Revenge of Shot on Site Summer - Ghostbusters II Locations, Part 3

In honor of the respective 35th & 30th anniversaries of the original Ghostbusters movies, every Sunday - henceforth dubbed Shot on Site Sundays - at Noon (Eastern) for the next several weeks (schedule here), I will go through the original two movies from start to finish, showing and telling you where everything was filmed in Manhattan, New York and Los Angeles, California. This will be part filming locations rundown, part behind the scenes exploration, and part "Making Ghostbusters". All parts are available here in reverse order: Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II. I will be utilizing the home video cuts of both movies, which can be found on the 2014 Blu-ray Double Feature, as well as the recently-released 5-Disc 4K UHD & Blu-ray with Bonus Disc Set. With that in mind, SPOILER WARNING if you read any further... though I suspect that if you're at Spook Central, you've already seen both movies a million times over.

The majority of real world New York photos were taken by Alex Newborn in July 2014 and Lars Karlsen in July 2018, and are being used with permission. The enlargements for these photos, and for the movie framegrabs, can be found on the various Filming Locations pages elsewhere on Spook Central. Other images are credited where known. Locations were identified by various people and sources over the past 35 years. Those that are not common knowledge are credited on the specific Filming Locations pages (see previous link). The title graphic seen at the top was created by Lars Karlsen, based on an idea by Paul Rudoff. It can be enlarged for a better look at its beauty. Now that that's out of the way, we've got movie sign...

Ray and Egon collect a slime sample from some church steps.


Another shot that took decades to identify. They're getting their sample from The Church of St. Paul the Apostle at 8-10 Columbus Avenue in New York. The gate seen at the top of the steps in the movie has been moved to the bottom, but other than that, the location still looks the same today.


A late marathon runner is running late for the New York City Marathon.


He's on the jogging path surrounding the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park by 85th-96th Street. The seven-foot-high chain-link fence seen in the movie was replaced with a shorter four-feet-high cast-iron fence in 2003. When scuba divers discovered a piece of the original fence that stood from 1864 to 1926 at the very bottom of the reservoir, the Central Park Conservancy commissioned a steel replica with cast-iron ornamentation, closely resembling the original.


Howie Weed applies a ghastly spray tan to Jim Fye so he can play the jogger.


Those bullies, the Ghostbusters, harass this innocent ghost - who was just minding his own business, getting in his exercise like the other joggers - by sucking him into a ghost trap buried in the dirt pathway.


Besides the fence, the bench Peter was sitting on is no longer there.


The Ecto-1A makes a hard left turn en route to a call


The car is heading north on Hudson Street, turning west onto Barrow Street (roughly 460 Hudson Street / 93 Barrow Street). This bit of footage, and the preceding red light close-up (which is at the same spot) were taken from a deleted scene which takes place after the Ghostbusters visit the museum to examine the Vigo painting. Ray gets possessed by Vigo, and under his influence, drives recklessly on the way back to the firehouse in an effort to kill himself and the team.


The Ghostbusters get out of the car and jog down the sidewalk to a store.


I'm separating this shot into two parts in order to tie this in better, and make this less confusing. The stores in the background of the shot above are the same ones seen in the promotional image below. You can see the J.M. Weston awning in the area above Egon's head in the movie frame above.


On the other side of the sidewalk, the Ghostbusters enter Orrefors jewelry store.


Orrefors Crystal Gallery was at 58 East 57th Street in New York. It is currently Phillips de Pury & Company auction house, and the entrance that the Ghostbusters went into has been turned into a window.


Slimer makes his first appearance in the film, as does the interior of the Ghostbusters headquarters.


We're back at the old headquarters of Fire Station #23 at 225 East 5th Street in Los Angeles. I've already shown some photos of the firehouse when I covered the first film, so lest I keep repeating myself, let's take a look at Slimer instead. In the first film he was portrayed by Mark Wilson, but proving that Ivan was 27 years ahead of Paul Feig in doing the gender flip thing, here Slimer is portrayed by the petite Robyn Navlyt (now Robin Shelby). Robin would provide the voice of Lady Slimer in Feig's film, but the less said about that, the better.


Egon and Ray reach out and slime someone.


Once The Church of St. Paul the Apostle was identified, this one immediately followed because it's right down the block. That makes sense since both have the same setup: Egon + Ray + Slime Jar. The slimed pay phone was formerly on West 59th Street, at the corner with Columbus/9th Avenue. The camera was pointed towards the apartment building at 910 9th Avenue, which is the blurry building in the background. When it's in focus, it looks like the photo below.


The Ghostbusters put more mileage on that old Cadillac.


Another one of those shots you would never think could be identified. The car is on the FDR Drive between East 36th & East 37th Streets. Just under that area is Glick Park, which wasn't there when the movie was filmed in 1988. Further down the road, in the direction Ecto-1A is travelling, is the United Nations building.


The Ghostbusters jog back to their car with some loaded ghost traps


My Shot On Site article explains this in more detail, but simply put, this is the East 57th Street side of the building across the street from Orrefors, currently a Citibank at 460 Park Avenue.


Once the montage concludes, we're back at the firehouse, where Egon and Ray show off the results of their mood slime testing. The scenes with the tub of slime and the dancing toaster were both filmed on the second floor of the Los Angeles firehouse, in that big room previously discussed when I covered the first film. No need to repeat myself, so let's move on to the next scene.

Dana walks up the steps of the museum, while Peter is inside checking in with Rudy the security guard.


The scenes around the guard station are the only interiors filmed inside the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House at 1 Bowling Green in New York. As previously mentioned, all of the restoration room scenes (including the one that follows) were filmed on a soundstage at The Burbank Studios in California.


Later, back in Dana's apartment, she's all set to play a rousing game of Splash Mommy with Oscar when her bathtub decides it wants to get in on the action.


Here we see the creation of the bathtub effect at ILM.


While Dana has an intimate relationship with her showerhead, she wants nothing to do with her bathtub. They dated once, but it didn't end well. So, she hightails it to Peter's apartment. The interior is a set on one of The Burbank Studio soundstages.

The next day, the other Ghostbusters meet Peter at the museum so they can investigate the place. Originally, between the scenes of them outside and being in the restoration room, they were to talk with guard Rudy in the lobby.


The shot of Egon from the end credits was taken from this scene.


As I just said two scenes ago, all of the scenes around the guard station were filmed inside the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House at 1 Bowling Green in New York.


What do the Ghostbusters find in the museum? Do they even bother to find out, or do they all just watch Bassmasters with Rudy? Find out next week - same ghost time, same ghost channel - when we continue our look at the filming locations from Ghostbusters II.