I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost

One of our favorite sites to browse on a daily basis is Scouting New York, a blog chronicling the finds of Nick Carr, a New York City locations scout. His finds include impossible to see gargoyles on the tops of buildings, fading signs from yesteryear and hidden alleyways. When we first found the site we have to admit, we spent an entire evening going through all of his archives, this is how obsessed we are with ScoutingNY.com.
 

September of last year, Scouting New York began a series called “New York, You’ve Changed” which takes scenes from iconic New York based films and goes back to the original location where they were shot then compares them to how they look today. The series includes Taxi Driver and Rosemary’s Baby but for us our favorite was the very first entry, Ghostbusters. We’ve actually had more than one out of town guest ask us to take them to “Dana’s building” and the Scouting guide gives a ton of interesting facts, like the shot of the building in the film is actually a painting that makes the building look much more menacing.
 

Our own Nisha Gopalan also had Ghostbusters in her sights for her chapter on New York City for Film + Travel and sought out their now famous firehouse. The firehouse used to be in a grimy part of Tribeca but New York has indeed changed and the Ghostbusters would thank their lucky stars to own such a prime piece of property these days.
 
Find the keymaster and head to Dana’s Building:
55 Central Park West at W65th St.
New York, NY 10023
Google Map
 
Make sure and take as many geeky photos as possible in front of Ghostbusters headquarters, without annoying the firefighters:
Hook and Ladder #8
14 N Moore St between Broadway and Hudson St.
New York, NY 10013
Google Map