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The Real 1980s East Village Building From 'Batteries Not Included'
By
Jen Carlson
Published Jan 29, 2014
Modified Jan 30, 2014
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Jan 29, 2014
Modified Jan 30, 2014
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The Batteries Not Included* building on East 8th Street
The 1987 classic Batteries Not Included* starts out with a five minute long intro bringing you back, through a series of old photos, to the East Village in the 1940s or '50s. You are then jolted into the present day, when the neighborhood's old charm is falling prey to developers. Many have accepted buyouts and their buildings have been leveled, while some holdouts are still standing their ground. (When one artist tells his girlfriend he likes it there, she replies: "Of course you do, it's old and depressing! This is the '80s ... nobody likes reality anymore. It's time to quit.") But since nothing was going to stop the development of the East Village, fiction had to come into play, and in the movie (spoiler alert) little mechanical space aliens end up helping the holdouts from losing their homes.
The Batteries Not Included* building on East 8th Street
Yesterday when we posted a photo of an old brownstone standing alone in a block of rubble on the Upper East Side, some believed it to be the building from Batteries Not Included*, but that isn't the case—the building was on East 8th Street (in the movie, the building is 817 East 8th Street). In fact, overseas the movie was sometimes called Miracle on 8th Street. To find the perfect location, scouting began in 1985, according to the DVD notes, where producer Ronald Schwary explained that while the building was real they built a tenement facade for it:
"Since the story called for a solitary building amidst rubble, we had to find a vacant lot with burned-out buildings all around it. We finally settled on an actual building on 8th Street between Avenues C and D. Production designer Ted Haworth designed a three-sided, four-story tenement facade and oversaw its construction on a location that covered most of a city block. In the name of authenticity, he brought 50 to 60 truckloads of rubble to cover the once vacant lot. It was so remarkably realistic that the Sanitation Department came by and took away prop garbage one morning, potential customers stopped by to eat in the diner, and the business agent for the Plumber's Local of New York visited, demanding to know why there wasn't a permit down at City Hall for the construction."
Unlike in real life, at the end of the film the building gets to stay, though construction goes on around it (the final scene is said to have been filmed around the World Trade Center).
The Batteries Not Included* replica placed near World Trade Center for closing shot
In reality the building was torn down—it was believed to be "located on the site of the current Housing Bureau substation, or the building to the east."
Tagged
1980s
batteries not included
development
east village
original
Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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