Walking tour stop name: Church Street and Vessey Street: World Trade Center, Ground Zero

Associated walking tour: "Made in NY": Walking Tours of Film and Television in New York City

Walking tour stop description: Here the narrator, Matthew Modine, notes how uncinematic the World Trade Center towers tended to be in films that engaged them as more than just features on the skyline. These include The Wiz (1978), King Kong (1976) and Three Days of the Condor (1975), in which the imposing buildings housed the New York offices of the CIA.

Films shot in the vicinity since September 11, 2001, have incorporated the site to connote very different symbolic, emotional and ideological meanings. Most notably, two characters in Spike Lee's 25th Hour (2002) look down on clean-up efforts from an adjacent condominium as they prepare to give their jail-bound friend a celebratory send-off.

In this clip from The Wiz, Dorothy (Diana Ross), Scarecrow (Michael Jackson), Tinman (Nipsey Russell) and Lion (Ted Ross) arrive at The Wiz's palace, the World Trade Center.



In this scene from Three Days of the Condor we learn that the New York headquarters of the CIA are inside the World Trade Center, affording some interior views, especially of the lobby, of those now-absent structures.



In this scene from 25th Hour, Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman) arrives at Frank's (Barry Pepper) apartment, and the two catch up while looking out the window directly onto the World Trade Center clean-up site.



Download audio file for this stop here.

Walking tour stop location: POINT (-74.0101817977281797 40.7121188342280860)

Next walking tour stop: 140 Broadway: Liberty Plaza

Previous walking tour stop: Broadway at Barclay Street: The Woolworth Building