Your definitive source to filming locations and all things Hollywood!
I am ecstatic to report that Brooks Memorial Home for the Aged, where Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) lived in the 1947 holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street, has finally been identified! Sadly, though, it is no longer standing. Watch my latest reel to discover where filming took place.
TL; DW – The now-defunct Black-Foxe Military Academy, formerly located at 637 North Wilcox Avenue in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park, played the facility onscreen.
Locations have been making impressions on me for ages, long before I even knew stalking was a thing. Case in point – way back in 1997 while watching The Ice Storm, I became fixated on the ornate stone staircase Libbets Casey (Katie Holmes) walked down in an early scene. Even though I only saw the movie once, those stairs were ingrained in my head. So when I started location hunting years later, I, of course, put some time into searching for them. Though I knew they had to be in New York or Connecticut, where the bulk of The Ice Storm was shot, I came up empty. Then, shortly before my April 2016 trip to the Big Apple, I saw the stairs pop up in an episode of White Collar and decided to revisit the hunt. Once again, I was unsuccessful. So I called in my friend Owen for an assist. And while I had yet to send him screen captures of the steps, he miraculously wrote me back in a matter of minutes saying he had come across a mention on the White Collar TV Live Journal site that noted the show did some filming at Union Theological Seminary in Morningside Heights, which he thought might be the spot I was seeking. One look at photos told me it was! I also quickly gleaned that while the school is closed to the public, it is available for special events. So I wrote to an events coordinator on staff, explained my fascination with the staircase, and asked if I might be able to tour it while in NYC. I was thrilled to receive a response shortly thereafter with a date and time to show up!
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As my tour guide explained, the staircase used in The Ice Storm is known as The Rotunda in real life. It is situated in the John Crosby Brown Memorial Tower, just beyond the campus’ main entrance.
Situated at the corner of West 120th Street and Broadway, the sprawling English Gothic-style campus is actually Union Theological Seminary’s third location. The Christian school, which educates those wishing to lead a life dedicated to the church, was initially established in a small building in Lower Manhattan in January 1836. With space for only a scant thirty pupils, it was not long before the need for a new, larger facility arose. Union Theological Seminary first re-located to Lenox Hill in 1884, but by the 1890s that site had been outgrown as well. So in 1904, a 36-lot plot of land in Morningside Heights was secured for a new school location. Architects Francis Richmond Allen and Charles Collens were tapped to design it. Construction began in 1908 and was completed in 1910.
As professor emeritus Daniel Johnson Fleming said of the new campus, “The Directors of the Seminary had as one of their aims that the very buildings should become an element in the education of those who live and study within its walls.”
I’d say Allen and Collens certainly delivered on that goal.
The Rotunda, constructed of marble and featuring a vaulted ceiling with rosette detailing, is literally breathtaking.
The three-story vestibule, which serves as Union Theological Seminary’s entrance hall, boasts fan tracery ornamentation that culminates in a central point showcasing the shields of the University of Edinburgh, the University of Cambridge, the City of Geneva, and the Westminster Assembly.
As I explained in my email plea for a tour, “I have to admit that I did not even like the movie The Ice Storm. But I took one look at Katie Holmes walking down the curved staircase and thought it was one of the most beautiful spaces I had ever seen.”
In person it was even more striking!
I literally couldn’t stop taking photos of the grand space.
It is not at all hard to see how The Rotunda wound up onscreen.
Because Union Theological Seminary itself is such a prolific film star, I decided it best to just focus on The Rotunda’s many onscreen cameos for this particular post.
I’ll cover the school as a whole in a future article.
It is on The Rotunda stairwell that Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) attempts to make a connection with Libbets over the writings of Dostoyevsky at the beginning of The Ice Storm. Hauntingly beautiful, it is no surprise that the space stayed with me all these years.
As I mentioned, The Rotunda also popped up in an episode of White Collar. In Season 3’s “Upper West Side Story,” which aired in 2012, Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) walk down the staircase while investigating a case at what is said to be Manhattan Prep.
Our tour guide was kind enough to fill me in on several of The Rotunda’s other cameos.
Claire (Mimi Rogers) walks through The Rotunda with her sister, Rose Morgan (Barbra Streisand), on the way to her wedding ceremony in the 1996 dramedy The Mirror Has Two Faces.
Detectives Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) descend the staircase and walk through the halls of Union Theological Seminary, which is standing in for The Crestborne School, while investigating a former teacher in the Season 2 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit titled “Abuse.” The episode, which aired in 2001, features a very young Hayden Panettiere in a guest role.
Interestingly, Benson and Stabler briefly revisit The Rotunda (the bottom level of it is visible behind them in the cap below) in another episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that guest-starred Hayden Panettiere – Season 6’s “Hooked,” which aired in 2005.
The duo once again heads to Union Theological while investigating the murder of a student at the fictional Morewood School in the Season 10 episode of SVU titled “Hothouse,” which aired in 2009.
Katherine Ann Watson (Julia Roberts) is told by President Jocelyn Carr (Marian Seldes) that she has gotten complaints regarding her teaching methods while in The Rotunda in 2003’s Mona Lisa Smile.
Max Carrigan (Joe Anderson) and his friends slide down the bannister of The Rotunda stairs in the 2007 musical Across the Universe.
In 2010, The Rotunda popped up very briefly in the Season 4 episode of Gossip Girl titled “Goodbye, Columbia,” in the scene in which Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) talks with her minions about the teaching assistant job she is hoping to land.
Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg) closed a case in the grand space in the Season 3 episode of Blue Bloods titled “Higher Education,” which aired in 2012.
The Rotunda appeared in the pilot episode of Masters of Sex, which aired in 2013, as the spot where Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) registers for classes at what is supposedly Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Jason McCord (Evan Roe) gets into a fistfight with a fellow student in The Rotunda in the Season 1 episode of Madam Secretary titled “The Ninth Circle,” which aired in 2015.
Beck (Elizabeth Lail) talked to Professor Paul Leahy (Reg Rogers) on The Rotunda staircase before class in the Season 1 episode of You titled “The Last Nice Guy in New York,” which aired in 2018.
And Abe Weissman (Tony Shalhoub) chased Simon (Michael Countryman) up The Rotunda stairs, supposedly located at Columbia University, in the Season 3 episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel titled “Marvelous Radio,” which aired in 2019.
Big THANK YOU to my friend Owen for tracking down this location! 
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Union Theological Seminary is located at 3041 Broadway in Morningside Heights. You can visit the school’s official website here. The Rotunda, from The Ice Storm, can be found just past the main entrance. Please keep in mind that the seminary is closed to the public and that I was only able to see it via a pre-arranged tour.
My taste in movies is about as mature and refined as my palate, which favors chicken strips and ranch dressing above all else. Case in point – I am obsessed with the 2004 tween romance A Cinderella Story. Chad Michael Murray? Hilary Duff on roller skates? A high school love story? A pink ‘50s diner? Yes, yes, yes and yes! I’ve written posts on several of the film’s locations over the years (you can read them here, here and here), but somehow forgot to dedicate one to Monrovia High School, which portrayed North Valley High (home of the Fighting Frogs!) and which I visited way back in 2013. I figure the time to rectify that is now!
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Designed by architect Austin Whittlesey, working under John C. Austin and Frederick M. Ashley, construction on Monrovia High School began in January 1928.
Completed early the following year, the Spanish Colonial Revival-style building, which features Palladian elements, cost $600,000 to erect.
Numerous expansions have taken place in the years since, the most recent from 2009 to 2011.
That project, which totaled a whopping $60 million, included the addition of a 2-story science building, a 30,000-square-foot gym complete with a weight room, and a new football stadium and surrounding track.
Thankfully, all of the additions were designed with the school’s original architecture in mind, ultimately creating a cohesive, striking and picturesque property.
Not only is the school itself beautiful, but the grounds are absolutely bucolic. I was just a wee bit obsessed with the massive tree pictured below.
I mean, just look at it!
Considering its handsome façade, it is no surprise that the place wound up onscreen. In A Cinderella Story, Monrovia High was used extensively. Areas of the school featured include the front exterior;
interior hallways;
the baseball field;
the pool;
the football field (which was, sadly, redone during the 2009 expansion);
and the main quad (it also looks a bit different post-expansion) . . .
. . . where the pep rally took place.
The quad is the spot I was most interested in seeing during my stalk, namely the “Friendship Circle” planter where Sam and Austin regularly sat throughout the movie.
Unfortunately, we stopped by on a Saturday, when Monrovia High was closed, so I wasn’t able to poke around. I was thrilled to see, though, that the quad area is visible through the front gates.
The gates even afford a small glimpse of the planter!
A Cinderella Story is hardly the only production to feature Monrovia High.
Skip Lewis (Chad Lowe) and Ken (Charlie Sheen) go to school there in the 1984 made-for-television movie Silence of the Heart.
In 1985, Monrovia High played itself in another made-for-TV film, Between the Darkness and the Dawn.
The production, which journalist John J. O’Connor deemed “a candidate for the worst television movie of the year,” gave audiences a glimpse at what the interior of the school looked like at the time.
Rocky Dennis (Eric Stoltz) enrolls in Monrovia High at the end of the 1985 drama Mask.
Monrovia High (along with Walter Reed Middle School from License to Drive) appears as Garden City High in the 1988 horror film 976-EVIL.
Brad Kimble (Will Friedle), Leah Jones (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Brooke Kingsley (Marley Shelton) attend Monrovia High School in the 1997 comedy Trojan War.
The school (along with several others, including Torrance High) was also used to portray John Hughes High School in 2001’s Not Another Teen Movie.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Monrovia High School, aka North Valley High from A Cinderella Story, is located at 845 West Colorado Boulevard in Monrovia.
Most actors will tell you that extra work is the worst. But when I first landed in L.A. back in 2000, I did quite a bit of it and couldn’t have enjoyed myself more. Just being on a movie or television set was surreal and provided an indelible opportunity to observe the inner workings of a production, watch my favorite actors live and in person (and sometimes even interact with them), and be truly immersed in the filmmaking process. I ate it all up with a spoon. One of my more memorable experiences took place on April 24th, 2000 (yes, I remember the date) when I sat in the audience of a supposed live town hall meeting with President Josiah ‘Jed’ Bartlett (Martin Sheen) for the Season 1 finale of The West Wing titled “What Kind of Day Has It Been.” I was not a viewer of the hit NBC series at the time and, despite my extraordinary experience on set, did not watch the episode when it aired and, shockingly, did not end up seeing it until last month when the Grim Cheaper and I went on a West Wing binge. Even though 19 years had passed, I was immediately brought right back to the day of the shoot and decided that I had to write a post on the auditorium where filming took place. While I did not remember its exact location, I did recall that it was in downtown L.A. near the U.S. Bank Tower. So I got to Googling and amazingly the first result kicked back when I inputted “auditorium” and “downtown Los Angeles” was a link to Zipper Concert Hall which turned out to be the right spot!
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Zipper Concert Hall is located on the campus of The Colburn School, a performing arts institution originally founded in 1950 as part of the USC School of Music. Initially housed in a warehouse across from the Shrine Auditorium in University Park, the facility offered piano lessons to young children. At some point, the curriculum was expanded to include college-level courses and the place re-branded as the Community School of Performing Arts. The academy broke away from USC in 1980 thanks to a sizeable donation from philanthropist/music enthusiast Richard D. Colburn and six years later it was renamed in his honor. Twelve years after that, The Colburn School was relocated to a new, larger custom-built campus at the corner of South Grand Avenue and East 2nd Street in downtown L.A., where it remains today.
Designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, at its inception the modern complex boasted a library, a rehearsal hall, two dance studios, a piano lab, 28 teaching spaces, and the 415-seat Zipper Concert Hall. The auditorium (it’s the sloped structure with the sheet metal roof below) was named after Vienna-born musician Herbert Zipper who served as The Colburn School’s artistic advisor from 1980 until his death in 1997.
Interestingly, the Lloyd Wright-designed former studio of violinist Jascha Heifetz was also incorporated into the layout of the campus. Initially situated on the grounds of Heifetz’s Beverly Hills estate (at 1520 Gilcrest Drive), the standalone structure, which was connected to the main residence via a breezeway, was saved from demolition by a very unlikely source. Upon Heifetz’s passing in 1987, his home was sold to none other than James Woods, who set about tearing the place down. The actor recognized the significance of the studio, though, and offered it up to anyone who was willing to pay to have it relocated. The Colburn School’s then dean, Joseph Thayer, jumped at the chance. The small edifice was subsequently deconstructed and transported to a storage facility where it sat until the new campus was completed. It was then reassembled on the third floor of the Grand Building. You can check out some images of it in its original form and its current state here and here.
In 2007, the Colburn campus was expanded by the Pfeiffer Partners architecture firm at which time a 384,000-square-foot, 12-story building was added, as were a 3,900-square-foot rehearsal hall, residential housing for 147 students, a cafeteria, offices, an art park, and numerous practice and performance spaces. And the school is still growing. Just last year, prolific architect Frank Gehry was tapped to design yet another addition, this one bringing in 200,000 square feet, an additional concert hall, and a theatre. You can check out some images of what the school currently looks like here and here.
In the “What Kind of Day Has It Been” episode of The West Wing, Zipper Concert Hall masks as Virginia’s Newseum. Though exteriors were filmed at the museum’s former location at 1101 Wilson Boulevard in Rosslyn . . .
. . . all interiors were shot at Zipper. It is there that President Bartlett speaks to a large audience about the apathy of America’s youth when it comes to government and politics.
The hall appears prominently at both the beginning and end of the episode. Sadly, Zipper was closed when we showed up to stalk it so I did not get to revisit the inside, but you can check out some photographs of it here.
The Colburn School’s Grand Foyer (which you can see images of here) was also featured in “What Kind of Day Has It Been” . . .
. . . as was its Mayman Recital Hall (photos here and here).
I can still remember the filming of the episode as if it was yesterday. I even recall exactly where I was sitting – fourth row, right. (That’s me below!) During the shoot, I became completely enamored with Martin Sheen, who is very much like his presidential character in real life – gregarious, warm, witty, chatty, and a wealth of random knowledge that he loves to share. Throughout breaks in filming, he actively engaged the extras, both individually and as a group, and discussed everything from how he spent the day prior, Easter Sunday, memorizing the speech we were now listening to him perform to behind-the-scenes tidbits (like the fact that Dr. Josiah Bartlett, Jed’s supposed great-grandfather’s great-grandfather and the New Hampshire delegate to the second Continental Congress in 1776, whom he mentions in the speech, was, in fact, a real person) to Elián González, the young Cuban boy who had been seized by federal agents and returned to his father just a few days prior. To see him seamlessly transition between his character and his actual self, turning Jed Bartlett on and off like a switch, was incredible. The president’s speech in the scene was long (much longer than what was actually shown in the episode), detailed, wordy, and full of facts and figures. Martin knew it inside and out, though, and nailed it on every.single. take. The fact that he could be jovial and joking with us one minute and then, as soon as “action” was called, be immediately in character and 100% on-point the next was thrilling and fascinating to watch. It was a long day, too, but Martin was just as fresh on his first take as he was on his last, a good ten to twelve hours later. Witnessing his creative process was an incredible experience – truly a once-in-a-lifetime. I’ll never forget coming home that night and telling my parents that I had learned more about acting (not to mention the way an actor should behave on set) from one day of observing Martin Sheen than I had in my four years of college as a theatre major. They were not pleased by the news considering they footed the bill for the latter. 
The West Wing is not the only production to feature The Colburn School. In the 2002 drama Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) attends Robert McKee’s (Brian Cox) Story Seminar at Zipper Concert Hall.
The school masks as the Museum of Design, where Milly Wilder (Mandy Moore) and Jason (Tom Everett Scott) go to see an art exhibit, in the 2007 romcom Because I Said So.
And in the Season 7 episode of Castle titled “Castle, P.I.,” which aired in 2015, Colburn portrays The Eastbourne School, where Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) investigate the murder of admissions director Shana Baker (Gia Mora). (Note – the exterior seen in the episode is the school’s Olive Street entrance.)
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Zipper Concert Hall, from the “What Kind of Day Has It Been” episode of The West Wing, is located on the campus of The Colburn School at 200 South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. You can check out the hall’s upcoming events on the school’s official website here.
Today’s locale, Woodbury University, was originally going to be included in this year’s Haunted Hollywood postings. I first learned about the Burbank college thanks to its appearance in the 2018 horror flick Truth or Dare and ran right out to stalk it, figuring it would fit in perfectly with my annual October theme. It was not until I sat down to research the place that I discovered its incredibly extensive film resume. The school easily has to be one of the San Fernando Valley’s most oft-used locations! From The Wonder Years to The Office, the site has popped up in countless notable productions over the years, including my and the Grim Cheaper’s latest favorite, Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Anytime a college is needed for an L.A.-area shoot, it seems, cast and crew head straight to Woodbury. How I had never heard of the place is beyond me! Thinking the university was better suited to a non-horror-related post, I back-burnered it and am thrilled to finally be writing about it now!
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Woodbury Business College, as it was originally known, was founded by entrepreneur F. C. Woodbury in 1884. Initially housed in single-room space at 316 North Main Street in downtown L.A. with a staff of two, the school offered four classes, all related to practical business skills – bookkeeping, English, spelling, and penmanship. It was not long before high enrollment brought about a need to expand and the college took over an entire floor of the Stowell Building located a few blocks away at 226 South Spring Street. The structure, sadly, has since been demolished. In 1924, Woodbury received charter status from the state and expanded its curriculum to include business administration, foreign trade, and marketing courses. As the student body continued to grow, the school moved numerous times until 1937 when it finally set up shop at a Streamline Moderne building designed by Claud Beelman at 1027 Wilshire Boulevard, where it remained for the next fifty years. Sadly, that property was also since razed.
In 1961, the school received full charter status. That same year, its name was officially changed to Woodbury University.
When the need to expand arose once again in the 1980s, administrators acquired the former Villa Cabrini Academy Catholic girls high school, a 22.4-acre Burbank site that was initially built in 1927 as a summer home for orphans and underprivileged youth.
The new Woodbury campus, which opened to students in the fall of 1987, featured landscaped grounds, a gym, a pool, an athletic field, and dormitories. Additional facilities were also built in order to accommodate an eventual prospective enrollment of 2,500.
Woodbury University continued to flourish in its new home and today the school boasts two additional campuses (in Hollywood and San Diego) and offers degrees in over twenty subjects including business, computer information systems, and design.
The college is absolutely beautiful with gorgeous landscaping . . .
. . . tucked away spots . . .
. . . a tree-lined central quad . . .
. . . and both modern design elements . . .
. . . as well as Italian Romanesque, which harken back to the site’s secular roots.
So it comes as no surprise that Woodbury is a frequent screen star. And what fun I had putting together a comprehensive list of its many cameos!
The school’s original gym was used extensively in the 1989 action flick Best of the Best as the spot where Alexander Grady (Eric Roberts) and the rest of the Team USA martial artists regularly practiced.
In 2001, that gym was transformed into the university’s Design Center. Though completely remodeled, the basketball court markings are still intact today, as you can see in photos here and here.
The exterior of the gym also made an appearance in Best of the Best . . .
. . . as did one of the school’s parking lots.
That same year, the gym popped up as the Kennedy Junior High School gymnasium, where Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) took a stand against his best friend, Paul Pfeiffer (Josh Saviano), constantly being picked last for team sports, in the Season 2 episode of The Wonder Years titled “Loosiers.”
In 2001, Woodbury masked as the fictional University of Northeastern California in two Season 1 episodes of Undeclared – “Eric Visits” . . .
. . . and “Hell Week.”
In the Season 5 episode of The Office titled “Business Trip,” which aired in 2008, Woodbury poses as New York’s Pratt School of Design, where Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) tearfully tells Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) that she failed her art class. Filming took place outside of Woody’s Café and the Cabrini Gallery, though very little of either building can be seen.
Woodbury University appears very briefly in the Season 6 episode of Criminal Minds titled “Middle Man,” which aired in 2010, in the scene in which the Behavioral Analysis Unit canvases college campuses in search of a group of serial killers.
In the Season 3 episode of Workaholics titled “Flashback in a Day,” which aired in 2012, Woodbury poses as RC Polytechnic.
The school’s gorgeous library (which originally served as Villa Cabrini Academy’s chapel) masquerades as the Brooklyn Public Library, where Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) chase down a suspect in a deleted scene from the Season 1 episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine titled “The Tagger,” which aired in 2013. You can watch that scene here.
Sadly, the library was closed when we visited Woodbury, so we only got to see its exterior.
During the fourth season of Shameless, which started airing in 2014, Woodbury was utilized regularly as the interior of Chicago Polytechnic, where Lip Gallagher (Jeremy Allen White) attended school.
That same year, Woodbury’s School of Business popped up in an establishing shot of the Raviga Capital Management offices in two Season 1 episodes of Silicon Valley – “Articles of Incorporation” and “Third Party Insourcing.”
Colette Kimball-Kinney (Fortune Feimster) and Jody Kimball-Kinney (Garret Dillahunt) attend a Physicians on the Front orientation in Woodbury’s auditorium in the Season 6 episode of The Mindy Project titled “Danny in Real Life,” which aired in 2017.
That same year, the school portrayed Danton College, where JJ DiMeo (Micah Fowler) shot a guest part in Bikini University 3, in the Season 2 episode of Speechless titled “B-I– BIKINI U-N– UNIVERSITY.”
Woodbury popped up as Long Beach Tech in another episode of Speechless, Season 3’s “THE S-T-A– STAIRCASE.”
In the 2018 horror flick Truth or Dare, Woodbury was used extensively as Westlake University, where Olivia Barron (Lucy Hale) and the rest of her doomed friends attend college.
The movie’s first freaky truth or dare challenge – which was featured in the trailer – takes place in the school’s library.
Actor Hayden Szeto, who played Brad Chen in the flick, posted the image below, of the Truth or Dare cast posing on the campus’ fountain, to Instagram the day that filming wrapped in July 2017, so I of course had to replicate it while I was there. 
Said fountain can be found in the center of campus in the Alumni Quad.
That same year, Woodbury masked as the Mumbai university where Bravo team rescued a group of American students who had been taken hostage in the Season 2 episode of Seal Team titled “Say Again Your Last.”
The school portrayed Howard University, Dre Johnson’s (Anthony Anderson) alma mater, in the Season 4 episode of Black-ish titled “Black Math” that same year.
Woodbury’s library makes an appearance in 2019’s Booksmart.
The school pops up in the Season 4 episode of Lucifer titled “Super Bad Boyfriend” as Callaway Prep, where Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis) and Chloe Decker (Lauren German) investigate the murder of a beloved teacher.
And the library is where Poppy Scoville-Parnell (Octavia Spencer) checks out books for her uncle in the Season 1 episode of Truth Be Told titled “No Cross, No Crown.”
Woodbury has also been featured in episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Community, Felicity, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and Just Add Magic, though I am unsure of which episodes in particular. If anyone happens to know, please fill me in.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Woodbury University, from “The Tagger” episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is located at 7500 North Glenoaks Boulevard in Burbank. You can visit the school’s official website here.
Despite the fact that I live in Palm Springs, I tend to think of myself as having my finger on the pulse of L.A. But when penning A Film Lover’s Guide to Tomorrow’s Movie Location Stars for Los Angeles magazine in 2015, I overlooked two key spots, which I hope speaks more to the vast landscape of the city than it does to my lack of awareness. Though I noted Wilshire Grand Center, Hollenbeck Community Police Station, 8500, Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, and the revamped Grand Central Air Terminal as the then newly-constructed sites I thought location managers would soon be flocking to, I somehow failed to include The Broad, a contemporary art museum in DTLA with a highly unusual perforated exterior, and Emerson College Los Angeles, an arts and communication school in Hollywood with a campus the Times deemed “a futuristic complex of aluminum and glass.” I actually did not become aware of the latter until watching the Season 5 episode of Scandal titled “Pencils Down” in March 2016, a full two years after its completion.
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In “Pencils Down,” Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) clandestinely meets up with Alex Vargas (Danny Pino) outside of the supposed Washington, D.C.-area venue where Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young) and Susan Ross (Artemis Pebdani) are participating in their first presidential debate. One look at the staggering wall of geometric panels pictured in the background of the scene and the dramatic vistas shown in wide shots and I was transfixed. I promptly paused my DVR and began trying to figure out where filming had taken place. Because Scandal shoots in L.A., I knew the locale had to be somewhere within the thirty-mile-zone, though I was certain I had never come across it in any of my stalking travels. So I did a Google search for “new modern building” and “Los Angeles” and pored through the countless images that were kicked back until finally landing upon one of Emerson College that matched what I had seen onscreen. Pulling up additional photos of the campus only served to make me more obsessed with the place. Though I immediately added the school to my To-Stalk list, it was not until this past December that I finally made it out there. Thankfully, Emerson, or ELA as it is also called, was worth the wait.
Construction on the 107,000-square-foot, 10-story, $110-million structure began in 2012 and grew out of a need for a more permanent place for the Boston-based Emerson to house and teach students in its semester-abroad program – abroad in this case being Hollywood.
The program, originally established in the 1980s, allows for participants to not only spend a semester studying in the show business capital of the world, but to also participate in invaluable internships at places like MTV, Comedy Central, and E! Entertainment. With no West Coast home base to call its own, students were originally taught in leased space in Universal City and put up in furnished units at the Oakwood at Toluca Hills by Avalon complex in Burbank. That all changed when Emerson’s Hollywood campus was completed in early 2014.
The striking complex, situated on the site of a former Sunset Boulevard parking lot measuring a scant 0.80 acres, essentially consists of one large box-shaped building with an open center. Two residential towers housing 217 dorm rooms, as well as a few faculty apartments, make up the framework of the structure.
Common areas, which include classrooms, editing labs, two black box theatres, a screening room, a conference room, rehearsal space, and lecture halls, are situated in between the two towers.
To say the site, which is the brainchild of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of the Morphosis architecture firm, is dramatic would be an understatement.
As ELA’s founding director (and the executive producer of Friends!) Kevin Bright said of the structure, “I don’t care whether you walk around it or drive by it or you see it from a distance; the thing about this building is it demands your attention.”
I’ve honestly never seen anything quite like it.
Considering the building’s completely unique and dramatic aesthetic, it is no surprise that location scouts came a-calling pretty much immediately.
As this ArchDaily article puts it, “Looking to the local context, the center finds a provocative precedent in the interiority of Hollywood film studios, where outwardly regular facades house flexible, fantastical spaces within. With rigging for screens, media connections, sound, and lighting incorporated into the framework, the upper platform serves as a flexible armature for outdoor performances, transforming the undulating scrim into a dynamic visual backdrop. The entire building becomes a stage set for student films, screenings, and industry events, with the Hollywood sign, the city of Los Angeles, and the Pacific Ocean in the distance providing added scenery.” The place truly is a location manager’s dream.
Besides appearing in the scene in which Olivia and Alex exchange damaging information on rival presidential candidates in “Pencils Down” . . .
. . . one of Emerson’s residential hallways served as the spot where Susan breaks up with her cheating boyfriend David Rosen (Joshua Malina).
At the beginning of the Season 1 episode of Extant titled “More in Heaven and Earth,” which aired in 2014, ELA portrays the upscale The Villas condominium building where Molly Woods (Halle Berry) attempts to question Derek Pearce (Rocco Vienhage) about the Aruna mission.
Molly returns to The Villas in a later scene only to discover that Derek has died, the victim of an apparent suicide.
Julie Gelineau (Grace Gummer) and Odim James (Charlie Bewley) also dine on the premises in “More in Heaven and Earth.” In the episode, the two share a meal at Emerson Kitchen, a restaurant that was formerly located on the college’s ground floor. Today that space houses Homeward Ground.
On The Catch, a now defunct series that aired on ABC from 2016 to 2017, ELA appeared regularly as the exterior of the Anderson/Vaughan Investigations office.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Emerson College Los Angeles, from the “Pencils Down” episode of Scandal, is located at 5960 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. You can visit the school’s official website here.
All historic structures in the Los Angeles area with the word “ambassador” in their name seem to be doomed. The famed Ambassador Hotel, which once stood at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown, was razed in 2005. And the former Ambassador College, at 131 South St. John Avenue in Pasadena, was largely demolished beginning in 2013. Coincidentally, both sites were featured in the 1996 film That Thing You Do! I never got to see the Ambassador Hotel in person while it was still intact, sadly, but I did visit Ambassador College on many occasions during the time I lived in Pasadena. Though a frequent filming locale, for whatever reason, I never blogged about the place. Until now, that is.
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Ambassador College was originally established by radio evangelist/Worldwide Church of God founder Herbert Armstrong in 1947. Upon moving his church’s headquarters to Pasadena, Armstrong decided to create a four-year university on the premises that would teach the religious institution’s ideals. He purchased several neighboring homes and mansions on Orange Grove Boulevard and began transforming them into a school.
Over the years, Armstrong acquired more nearby residences and plots of land, and his school, which he dubbed Ambassador College, eventually encompassed a large 4-block, 48-acre area consisting of outcroppings of mansions, gardens, and buildings.
In 1963, he employed the Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall (DMJM) architecture firm to devise a cohesive design for the haphazard site.
The group’s creation was a mid-century modern masterpiece.
DMJM hired architect Peter J. Holdstock to design many new campus buildings, including three that became a focal point – the Ambassador Auditorium;
the Hall of Administration;
and the Student Center;
all of which surround a reflecting pool and fountain . . .
. . . that is capped off by a towering sculpture of egrets taking flight designed by David Wynne.
Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall also bought in landscape architect Garrett Eckbo to overhaul the campus’ sprawling grounds.
The result was a dazzling array of colorful gardens, picturesque vistas, and sparkling fountains. You can see some fabulous photos of the school shortly after the redesign project was completed here.
Sadly, virtually none of it remains. Armstrong passed away in 1986 and Ambassador College faltered in his absence. The school, a four-year, liberal arts institution, was not without its fair share of controversy, which didn’t help matters. I won’t get into the details, but tales from disgruntled alumni can be found all over the internet, most describing the Worldwide Church of God as a cult. The campus was shuttered in 1990 and students and teaching staff were transferred to a sister facility in Texas. The Pasadena site remained vacant for almost a decade before being put up for sale in 1999. The property was finally sold off in 2004 to three different entities – Harvest Rock Church, Maranatha High School, and the Sares-Regis Group. The latter made plans to turn their 11-acre portion of the campus into a mixed-use development.
As part of the project, Sares-Regis tore down many of the school’s historic structures. Today, Ambassador College is a shell of its former self.
My most recent visit to the school took place last month and I was shocked to see that the campus was virtually unrecognizable. Thankfully, the Ambassador Auditorium still stands.
The fabulously honeycombed Hall of Administration is long gone, though.
Fortunately, I managed to snap a photo of its interior during a previous visit in August 2015.
Ambassador College was featured at the end of That Thing You Do!, in exterior shots of the supposed Santa Monica City of Broadcasting, where The Wonders filmed their The Hollywood Television Showcase segment.
The Ambassador Auditorium’s dressing room . . .
. . . and a campus bathroom were also utilized in The Hollywood Television Showcase scene.
That Thing You Do! is hardly the only production to have been lensed at Ambassador College, which should come as no surprise. The school’s clean lines and striking architecture transfer beautifully to both the big and small screen.
The campus has been such a hotbed of filming activity over the years, in fact, that it would be impossible for me to chronicle its entire resume here. But a list of some of the highlights can be found below.
In the Season 1 episode of The Incredible Hulk titled “Life and Death,” which aired in 1978, Ambassador College masked as the hospital where Dr. Stan Rhodes (Andrew Robinson) worked, though not much of it was shown.
The school popped up once again on The Incredible Hulk later that same year, this time as a psychiatric institute at the University of Hawaii in Season 2’s “Married.”
The campus’ Hulett C. Merritt mansion is where Dr. David Banner (Bill Bixby) married Dr. Carolyn Fields (Mariette Hartley) in the episode.
James ‘Thunder’ Early (Eddie Murphy) drops his pants during a live televised performance being shot in the Ambassador Auditorium in 2006’s Dreamgirls.
George (Colin Firth) taught at Ambassador College in the 2009 drama A Single Man. Of shooting at the school, an Interiors article states, “The filmmakers searched for a lecture hall that fit the time period; while most colleges had updated their lecture halls and buildings, this college in particular had been left untouched, for the most part. There was some modification and adjustments done in the interior spaces, such as painting and the removal of modern accoutrements, such as replacing whiteboards with blackboards, as a way of making the space more appropriate for the period.” Sadly, the Fine Arts Building, where filming took place, was one of the buildings lost to development, demolished in 2013.
2009 was busy for Ambassador College. That year, the interior of the Hall of Administration portrayed an immigration office in the Season 1 episode of Lie to Me titled “Depraved Heart.”
That same year, Nathan Ford (Timothy Hutton) attended a gala at the Ambassador Auditorium in the Season 1 episode of Leverage titled “The First David Job.”
The Hall of Administration popped up – as a museum – in the Leverage episode that followed, as well, titled “The Second David Job.”
The Hulett C. Merritt mansion also served as temporary safe house for Nathan and his team in the episode. Both the exterior . . .
. . . and interior of the property were utilized in the shoot.
The Hall of Administration portrayed the FBI office where Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) worked in Fast & Furious, also in 2009.
President Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn) was shot outside of the Ambassador Auditorium in the Season 2 episode of Scandal titled “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” which aired in 2012.
That same year, the school appeared in one of my favorite commercials of all time, the Microsoft Surface “Movement” ad directed by Jon Chu. You can watch it here.
The campus was featured extensively in the first season of the reality competition series King of the Nerds, which aired in 2013.
In 2014, Jennifer Jareau (A.J. Cook) was kidnapped from outside of the Ambassador Auditorium at the end of the Season 9 episode of Criminal Minds titled “The Road Home.”
That same year, the interior of the Hall of Administration masked as the interior of Golden Fang Enterprises, Inc. Corporate Headquarters in Inherent Vice.
Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) fights Andrew Garner (Blair Underwood) in the Hall of Administration’s lobby in the Season 3 episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. titled “Chaos Theory,” which aired in 2015.
And in 2016, Ambassador College masked as the Japanese National Archives in Tokyo in the Season 3 episode of The Last Ship titled “Legacy.”
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The former Ambassador College site, from That Thing You Do!, is located at 131 South St. John Avenue in Pasadena.
I hope y’all aren’t sick of Pretty Little Liars locations yet, because I still have a few more up my sleeve, as well as a huge soon-to-be published article on the subject for Discover Los Angeles. Today’s locale is Vancouver’s Lord Byng Secondary School, which stood in for Rosewood High School in the pilot episode. For those who have not read my other PLL articles (which you can do here, here, here, and here) and are unfamiliar with the production of the show, I’ll give you the skinny. While the series is lensed almost in its entirety at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, the pilot was shot in Vancouver. I recently became a bit obsessed with tracking down locations from the inaugural episode and found the school featured in it thanks to the Pretty Little Liars Wikia page. My good friend/fellow stalker Kerry was nice enough to stalk it for me during a recent trip to Canada. Thank you, Kerry!
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The stately Lord Byng Secondary School was originally constructed in 1925 and was named after The Lord Byng of Vimy, who, at the time, was the Governor General of Canada. You can see a photograph of what the site looked like when it was first constructed here.
The property has been expanded several times over the years. You can see some photos of those additions being built here.
Lord Byng popped up a few times in the Pretty Little Liars pilot and establishing shots of it still appear on the series from time to time.
The real life interior of the school was also used in a few scenes.
Once the show got picked up, production moved to the Sunshine State, more specifically to Warner Bros. Studio. Outside of an occasional establishing shot of Lord Byng, a brick-faced façade located in the Midwest Street portion of the lot has since been used to mask as Rosewood High. Surprisingly, that structure (pictured in the second photograph below) bears quite a resemblance to Lord Byng Secondary School. I say “surprisingly” because the façade was not constructed for Pretty Little Liars, but has been a lot staple since it was built the ‘50s. The Dukes of Hazzard fans should recognize the place as the infamous Hazzard County Courthouse.
As I mentioned in my post about Aria Montgomery’s (Lucy Hale) house, the parts of Mike Montgomery (Cody Allen Christian) and Byron Montgomery (Chad Lowe) were re-cast after the Pretty Little Liars pilot was shot, which required many scenes to be re-shot. A few of those scenes took place at Rosewood High and the re-shoots made use of the Warner Bros. façade. Those scenes included the segment in which Aria dropped Mike off at lacrosse practice . . .
. . . and close-up shots from the scene in which Byron dropped Aria and Mike off at school on the first day of classes.
Lord Byng is an oft-used filming location. In fact, it has appeared in so many productions that it would be impossible for me to chronicle them all here, but I’ll list a few. In 1986’s The Boy Who Could Fly, LBSS was where Milly (Lucy Deakins) attended high school.
Lord Byng has appeared in no less than five episodes of 21 Jump Street, including Season 2’s “After School Special,” which aired in 1987. For that episode the rear side of Lord Byng was utilized. You can read about more of the episodes filmed there on the 80sFilmLocations site.
LBSS was where Nicole Walker (Reese Witherspoon) went to high school in the 1996 thriller Fear.
In 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the school was where Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber) and Scott Summers (Tim Pocock) had a showdown.
And in the Season 1 episode of Emily Owens, M.D. titled “Emily . . . and the Outbreak,” which aired in 2012, Lord Byng masked as Robert M. Johnson High School, where Emily Owens (Mamie Gummer) taught a sex education class.
Kerry also let me know that the site is currently portraying Erie Harbor School on the new Apple TV+ series Home Before Dark.
Big THANK YOU to Kerry for stalking this location for me! 
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Lord Byng Secondary School, aka Rosewood High School from the pilot episode of Pretty Little Liars, is located at 3939 West 16th Avenue in Vancouver.
For my final holiday post of 2013, I thought I would blog about a locale from my favorite television series of all time, Beverly Hills, 90210. Last September, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to Culver City to stalk Playa del Rey Elementary School, which masqueraded as Alvarado Street School, where Brenda Walsh (my girl Shannen Doherty), Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth), Dylan McKay (Luke Perry), and the rest of the West Beverly gang handed out gifts to needy children in the Season 3 Yuletide-themed episode “It’s a Totally Happening Life.” Because I do not own the series’ third season on DVD, though, and because the episodes are maddeningly not available to stream on iTunes, Netflix or Amazon, I was not able to blog about the site last Christmas. So this year, I enlisted my good friend Mike, from MovieShotsLA, to provide me with a recap and screen captures so that I could finally do so. Thank you, Mike!
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In real life, Playa del Rey Elementary School, which is known as the “Jewel of the Westside,” is an SAS (School for Advanced Studies) establishment for gifted and high-achieving students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Besides traditional courses, such subjects as theatre arts, dance and choral music are also offered.
Playa del Rey Elementary School was featured prominently in “It’s a Totally Happening Life,” in which, in an homage to the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life, two guardian angels, Clarence and Miriam, watch over the 90210 gang. And, in what turns out to be a Christmas miracle, the angels even manage to save the group from a fatal bus accident at the end of the show.
In the episode, Brenda and Kelly give Dylan an ultimatum, telling him that he must choose between the two of them by New Year’s Day. (He makes the wrong choice, incidentally, and the show never recovered, at least in my never-to-be humble opinion. I’ve shared my thoughts about the Dylan-Kelly-Brenda love triangle ad nauseam over the years, though, so I will spare y’all from digressing further. 
)
While the school still does look very similar to how it appeared when filming took place back in 1992 (has it seriously been 21 years?!?), sadly the area that was featured in the episode is now covered over with blue-paneled fencing and is no longer visible from the street. Ironically enough, that is the only portion of the school’s fencing that is covered in such a manner. The paneling must have been installed to ward off the many stalkers who drop by.
You can see areas of the school that were not featured on Beverly Hills, 90210, but are visible from the street in the photographs below.
Sadly, the gate that the gang walked through in “It’s a Totally Happening Life” has also since been removed. It was formerly located at the front of Playa del Rey Elementary, just east of the main entrance, in the area where Santa is standing in the photograph below. Oh, how I wanted to pose for a photograph next to that gate! 
I will be taking the rest of the week (and possibly next Monday) off from blogging in order to celebrate Christmas with my family and for a quick trip to L.A. I hope all of my fellow stalkers have a fabulous holiday!
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for making the screen captures that appear in this post.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Playa del Rey Elementary School, aka Alvarado Street School from the “It’s a Totally Happening Life” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 12221 Juniette Street in Culver City. The southeast corner of the school, near the intersection of Juniette and Randall Streets, was the area that appeared in the episode.
Back in March, a fellow stalker named Bill contacted me to ask for some help in tracking down the high school that Kris Witherspoon (my girl Shannen Doherty) attended in the 1986 television series Our House. In his email, Bill included the links to several episodes of the series on YouTube (because it is maddeningly not yet available on DVD!), but the large brick structure did not look at all familiar to me. So I called up Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and asked if he happened to know of any large brick schools in the L.A.-area off the top of his head. He, of course, did and mentioned three of them that he thought I should check out – Grant High School in Van Nuys, Taft High School in Woodland Hills and Clark Magnet High School in La Crescenta. As luck would have it, Clark Magnet was the right one! That right there is why I love Mike – I can give him the vaguest of descriptions and, right off the bat, he knows the exact place I am talking about! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there a few days later.
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Sadly though, Clark Magnet High School – like most schools in L.A. – is gated and, aside from the front entrance, not very accessible to the public. So I called on Mike – who is now a location manager – once again, and suggested that he scout Clark the next time he was in need of a high school location – and that he should also bring me along. Which he did just a few weeks later. Yay!
Clark Magnet High School, which was named in honor of humanitarian Anderson W. Clark, was originally founded in 1961 as a middle school, serving kids in the 7th through 9th grades. In 1983, suffering from low enrollment, the property’s doors were forced to close. Thankfully though, the structure was not torn down, but instead became a community center, a teacher resource and training station and an office for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And it was also used for filming. Due to the fact that Clark was no longer a functioning school and therefore easy to film at, and had a desirable All-American look, the place became an obvious choice for location scouts. But more on that later. In 1996, a task force decided to re-open Clark, this time as a high school, to alleviate nearby overcrowding and the property subsequently underwent a 13-month, $15 million renovation and modernization project. The site was re-founded in the fall of 1998 as a magnet school with focuses on science and technology and is currently the most technologically advanced school in the entire Glendale Unified School District. In a very odd side-note – Clark has a “twin” – a virtually identical carbon copy – named Rosemont Middle School that is located about ten blocks east. Both properties were built at the same time and, in order to be cost efficient, were designed in the exact same image. So incredibly weird!
In Our House, Clark Magnet High School stood in for James Polk High School, which Kris attended and where her mother, Jessica ‘Jessie’ Witherspoon (Deidre Hall), taught for a time. The school can best be seen in the Season 1 episode titled “First Impressions”. As you will notice below, during the renovation, Clark’s windows were, unfortunately, changed and no longer look as they did in the series. Blah!
In the “First Impressions” episode, Kris and her friend are shown walking through Clark’s humongous interior quad and then sitting on a set of cement bleachers. It was those bleachers that I most wanted to see while we were there. And thankfully, unlike the windows, they still look pretty much exactly the same as they did onscreen.
And I, of course, just had to sit in the area where Shannen was sitting in the episode.
Clark Magnet High School was also the school attended by despondent teenager Lane Meyer (John Cusack) in the 1985 flick Better Off Dead. (My second photograph below does not exactly match the posted screen shot, but it is of the general area. I am going to re-stalk the school soon so that I can get an exact pic.)
In 2003’s Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, Clark Magnet was the school attended by Sam Finney (Scott Terra) and Sally Finney (Jenna Boyd).
The school’s gym, which we did not get to see, appeared in the movie’s pep squad tryout scene. You can see a real life photograph of the Clark gym here.
And thanks to this 1987 Los Angeles Times article, I learned that the movie Return to Horror High was also filmed at Clark.
Randomly enough, a very young George Clooney had a starring role in Return to Horror High.
As did Maureen McCormick, aka Marcia Brady.
According to IMDB, the 1986 flick Dangerously Close was also filmed at Clark Magnet High School, but I could not find a copy of the movie with which to verify that.
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Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location and taking me to stalk it! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Clark Magnet High School from Our House is located at 4747 New York Avenue in La Crescenta. You can visit the school’s official website here. Clark’s twin, Rosemont Middle School, is located at 4725 Rosemont Avenue in La Crescenta. You can visit that school’s official website here.