Run Movie Hindi Picture Film
Settling on a central filming location for the movie adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda's musical In the Heights wasn't too hard for production designer Nelson Coates. Washington Heights is in the title, after all. But picking out the parts of Washington Heights that made the movie feel like a true love letter to the neighborhood and its residents, from the sweeping views of the George Washington Bridge and the local public pool, to the sun-bleached bodegas awnings and the wares stocked inside, was the real challenge. Coates spent time walking up and down the streets of the Heights, as it's known, and most of the surrounding neighborhoods in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, sometimes alongside Miranda and the movie's director Jon M. Chu as part of his research. What he and the location team found—from the local public pool to the perfect corner for main character Usnavi's Dominican Republic–inspired bodega store—is an amalgamation of the best of the Heights. "You just hope that people will see the neighborhood for the joy there, and the wonderful, incredible depth of culture," Coates says.
Most of the film's interiors, including the inside of the aforementioned bodega, were filmed on a soundstage—but the street scenes take place all over Washington Heights (and even Brooklyn's New Utrecht Ave. subway station). We sat down with Coates ahead of the film's June 10 premiere in theaters and streaming on HBO Max to chat about his favorite In the Heights filming locations, how they restored parts of the 191st subway station's art tunnel, and the joys of the classic Cuban and Dominican restaurant, El Floridita.
All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
When you first joined the project, what were the Washington Heights spots you knew, without a doubt, had to make it into the 'In the Heights' movie?
Obviously you have to have the George Washington Bridge. It's the bridge. It's iconic from the poster from the stage musical and it towers over the neighborhood. J. Hood Wright Park has an incredible visual of the bridge, and it created a wonderful environment [for filming] the song "Home." We created a basketball court, we brought in fencing, we brought in fire hydrants, all the elements to make it work for what we needed cinematically. And when I think of parks in New York, no matter where, there are always the chess/checkers tables, and in Washington Heights particularly, people are playing dominoes. So we brought in those, too. Then ultimately, you get to the last bit of the song and you're looking out over the bridge, and Jon needed [Benny and Nina] to be higher than the other dancers. And you know how there are rock outcroppings in the parks in New York in weird places? So I said, I'll make a rock. And I added my own rock to the [existing] terrace—and the rock happens to be in the shape of the Dominican Republic.
Another location in where the attention to detail was obvious was inside Usnavi's bodega. What did bodega research look like?
Source: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/on-location-in-the-heights