Abandoned for almost twenty years, Bowery Station is enjoying a second life. Located on the corner of Bowery and Kenmare streets, the station has become an underground studio for film crews looking to recreate an authentic New York City subway scene.
It all started in 2016, when Sam Hutchins, a location manager, was looking for a metro station to shoot the film. Ninja Turtles 2. He reached out to Ruthie Jones, director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Film and Special Events Unit, who introduced him to this secret location. “We were in front of an empty station, and we said to ourselves: ‘Oh, my God, this is crazy'”, says Sam Hutchins. “She was intact. It’s like a time capsule. It’s the New York of the 1980s. ”
Since, “Dozens of productions are shot here every year”, indique Ruthie Jones au New York Post. It is also here that Joe, the serial killer and stalker played by Penn Badgley, saves the young girl he tracks, Beck, when she falls drunk on the railroad tracks, in the hit Netflix series, You. Other series like Orange Is the New Black, Mr. Robot or many films such as L’Extraordinaire Mr. Rogers with Tom Hanks, Isn’t it Romantic and If Beale Street could speak have also adopted this decor.
Prohibited to the general public
Bowery Station is also a popular haunt for stylists. In September 2019, designer Tom Ford organized a parade there, transforming the platform into a podium. Before him, Valentino had photographed Naomi Campbell wearing a green sequined dress, in the same location for its fall 2019 campaign.
If the metro runs on the other side of the station, this particular platform of the station was taken out of service in 2004, during a construction project. The station is therefore closed to the public. However, one track is still intact, which allows trains to run for filming, specifies the American daily. “Bowery offers exclusivity to productions, explique Ruthie Jones. They don’t have to worry about impacting customers or leaking paparazzi photos. It is as if it were a closed film set. ”
Directors are completely free to transform the station to suit their artistic ideas or a specific era. For example, for the movie If Beale Street could speak, the columns were painted in different colors to give the impression that they were separate stations. But with each change, it is the productions which must pay for the materials and the labor, so that the MTA modifies and then restores the station as it was originally, at the end of the shooting.
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