revival-style courtyard apartment building to be constructed in L.A.  In 2005, the Church of Scientology purchased the El Cadiz, and thanks to the community’s fear that the place would subsequently be torn down, just a few months later the City of Los Angeles declared it a Cultural Historic Monument, preserving its beauty for future generations to appreciate.  The El Cadiz is an absolutely gorgeous dwelling that boasts numerous Andalusian decorative elements including a red-tiled roof, covered balconies scattered throughout, large water fountains, arched doorways and windows, and a multitude of courtyards.  Sadly, though, none of those elements is visible from the street and what is visible is fairly non-descript, as you can see above.

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Even more unfortunate is that fact that not even Google maps can give us a very good view of the building.  🙁   But you can read a more in-depth history of the property and see a picture of its interior courtyard here.

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Charlie’s apartment building is only featured at the very beginning of Monster-in-Law, in the scenes which take place before she moves in with new-fiancé Kevin Fields (aka Michael Vartan). 

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Because of the way some scenes were filmed and because, according to the movie’s production notes, all of the apartments in the El Cadiz building were vacant and undergoing extensive renovations at the time of the filming, I am fairly certain that the real life interior of one of the units was used in the movie, too.

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Coincidentally, the El Cadiz was also featured each week during the first two seasons of the immensely popular television series Alias, where it stood in for Sydney Bristow’s apartment.   (An even further coincidence is that both productions starred actor Michael Vartan!)  As I mentioned above, I actually stalked the place – and blogged about it! – back in February of ‘08, but because only the exterior of the complex was featured in Alias, while only the interior courtyard was featured in Monster-in-Law, I didn’t recognize that they were actually the same place.   

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Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Nick for helping me find this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: El Cadiz, aka Charlie’s apartment building from Monster-in-Law and Sydney Bristow’s apartment building from Alias, is located at 1721-1731 North Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood.

Viola’s Mansion from “Monster-in-Law”

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The second Monster-in-Law location that I set my sights on tracking down this past weekend was the gargantuan mansion owned by Viola Fields (aka Jane Fonda) in the flick.  Once again, fellow stalker Nick had done most of the legwork on this one by discerning that the house was located in Pasadena and had been built in 1927 by famed Los Angeles-area architect Wallace Neff, the very same man who was responsible for designing King Gillette Ranch (aka the Biggest Loser Ranch) and the dwelling where Brad and Jen lived during most of their five year marriage.  But even though Nick had provided me with that wealth of information, for some reason, I had a very difficult time finding this particular residence.  As fate would have it, not only did Wallace Neff design quite a few homes in the Pasadena area, but the vast majority of them were Mediterranean in style and extremely similar in appearance to the Monster-in-Law mansion.  So, I once again headed over to fave bookstore Vroman’s with the hope that it could provide me with some Wallace Neff insight.  And, sure enough, it did!  As was the case with Kevin’s house from Monster-in-Law, which I blogged about yesterday, Viola’s mansion was chronicled in the very first book in which I looked – Wallace Neff: Architect of California’s Golden Age.

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In real life, the Monster-in-Law mansion is known as the “George O. Noble House” and, as I mentioned above, it was designed by Wallace Neff in 1927.  The Spanish Revival-style abode boasts six bedrooms, five bathrooms, and a whopping 8,971 square feet of living space.  And, while it once sat on over three acres of land, much of the parcel was subdivided in later years and the property currently encompasses “only” 1.2 acres.  Sadly, though, not much of the residence is visible from the street.

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But, as I’ve said before, that’s why God created aerial maps!  😉  As you can see in the above image, the George O. Noble House is not only stunning, but absolutely ginormous!

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The mansion was featured quite a few times in Monster-in-Law . . .

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. . . most notably in the scene in which Charlie Cantilini (aka Jennifer Lopez) and Kevin Fields (aka Michael Vartan) get married.

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And, thanks to a photograph provided in the book Architectural Realism, you can see that the mansion’s real life interior was also used in the flick. 

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The George O. Noble House also appeared in the 2009 horror flick Drag Me to Hell as the residence belonging to Clay Dalton’s (aka Justin Long’s) parents.  And, as was the case with Monster-in-Law, the real life interior of the residence was also used in the movie.

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A few other Monster-in-Law locations can also be found in the Pasadena area, including the Ross House, which I blogged about yesterday, and the Bundy House, aka the Governor’s mansion from Benson, which was used as the home of one of Charlie’s dog walking employers (pictured above).  And, yes, I did also find Charlie’s apartment building from Monster-in-Law.  Tune in tomorrow for that location.  🙂

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Big THANK YOU to Nick for helping me find this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The George O. Noble house, aka Viola’s mansion from Monster-in-Law, is located at 675 Burleigh Drive in Pasadena.  The Governor’s Mansion from Benson is located at 1365 South Oakland Avenue in Pasadena.

Charlie and Kevin’s House from “Monster-in-Law”

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A couple of weeks ago, fellow stalker Nick challenged me to track down all of the residences used in the 2005 romantic comedy Monster-in-Law, including Charlie Cantilini’s (aka Jennifer Lopez’s) Mediterranean-style apartment building, Kevin Fields’ (aka Michael Vartan’s) Craftsman house, and Viola Fields’ (aka Jane Fonda’s) opulent mansion.  Nick had already done most of the heavy lifting for this particular hunt by narrowing down the cities in which each of the dwellings was located.  All that was left for me to do was pinpoint the exact address of each location.  So, this past Saturday night, my fiancé and I finally sat down to watch Monster-in-Law for the first time.  I didn’t actually expect to like the movie, but I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised – it’s a really cute flick!  Anyway, the first house I set my sights on finding was the large Craftsman bungalow where Kevin, and later Charlie, lived in the movie.  Nick had ascertained that this particular house was located somewhere in Pasadena and I had a hunch that, due to its stunning Craftsman-style architecture, it was most likely a famous residence.  So, on Sunday morning, I headed over to fave bookstore, Vroman’s, to take a peek at some Pasadena area architectural guidebooks and, sure enough, I found the Monster-in-Law house in the very first one in which I looked.  Yay!

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In real life, the Monster-in-Law house is known as the Ross House and it was designed in 1911 by Alfred and Arthur Heineman, the same architectural team who was responsible for giving us Dylan’s house from Beverly Hills, 90210 and the Eppes house from the television series Numb3rs.   The Heineman brothers built the residence, which features Craftsman, Asian, and Neo-Classical design elements, for a rancher named Winslow Ross at a cost of $8,000. The house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, boasts Batchelder tile work, a hand-painted mural, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a whopping 4,657 square feet of living space.  And, let me tell you, it is absolutely beautiful in person!

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The exterior of the Ross House showed up numerous times in Monster-in-Law.

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As did the home’s large front porch.

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But, according to the behind-the-scenes information featured in the movie’s DVD extras, the interiors were not filmed on location at the residence, but on a soundstage at Culver Studios in Culver City.  As you can see in these photographs of the real life house, the actual interior doesn’t much look like its onscreen counterpart, which is pictured above.  You can check out a more in-depth view of the set where filming took place on fave website Hooked On Houses.

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While watching Monster-in-Law on Saturday night, I spotted an unusual-looking street sign in the background behind Jane Fonda in a scene that had been filmed in front of the house.  I was hoping it would give me some sort of clue as to the residence’s exact location, but, try as I might, I could not for the life of me make out what the sign said.  As it turned out, I didn’t end up needing the sign to find the house, but when I  stalked the place on Sunday, I was absolutely dying to see that sign in person and of course, just had to take a picture with it.  🙂 

Big THANK YOU to Nick for helping me find this location!  🙂

  Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The Ross House, aka Charlie and Kevin’s house from Monster-in-Law, is located at 674 Elliott Drive in Pasadena.

The Firehouse from “Ghostbusters”

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This past weekend while doing some stalking in Downtown L.A. I dragged my fiancé out to see an oft-used filming location that has long been at the top of my “To-Stalk” list.  That location is known as Fire Station #23, a real life former working fire house that served as the offices of Dr. Raymond Stantz (aka Dan Aykroyd), Dr. Peter Venkman (aka Bill Murray), Dr. Egon Spengler (aka Harold Ramis), and Winston Zeddmore (aka Ernie Hudson) in the 1984 movie Ghostbusters.  And as fate would have it, when we pulled up to the now-defunct fire station, the caretaker of the property, an EXTREMELY nice man named Daniel Taylor, happened to be standing outside speaking with a student filmmaker.  So, I, of course, struck up a conversation with him and asked if it might be alright if I stepped inside to take a look around and snap a few photographs.  And, let me tell you, I just about fell over from excitement when Daniel told me to go right in!  YAY!

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Fire Station #23 actually has quite a storied, and sometimes scandalous, history.  The structure, which first opened on October 2, 1910, was designed by the prominent architectural firm of Hudson & Munsell and served as the headquarters of the Los Angeles Fire Department for over a decade.  The three story building, which cost between $57,000 and $60,000 to construct and measured 26 feet wide, 167 feet deep and encompassed 13,600 square feet of space, has been mired in controversy ever since the day it was first dedicated.  In the beginning, angry citizens deemed the construction costs far too steep for a public building, especially since tax payers were footing the bill and considering the extravagance with which the place was built.   And it has been said that no other fire station in the country is as opulent.  The top floor of the structure housed the Fire Chief’s suite, an apartment which every fire chief from 1910 to 1928 called home.  The suite featured a marble bathroom complete with a double bathtub, Peruvian mahogany wall paneling, imported Italian tile detailing, oak flooring, a private elevator, a brass bed, a roof garden, a marble fireplace, and French bevel glass mirrors.  The second floor contained the captain’s dwelling, a library with built-in bookshelves, and bunks for twenty firefighters.  The bottom floor contained an open arcade with enamel tiled walls, 21 foot high pressed tin ceilings, and stalls to accommodate ten horses.  Pretty amazing for a fire house, huh?  The Los Angeles Times even dubbed the place “the Taj Mahal of fire stations”.

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Fire Station #23 remained in operation for fifty years, whereupon its men responded to over 60,000 fires.  But with the city moving towards building more modernized stations, Engine Truck Company #23 closed its doors for good on November 23rd, 1960.  Because a station in Pacific Palisades adopted the “23” company number, the shuttered station took on the name “Old 23”.  For the next six years, the fire department utilized the space for medial records storage and as a training facility.  In 1966, the same year it became a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, the fire house was shut down by the department completely.  For the next ten years, as the area surrounding the building became more and more impoverished, the station fell into serious disrepair and suffered from extreme vandalism and looting.  In 1979, the Fire Commission decided to renovate the property and eventually turn it into a firehouse museum.  A non-profit organization named Olde 23 was set up to oversee the restoration process and to raise funds for the massive undertaking.  In 1980, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places.  Nine years later, though, in 1988, the plans for turning Old #23 into a museum were nixed and the city opened their Los Angeles Fire Department Museum at a location in Hollywood instead.

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Seven years later controversy came raining down upon the fire house once again when Los Angeles Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez authored a front page article accusing the Olde 23 corporation of misuse of funds.  According to the article, Olde 23 had been collecting massive amounts of money (over $210,000 to be exact) thanks to the numerous film shoots that had taken place on the premises over the years.  Not only had the company failed to turn that money over to the city, though, but no one had even informed the city that any sort of filming was going on.  Being that a city department is responsible for handing out film permits, I’m not quite sure how this even happened, but I guess it’s just another case of a beaurocracy’s right hand not knowing what the left is doing.  Causing further scandal was the fact that even though the city had moved the museum location to a different site seven years prior, Olde 23 was still collecting not only filming fees that would supposedly go into the museum fund, but also donations for the project.  AND (yes, there’s more!) the supposed non-profit was ALSO collecting filming fees from production companies for shoots that were taking place at other firehouses in the area – firehouses that the Olde 23 company had no jurisdiction over!  LOL  Talk about a sh*tstorm!!  😉  President and C.E.O. of the Olde 23 company was none other than Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning himself, who resigned from his post just 8 days after Lopez’s newspaper article hit the stands.   Following his resignation, Fire Station #23 continued to host film shoots, with the money going to the City of Los Angeles, the property’s rightful owner.  Just this past September, though, the building was designated surplus property and the city is considering selling it to several different private investors, including a restaurant developer and a non-profit arts education group.

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Daniel Taylor, who has been caretaker of the property since 1985 and who the city is currently trying to evict, has different plans for the building, though.  He recently formed the Corporation for History, Arts, and Culture (CHAC) with the hopes of restoring the old firehouse to its original grandeur for use as both a cultural center and a filming location.  He estimates the restoration project to cost upwards of $8 million and is trying to raise funds now.  If you would like to learn more about the cause, you can do so on CHAC’s official website.  And while the future of the historic firehouse remains to be seen, in the meantime I highly recommend stalking it as it is a truly beautiful and unique building.

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In Ghostbusters, the exterior of the gang’s headquarters (pictured above) was actually filmed at Hook & Ladder Company #8 located at 14 North Moore Street in New York.

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But for the interior filming, cast and crew came to Fire Station #23 in Downtown Los Angeles.  And I am happy to report that the interior looks almost exactly the same today as it did in 1984 when Ghostbusters was filmed!  Amazing!

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The boys’ back office area is not there in real life, though, and I am assuming it was just a set that was added solely for the filming.

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The upstairs of the firehouse was used in the filming, as well, but unfortunately I didn’t get to see that area while I was there.

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Five years later cast and crew returned to Fire Station #23 once again to film the interior scenes for Ghostbusters II.

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And I just about died when I spotted the wooden wall adornment pictured above, which was featured in the sequel.  So cool!

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The firehouse was also featured in 1994’s The Mask, in which it doubled as Jim Carrey’s deceitful car mechanic’s office.

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He later vandalizes the place after turning into “The Mask”.

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In 2003’s National Security, the firehouse was used as the location of Earl Montgomery (aka Martin Lawrence) and Hank Rafferty (aka Steve Zahn’s) stakeout.  Only the exterior of the building and a very small portion of the interior (pictured above) were featured in that shoot, though.  Firehouse #23 has also appeared in V.I. Warshawski, Police Academy 2, Flatliners, Set It Off, RE(e)volution, Big Trouble in Little China, in the television series Firehouse, and in the Season 4 episode of The A-Team entitled “The Road to Hope”.  All in all, it has been featured in more than 50 commercial, television, movie, and music video productions over the years.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Fire Station #23, aka the firehouse from Ghostbusters, is located at 225 East Fifth Street in Downtown Los Angeles.  Unfortunately, the station is not in the safest of areas, so please exercise caution if you choose to stalk it.  You can visit the CHAC Fire Station #23 website here.

Cameron Frye’s House

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Last Wednesday morning I almost fell out of my chair as I opened up my email account and saw an AOL news headline screaming out at me “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off   House For Sale!”  At first, I thought the article was talking about the Long Beach area home that stood in for Ferris’ in the film.  But, in reality, it is the ultra-modern glass and steel abode that belonged to Ferris’ best pal Cameron Frye in the film that just recently went on the market.  And, while I don’t usually like to blog about places that I have not actually visited myself, since I have received about a million emails this week about the cinematically historic home, I figured what the heck!  So, here goes.  🙂

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The house, which was built entirely out of steel, cedar, and glass, measures 5,300 square feet, sits on almost an acre of land, and boasts four bedrooms and four bathrooms.  The home was built in 1953 by prominent architect A. James Speyer for a prominent textile designer named Ben Rose, and his wife, Fran.  The famous garage – which is actually called “the Pavilion” or auto museum – is separate from the house and was not built until 1970.  It was designed by architect David Haid and, in line with how it was portrayed on film, was built to store Ben’s antique car collection.   The house had been featured in numerous architectural books and magazines long before Ferris Bueller was filmed and, apparently, it was through those magazines that location scouts discovered the house.  🙂  With its glass walls and simplistic design, the home reminds me quite a bit of the Stahl House in Los Angeles and the other Case Study Houses.  Cameron Frye’s home is selling for a cool $2.3 million, which I think is pretty low considering you’d be buying a cinematic and architectural landmark!  🙂  You can read a great article about the home and its original owners here

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Several memorable scenes from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off  took place at Cameron Frye’s home, including the “He’ll keep calling me, he’ll keep calling me until I come over.  He’ll make me feel guilty.  This is – uh – this is ridiculous!  OK, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go.  Sh*t!” scene.  LOL

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I believe the real interior of the Ben Rose House was used in the scene when Ferris continually calls Cameron begging him to come over.  The walls of the actual home are built entirely out of glass and, as you can see in the above screen capture, so are the walls of Cameron’s room.

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But, of course, the most memorable scenes took place in the Pavilion and involved Cameron’s father’s 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California.  

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It is in the Pavilion that Cameron says to Ferris, “Less than 100 were made.  My father spent three years restoring this car.  It is his love, it is his passion . . .” to which Ferris replies. “It is fault he didn’t lock the garage.”  LOL  God, I love that movie!!!!

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It is also in the Pavilion that Ferris “runs the car in reverse” in the hopes of removing the mileage that was accrued during their “day off”.

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When that plan doesn’t work, Cameron flips out and ends up “killing the car”.  LOL To shoot that scene, producers had to not only replace the Pavilion’s real life windows with breakaway glass, but also build several fake cars out of fiberglass, complete with small bombs that made the car smoke upon impact.  I can’t even imagine being there to watch that scene be filmed!!!   It must have been so much fun for the owners of the house!!!!  Apparently, there is an entire wall of photographs from the filming of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off  on display in the Pavilion.  Love it!!!

You can visit the home’s real estate website and see photos of its interior here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Cameron Frye’s house is located at 370 Beech Street in Highland Park, Illinois.

Top of the Tower

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While there are several restaurants in New York that I LOVE, there is one in particular that stands out far above the rest. That restaurant is named the Top of the Tower and it is located on the 26th floor of the Beekman Tower Hotel. Although the Top of the Tower has been one of my favorite places in all of New York for several years now, I had yet to blog about it because up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t realize it was a filming location – in one of my dad’s favorite movies no less! Two weeks ago, while looking at the Top of the Tower website, I noticed a small section mentioning that it had been used in film and video shoots. So I asked Mike, from MovieShotsLA, to call up the hotel to ask what exactly it had been featured in. For some reason making phone calls like that absolutely terrifies me. I love speaking with people face to face, but phone calls – ugh. Mike, on the other hand, dreads the face to face, but likes making phone calls. LOL What can I say – we make the perfect team. 🙂 So anyway, Mike called up the Beekman Tower for me and found out that among other things, the exterior of the hotel was featured in the Matt Damon flick The Bourne Supremacy. And voila, a blog post was born. 🙂

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The landmark art deco style Beekman Tower Hotel was built in 1928 by John Mead Howells. The building’s many ornamental Gothic details were designed by sculptor Rene Chambellan. The building, which was previously named the Panhellenic Tower, was originally built as an affordable apartment complex for recent female college graduates belonging to the Greek, or Panhellenic, system – hence the name. According to the book One Thousand New York Buildings, the Panhellenic instantly became a landmark building as it was “a perfect example of vertical force”. The twenty-six story building housed 400 separate living spaces, a roof solarium with 360 degree sweeping views of Manhattan (that space is now the Top of the Tower restaurant), and a cocktail lounge. Not bad for affordable housing, huh? 🙂 The Greek Alphabet, which was carved just to the left of the building’s entrance, is still visible to this day. In 1964 the Panhellenic was sold to a private company who turned it into a regular apartment building. In the early 90s the building was sold once again and was completely renovated and remodeled and turned into the upscale, all suite Beekman Tower Hotel. You can view some great photographs of the Panhellenic Building here.

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The Beekman Tower has had several brushes with celebrity. Katharine Hepburn’s sister was a resident of the Panhellenic Tower in its early years and Ms. Hepburn visited the building frequently. The photo shoot for Jennifer Hudson’s March 2007 cover story for Essence Magazine took place at the Top of the Tower. You can see behind the scenes pics of that photo shoot here. In November of 2008, a party to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Miles Davis “Kind of Blue” album was also held at the Top of the Tower. And as I mentioned earlier, the exterior of the Beekman was used in the filming of The Bourne Supremacy.

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I really can’t recommend stalking the Top of the Tower enough! The food is amazing – the mashed potatoes and mushroom risotto are some of the best I’ve ever had! – the art deco ambiance is beautiful, and the service is perfection. But more than anything else, it is the breathtaking views that set this restaurant apart. The Top of the Tower has some of the most amazing views I have ever experienced in my life – especially at night when the city lights make New York extraodinarily spectacular and romantic. If you only have one night to spend in Manhattan, the Top of the Tower is the place I’d spend it.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It:The Beekman Tower Hotel is located at 3 Mitchell Place, at the corner of 1st Avenue and 49th Street, in New York City. You can visit their website here.