The first batch covers two cities that have carried a remarkable
amount of screen work between them, frequently standing in for New York or for a fictional
city entirely. More regions will follow as records clear verification.
The Many Saints of Newark (2021)
PatersonPassaic CountyScene-level, from a named source
Real location: 42 Market Street · 42 Market Street, Paterson
On screen: Satriale’s Pork Store
Satriale’s, the pork store that anchors so much of The Sopranos, returns in the prequel. The original was in Kearny; for this film it was recreated in Paterson.
Transformation: The State’s wording is precise and worth keeping: Satriale’s was recreated at 42 Market Street. This was a build on a real address, not an existing shop that happened to look right.
Accuracy: Because it was a recreation, do not assume the Paterson building supplied the interior as well. We make no claim either way: no source we opened addresses the interior, so we do not describe one.
Access today: A working Market Street address. The dressing came down when the production wrapped.
Verified August 24, 2026
· Paterson filming guide
West Side Story (2021)
PatersonPassaic CountyScene-level, from a named source
Real location: Parking lots between Veterans Place and Hamilton Street, across from Center City Mall, in the Downtown Historic District; businesses on Ellison Street
On screen: 1957 New York City, including Broadway and 68th Street
Steven Spielberg’s adaptation puts the Sharks and Jets on the streets of a late-1950s New York that was, for a substantial part of the film, Paterson.
Transformation: The State records that Paterson’s Downtown Historic District was used to build sets in the parking lots between Veterans Place and Hamilton Street, and that businesses on Ellison Street were transformed to recreate Broadway and 68th Street. Location manager Robert Striem, a Maplewood resident, described the result as the largest back lot on the East Coast.
Accuracy: Producer Kristie Macosko Krieger told Variety the production looked widely and chose Paterson for its grit and authenticity. Spielberg’s own statement makes clear New York was also a primary filming location, so this is a major New Jersey contribution to the film, not the whole of it.
Access today: The sets were temporary construction on active parking lots and came down after filming. There is nothing standing to visit.
Verified August 24, 2026
· Paterson filming guide
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
PatersonPassaic CountyScene-level, from a named source
Real location: The former Community Baptist Church of Love; a mansion in the Eastside Historic District
On screen: The federal courtroom of the 1969 conspiracy trial
Aaron Sorkin’s account of the trial that followed the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests. The courtroom carries most of the film, and that courtroom was in Paterson.
Transformation: The State records that the courtroom scenes were staged at the former Community Baptist Church of Love, and that a mansion in the Eastside Historic District was also used. The film was shot entirely in New Jersey, with further work in Newark, Clifton, Hoboken and Montclair and at two universities.
Accuracy: The State says “former” church and does not describe its condition. Some coverage calls the building abandoned and puts a figure on how long the conversion took; we could not open a source for either, so neither is published here.
Access today: No street address is published for the church. The State does not give one, and we are not going to guess at a building and send people to it.
Verified August 24, 2026
· Paterson filming guide
Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)
PatersonPassaic CountyScene-level, from a named source
Real location: Thomas Rogers Building, now the Paterson Museum · 2 Market Street, Paterson, NJ 07501
On screen: The warehouse and attic of the film’s climax
The building supplied the warehouse where the masked killer attacks Alice’s father Dom, the killer’s identity is revealed, and Dom is pushed to his death.
Transformation: Very little dressing was needed. A surviving 19th-century locomotive erecting shop already reads as an industrial warehouse.
Accuracy: The building is the functioning Paterson Museum today, not an abandoned warehouse. The event organiser’s “abandoned warehouse” describes the setting in the film, not the building now.
Access today: The museum publishes Monday to Friday visiting hours. The attic is not normally open to the public, and ordinary admission does not include it.
Read the full location story →
Verified August 24, 2026
· Paterson filming guide
Paterson (2016)
PatersonPassaic CountyScene-level, from a named source
Real location: Paterson Great Falls; downtown streets filmed from a moving bus
On screen: Paterson, playing itself
Adam Driver’s poet-bus driver returns repeatedly to the Great Falls. The production also spent roughly a week filming from a bus moving through downtown Paterson, using the elevated passenger viewpoint to capture storefronts, sidewalks and residents as the character’s daily route.
Transformation: Almost none, which is the point. Jim Jarmusch has said he originally sat beside the Great Falls in the same spot where Driver’s character later sits — unusually direct confirmation, since the director is placing himself at the location years before the shoot. The distributor describes the city’s architecture, history and everyday street life as central to the film.
Accuracy: Most of the film is not Paterson. Jarmusch has confirmed that the waterfall and bus depot were filmed in Paterson, but that the bar was in Queens and several other scenes were shot in Yonkers. We therefore make no claim about the character’s house, Shades Bar or any interior. The bus depot is very likely NJ Transit’s historic Market Street Garage, but that identification rests on a location guide rather than the director, so we flag it rather than assert it. We also do not name a fictional route number or list downtown intersections.
Access today: The Great Falls is a National Historical Park with its own federal permitting process, entirely separate from a Paterson municipal permit. See the Paterson guide.
Verified August 24, 2026
· Paterson filming guide
The Many Saints of Newark (2021)
NewarkEssex CountyScene-level, from a named source
Real location: Branford Place and Halsey Street; the old Adams Theatre; Hobby’s Delicatessen
On screen: Newark during the 1967 rebellion
David Chase’s Sopranos prequel uses the 1967 Newark rebellion as its backdrop, with the story of a teenage Tony Soprano set against tensions between the city’s Italian-American and African-American communities.
Transformation: The State records that Branford Place and Halsey Street were dressed to reflect the 1960s. The production returned to Essex and Passaic counties roughly fifteen years after The Sopranos finished, having originally filmed that series in homes, shops and diners across New Jersey.
Accuracy: The State names these locations for the production as a whole. It does not assign individual shots to individual storefronts, and neither do we.
Access today: These are working downtown blocks and private businesses. Filming there in 2021 establishes nothing about access or availability now.
Verified August 24, 2026
· Newark filming guide
West Side Story (2021)
NewarkEssex CountyScene-level, from a named source
Real location: Interior of the National Newark Building on Broad Street; exterior of the former Bamberger’s on Washington Street
On screen: Gimbels department store
Downtown Newark supplied the department store where part of the film plays out.
Transformation: Two separate buildings, one interior and one exterior, were combined to recreate a single fictional store. That is ordinary practice and almost invisible on screen.
Accuracy: The State draws the line at interior versus exterior and so do we. We do not assign individual Gimbels shots to either building, because no source we opened does.
Access today: Both are private commercial buildings in downtown Newark. Neither is a film location open to visitors.
Verified August 24, 2026
· Newark filming guide
War of the Worlds (2005)
NewarkEssex CountyMunicipality-level only
Real location: Locations across Newark
On screen: The film’s American cities under attack
Spielberg’s adaptation, with Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, filmed extensively in New Jersey two decades before his West Side Story returned him to the state.
Transformation: The State describes filming extensively on location in Newark and Bayonne. It does not break that down by street or by sequence.
Accuracy: This record is municipality-level only. Widely repeated accounts place specific destruction sequences at a named Newark intersection and church. We could not open a source for that detail, so it is not published. Nothing on screen represents real damage to any building.
Access today: Filming was in 2004 and 2005. The city has changed considerably since.
Verified August 24, 2026
· Newark filming guide
Joker (2019)
NewarkEssex CountyScene-level, from a named source
Real location: Market Street and Broad Street, including the frontage of the former Newark Paramount Theatre at 195 Market Street
On screen: “Gotham Square,” the film’s 1981 answer to Times Square
Downtown Newark opens the film. Arthur Fleck spins an “Everything Must Go” sign on Market Street outside the former Newark Paramount Theatre before chasing a group of teenagers into an alley. Market and Washington streets later carry the police-car riot sequence.
Transformation: Production designer Mark Friedberg’s team rebuilt Market and Broad streets as 1981: fictional storefronts, period signage, graffiti, garbage, old phone booths and meters, vintage cars and buses. Director Todd Phillips has described the approach directly — the foreground was built and shot practically in Newark, and much of the distant Gotham skyline was added digitally behind it.
Accuracy: Exterior use only. Nothing here establishes that anything was filmed inside the Paramount Theatre; the production altered the marquee and frontage. We also do not give the fictional music shop a street number, because sources conflict between 197 and 199 Market Street, and we do not publish a precise alley address. On a small point that gets repeated wrongly: the shop’s fictional name is Kenny’s Music Shop, not “Jimmy’s.”
Access today: Market and Broad are working downtown streets. The dressing came down in 2018, the Paramount remains a closed historic theatre, and none of this is a set to visit.
Verified August 24, 2026
· Newark filming guide
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
NewarkEssex CountyScene-level, from a named source
Real location: Military Park Station on the Newark Light Rail; Commerce Street; Raymond Boulevard; Newark City Hall interiors
On screen: Gotham City — a Gotham subway, police-action streets and a makeshift infirmary
Military Park Station carries the underground sequence in which Selina Kyle leads Batman toward Bane. Gotham police vehicles filled Commerce Street, with police-action filming extending onto Raymond Boulevard near Military Park. Newark City Hall supplied interiors, including the makeshift infirmary, and its rotunda appears during the concluding Batman-statue unveiling.
Transformation: The New Jersey Film Commission records that location manager Gabriel Gonzalez coordinated with NJ Transit to take over the Newark Light Rail for the production. Taking a working transit line out of service is the kind of cooperation that is far easier to arrange here than across the river, and it is the single most useful thing this record says about filming in Newark.
Accuracy: A correction worth making, because the opposite is widely repeated: Newark City Hall did not supply the exterior where Bane addresses Gotham. That “Gotham City Hall” exterior was Carnegie Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh. Newark’s verified uses are interiors and the rotunda. Separately, the Commerce Street and Raymond Boulevard detail comes from Newark’s own destination and film-tour guide — authoritative local tourism material, but not a Warner Bros. production source.
Access today: Military Park Station is a working light-rail stop and City Hall is a working municipal building. Filming there in 2011 confers no access now.
Verified August 24, 2026
· Newark filming guide