Regarding the following from the GF1 Filming Locations section.

The scene for the meeting of the Don's was filmed at the boardroom of the Penn Central Railroad on the 32nd floor above Grand Central Station [challenged]

What is the challenge? I am 99% sure that the outside shot is the Federal Reserve on Maiden Lane in the Wall Street area of NYC.



Old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street was used for the christening scene. A real Bishop was used. Coppola's family is used as extras. [Challenged: Mt Loretto Church in Staten Island?]

FFC himself says in the DVD Commentary that it's Old St. Pats. Case closed! Is the challenge due to the outside shot? The inside/outside shots are obviously different because there is no grass on Mulberry St.


The estate of movie czar Jack Woltz was really the Guggenheim Estate, Sands Point, Long Island [Challenged: Harold LLoyd Estate in Beverly Hills, CA]

Is this challenge another case of confusion regarding inside/outside shots? The outside shots can't be in Long Island because of the palm trees.

I love these detail challenges! BUT, I don't think its the Fed Reserve. The color of the stone in the film is gray. The color of the stone on the Fed is more of a beige. Next time I'm up there (a sunny day anyway) I'll take a picture. Thanks for the challenge.

I'm pretty sure the exterior shot is the Fed. I think they're talking about the interior being the Penn Central boardroom. I think I recall some paintings of trains in the room.

Fed building

Its a different angle, but the arched stone looks the same....

Found this information on the internet.

It pertains to the Penn Central Boardroom.

Here is another angle of the Fed building that more closely resembles the shot in the film.


http://www.nyu.edu/classes/finearts/nyc/wall/fed_reserve.html

Well folks, it wasn't raining so I took my camera and went up to the Fed. It certainly looks like the building, but we'll have to put it next to the TV and see if the architecture is the same. The color is darker and grayer in the photo. It is a very light buff-beige color. Its a dreary day in NY. Sorry for the size. This is only the 4th photo I've put on PhotoPile and copied to the BB.

The photo is taken from the Liberty St side of the building.

The exterior for the Dons' meeting definitely was the Federal Reserve Building in NYC's financial district. I've been there many times.

For deposits, no doubt

I was there once in the sixties. My father had an accumulation of one dollar bill silver certificates, and when the US Treasury decided decided that they would no longer be redeemable for actual silver, there was a deadline for turning them in. I brought them there--must have been close to 100--and got a nice bag of silver 'dust' in return, probably a couple of ounces.

Thanks for the pic, Mary. The "Fed" can also be seen in "Die Hard 3" (the building from which all the dump trucks take the gold).

The interior scenes of the boardroom were shot in the same building in which Salvatore Marranzano was shot to death some 40 years earlier.

Make deposits Hell, I bet he was there when the Fed ran short, either that or he needed 2 million to stuff in a suitcase and went to Cuba.

plawrence, I think the building you visited with the Silver Certificates was the Assay Office on Water Street, not the Fed. I worked near there and also cashed in Silver Certificates before the deadline.
BTW: Silver played a role in the founding of Joe Columbo's Italian American Anti-Defamation League. To clarify for our overseas friends: The US Treasury Department used to cast coins in silver, and issued paper money called Silver Certificates that could be redeemed for silver ingots. In the late 60's, America ran critically short of silver, so the Treasury stopped using silver in coins, and announced a deadline for redeeming Silver Certificates. This caused a huge "bubble" in the price of silver. Joe Columbo, who was boss of the former Profaci Mafia family, had a son who figured out that if he melted down silver coins, the silver would be worth more than the nominal value of the coins. But this was against the law. The Feds indicted him on a felony rap. They were also preparing several racketeering indictments for Joe. He claimed that he and his son were being "persecuted for being Italian." So he formed his League and got hundreds, even thousands, of Italian-Americans to believe in his cause. They picketed the FBI offices in NYC and got them to stop referring to Joe and his sons as "Mafiosi." They picketed the NY Times and got them to drop "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" in their news stories. They also leaned on Al Ruddy and got him to drop those terms from GF (in return, they gave Ruddy and FFC lots of cooperation on the streets while filming GF, and let Caan pal around with their guys to learn their ways. Since Caan was relatively unknown, the FBI opened a file on him, thinking he was an up-and-coming gangster.) Columbo gave interviews to the media and appeared on the Dick Cavett TV show, always denying he was Don or that there was a Mafia. He was gunned down and disabled at a rally in 1971. He died several years later. Carmine (the Snake) Persico took over the Columbo family.