Seinfeld Filming Locations

IMDb 8.9/10 (382,252 votes) | 1989–1998 | USA | Comedy | 22 min | English / Spanish / Italian

Seinfeld (1989–1998) is an American sitcom created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, with Seinfeld playing a fictionalised version of himself as a stand-up comedian living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Much of the series revolves around Jerry and his three closest friends: the anxious and frequently self-destructive George Costanza, the sharp-tongued Elaine Benes and Jerry’s eccentric neighbour Cosmo Kramer. Rather than building episodes around conventional family or workplace stories, Seinfeld found comedy in the small frustrations of everyday life – awkward dates, restaurant etiquette, parking spaces, waiting in line and the unwritten social rules that its characters were constantly breaking. That approach gave rise to its famous reputation as a “show about nothing”, although its tightly constructed stories frequently brought several seemingly unrelated plots together in elaborate ways. Running for nine seasons, Seinfeld became one of the defining American sitcoms of the 1990s and had a lasting influence on television comedy.

Seinfeld (1989–1998) is closely associated with New York City, but the great majority of the series was actually filmed in Los Angeles. Early production took place at the former Ren-Mar Studios on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, before the series established its long-term home at CBS Studio Center in Studio City. Jerry’s apartment, the interior of Monk’s Café and most of the other regularly seen interiors were studio sets, initially housed on Stage 19 before the expanding production moved to the larger Stage 9. The studio backlot also became an important substitute for Manhattan: its New York Street was repeatedly redressed as different city blocks, while a separate park area stood in for Central Park. This meant that many scenes in which Jerry, George, Elaine or Kramer appear to be walking through New York were actually filmed only a short distance from the indoor sets. Even one of the show’s most familiar establishing shots is Californian. The building presented as Jerry and Kramer’s Manhattan apartment house, supposedly at 129 West 81st Street, is actually 757 South New Hampshire Avenue in Los Angeles. Genuine New York locations were nevertheless essential in selling the illusion. Tom’s Restaurant at Broadway and West 112th Street provided the instantly recognisable exterior of Monk’s Café, although every conversation inside the diner was filmed on a studio set. Establishing shots around Manhattan were also used for the homes, offices and neighbourhoods visited by the characters, while places such as Rockefeller Center and Yankee Stadium helped anchor particular storylines in the real city. The result is a surprisingly seamless mixture of actual New York streets and buildings with Los Angeles apartments, sound stages and backlots – a combination that allowed Seinfeld to feel thoroughly Manhattan even when almost none of its principal cast was there.

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