The Ghostbusters headquarters is Hook & Ladder Company 8, at 14 North Moore Street on the corner of Varick in Tribeca. It is not a museum, a set or a retired building. It is an active New York City fire station with a company that responds to calls, and it was one of the first units to reach the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.
That is the essential thing to hold on to when visiting. The Ghostbusters sign painted on the pavement outside and the fan pilgrimage are tolerated with considerable good grace by people who are at work.
Exterior in New York, interior in Los Angeles
Only the exterior of the firehouse is Hook & Ladder 8. The interiors that everyone remembers — the pole, the containment unit in the basement, the upstairs living quarters, Janine's desk — were shot on the other side of the country, at Fire Station No. 23 on East Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles, a decommissioned firehouse, with additional work on soundstages.
That was a practical decision. Filming interiors inside a functioning Manhattan fire station, around a company that has to be able to roll out at any moment, was never realistic. The building has a working apparatus floor with a ladder truck on it.
Ghostbusters II returned to the same exterior in 1989, and the 2016 film and Ghostbusters: Afterlife both used it again.
The building, and the campaign that saved it
The firehouse dates from 1903 and was originally a much larger structure; it lost roughly half its width in the 1910s when Varick Street was widened for the subway, which is why it is so narrow. It is a designated New York City landmark.
In 2011 Hook & Ladder 8 appeared on a list of twenty fire companies proposed for closure in a round of city budget cuts. The response was a public campaign that leaned explicitly on the building's fame — petitions, press coverage, fans and firefighters together, with the actor Steve Buscemi, himself a former New York firefighter, and the future mayor Bill de Blasio among those who spoke up for it. The company was not closed.
That is a genuinely unusual outcome for a filming location: the film did not just make the building famous, it arguably kept it in service.
The rest of the film's New York
Dana Barrett's apartment building, the one with Gozer's temple on the roof, is 55 Central Park West on the Upper West Side. It is a real Art Deco co-op from 1929, and the film added a substantial number of imaginary storeys and a Sumerian temple to it. Locals call it the Ghostbusters Building; the roofline you see in the climax does not exist.
The New York Public Library's main branch on Fifth Avenue supplies the opening sequence, exterior and the reading rooms. Columbia University's Havemeyer Hall stood in for the parapsychology department the team is thrown out of.
The Tavern on the Green sequence was shot at the real restaurant in Central Park.
Visiting the location
- Where
- Hook & Ladder Company 8, 14 North Moore Street, Tribeca, New York, NY.
- Getting there
- Franklin Street station on the 1 line is two minutes away; Canal Street serves several lines a short walk south.
- Access
- The exterior is on a public street and free to look at. This is an operating fire station — there is no public interior access, and the apparatus floor must never be blocked.
- Keep the doorway and the kerb clear. The truck leaves at speed and without warning.
- The company sometimes sells FDNY merchandise for its own fund; buy something rather than just photographing the building.
- 55 Central Park West, Dana's building, is a straightforward subway ride uptown if you are doing the circuit.
- Do not knock, and do not ask to see the pole. The interiors were filmed in Los Angeles and are not there.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Ghostbusters firehouse a real fire station?
Yes. Hook & Ladder Company 8 is an active FDNY station at 14 North Moore Street in Tribeca, with firefighters on duty and a ladder truck on the apparatus floor.
Can you go inside the Ghostbusters firehouse?
No. It is a working fire station with no public access. Only the exterior appears in the films — all the interiors were shot in a disused firehouse in Los Angeles and on soundstages.
Was the Ghostbusters firehouse nearly closed?
Yes. It was on a 2011 list of companies proposed for closure in city budget cuts, and a public campaign that drew heavily on its film fame helped keep it open.
Where is Dana Barrett's apartment building?
55 Central Park West on the Upper West Side. The extra storeys and the rooftop temple were added for the film and do not exist.