Metro Motel

Metro Motel is a low-rise roadside motel building at 73-00 Queens Boulevard in Woodside, Queens. The two-storey property was completed in 1964, during a period when Queens Boulevard was lined with motor inns catering to motorists travelling between Manhattan, the airports and the rapidly developing neighbourhoods of central Queens. The property was originally known as the Mets Motel before later becoming the Metro Motel. Its most distinctive feature is the tall vertical METRO MOTEL sign facing Queens Boulevard, with original neon lettering that has survived long after this style of roadside accommodation largely disappeared from New York City. The same address has also been used for Metro Family Residence, a shelter for families with children, since at least the 2000s, and city records have listed the facility with a capacity of 76 families. Despite the building’s changing role, its unmistakable mid-century motel exterior and surviving signage have made it a useful filming location for productions looking for an ageing roadside motel without leaving New York City.

Metro Motel has appeared in Bored to Death (2009–2011), The Deuce (2017–2019) and Billions (2016–2023). Its surviving roadside-motel appearance and prominent vertical sign have made it particularly useful for productions needing an inexpensive or slightly disreputable motel while still filming within New York City. In Bored to Death (2009–2011), it becomes the motel where Jonathan Ames attempts to trap a woman involved in a sex-tape blackmail scheme, while The Deuce (2017–2019) disguises the Queens property as a motel on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. Billions (2016–2023) later uses it as a discreet hiding place for a financial adviser connected to the Jeffcoat family.

In Bored to Death (2009–2011), Metro Motel plays a major role in the first-season episode «The Case of the Beautiful Blackmailer» (2009). Jonathan Ames is hired by a married man named Mr. Eaton, who has been secretly filmed having sex with a woman called Sophia and is being forced to make continuing payments to prevent the recording from being sent to his wife. Jonathan poses as another married man and arranges to meet Sophia at what the episode presents as a motel outside the Lincoln Tunnel. Accompanied by Ray Hueston and his editor George Christopher, Jonathan rents room 6 at the Metro Motel and plans to meet Sophia briefly before following her home and recovering Eaton’s recording. The plan quickly collapses when Jonathan sleeps with Sophia and discovers that she has secretly filmed him as well. She demands money from him, and her brother Carl arrives with a taser to enforce the threat. Ray and George, meanwhile, are sitting nearby smoking marijuana and initially fail to realise that Jonathan is in trouble. After Jonathan is forced to withdraw money, the three follow Sophia and Carl in an attempt to recover both Jonathan’s recording and Eaton’s tape. The Metro Motel therefore provides the setting for a substantial portion of the episode rather than a brief exterior shot, including Jonathan’s meeting with Sophia, the attempted blackmail and the comic failure of Ray and George to function as reliable backup.

In The Deuce (2017–2019), Metro Motel appears in the first-season episode «The Principle Is All» (2017). Lori Madison has begun picking up customers around the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel and negotiates with a motorist who wants oral sex. She charges him an additional ten dollars because travelling through the heavy tunnel traffic will cost her working time. After they cross into what is presented as New Jersey, Lori gets out of the car in front of the Metro Motel. The customer complains because he believed the higher price also entitled him to another encounter on the return journey, leading to an argument over what exactly their agreement covered. Although the story places Lori on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel, the motel exterior is actually in Woodside, Queens. Its genuine vertical Metro Motel sign is left clearly visible, allowing the real 1960s roadside property to fit naturally into the series’ recreation of New York and its surroundings in the early 1970s.

In Billions (2016–2023), Metro Motel is used during Chuck Rhoades’s escalating campaign against U.S. Attorney General Jock Jeffcoat. Chuck and an FBI contact working with Kate Sacker track down a financial adviser connected to the Jeffcoats who is preparing to flee to South America. Rather than simply stopping him from leaving, Chuck uses the situation as leverage and offers him the opportunity to continue his escape if he agrees to cooperate and turn against Jeffcoat. Metro Motel provides an appropriately anonymous temporary refuge for a man attempting to disappear, with the production again using the building largely because its ageing roadside appearance immediately suggests the kind of inexpensive, discreet motel where someone might try to remain unnoticed.

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