A Guide to Nora Ephron's New York City
Give me the streets of Manhattan! (And a Starbucks drip coffee, black with extra sugar.)
Do you remember a moment when your whole life changed, when black-and-white film turned Technicolor, when a fork in the road materialized and you decided, right there and then, to travel down the path unknown?
We all have those moments, often multiple times throughout our lives, at every stage. In my early twenties I had one while visiting New York City for the first time on a grad-school class trip. The year: 2004. My advance level of excitement: Lukewarm. I was a daughter of Illinois living in Chicago, and while I was raised on images of New York in popular culture (Seinfeld, Friends, Sex and the City, and yes, the Nora Ephron holy trinity), I hadn’t felt the urge to jump on a plane and check out a metropolis that I figured was exactly like Chicago but denser and more expensive. However, once I navigated its crowded, vibrant streets, an extremely small fish in a churning sea of humanity, I was quickly seduced by the scale, the blinding lights of Time Square, the concrete fashion runways, the glorious diversity and the kindnesses of New Yorkers stopping in their tracks to give directions. (Me: “Pardon, where is the Avenue of the Americas?” A woman, carrying multiple tote bags, her mouth a straight line: “You mean Sixth Avenue — it’s one block that way.”)
I thought, in my roundabout Midwestern way, No, yeah. I think gotta move here. New York seemed like it was built just for me.
After graduation, I did something completely out of character: I moved to Manhattan with two suitcases, my parents’ blessing and, very fortunately, a new job as an editorial assistant at a short-lived launch magazine named Inside TV (tagline: The magazine for women who love television.) (Niche!) I signed a temporary sublease on West 85th Street, and without a computer and smartphone to suck my time and keep me indoors, I spent untold magic hours outside, becoming a regular at various hotspots from You’ve Got Mail, Ephron’s third and best romantic comedy. In fact, I couldn’t go anywhere without running into a place the beloved filmmaker and longtime Upper West Sider had stamped with her heart-shaped personal brand. I shopped at Zabar’s. I ordered cake at Cafe Lalo. I browsed the shelves at Barnes & Noble, a.k.a. Fox Books, and strolled through Riverside Park, where Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) and Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) finally embrace in the ultimate enemies-to-lovers happy ending. I don’t know that Ephron ever procured delicious pastries from the Hungarian bakery facing St. John’s, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she had.
You’ve Got Mail, a loose remake of the classic romance The Shop Around the Corner (1940), which director Ernst Lubitsch set in Budapest, possesses so much of its predecessor’s charm, the Upper West Side retaining an Old World, vaguely European feel compared with hipper New York neighborhoods. Ephron cleared the smelly trash heaps in front of Kathleen’s twee brownstone, and in lieu of darting rodents and dingy apartment stairwells, glossed over the grit with twinkle lights, which she called “winky lights,” and bouquets of daisies, the friendliest flower. She saw the city the way she wanted to see it — through rose-colored glasses — and her neighborhood as it often was: A small, self-contained town that marched to the beat of its own drum, as she did hers.
Eventually, I led a walking tour of iconic romantic comedy locations alongside the writer Jennifer Armstrong, a fellow fan of The Big Three: When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. We narrowed our tour to the Upper West Side, of course, where Ephron lived for decades and filmed her final rom-com in 1997. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and loved its East Coast rival the way only an outsider could; she formed a deep attachment to her neck of the woods, especially The Apthorp, the baronial residence in which she and Goodfellas scribe, Nick Pileggi, her third and best husband, shared an apartment. (The two rarely bickered, even when she took over his closet space.) On the street, she marveled at the sight of a baker’s fresh bread loaves lying unattended outside a deli early in the morning. Passersby hadn’t thought to steal the delivery, possibly out of respect for the deli owner, a guy everyone knew. Ephron wanted to capture that cozy familiarity in You’ve Got Mail, her love letter to the Big Apple and its quirky, warmhearted inhabitants. She selected and approved every single locale down to the smallest details.
I harbored low expectations for our first foray through the Ephron Cinematic Universe, so when Jennifer and I tweeted the link to buy tickets, the enthusiasm caught me off guard. A couple celebrating their wedding anniversary flew all the way from Arizona to New York to participate in a thing we started on a lark, because we thought it would be fun. The journalist Kirthana Ramisetti, whom we’d never met, emailed us and said she wanted to cover it … for The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper that Joe Fox, the enemy of the mid-list novel, the destroyer of City Books, surely subscribed to. (No pressure.) Anyway, we loved leading this homage to the world Ephron created, meeting kindred spirits and awkwardly recreating the scene between Hanks and Dave Chappelle outside Cafe Lalo. (“Well, if you don't like Kathleen Kelly, I can tell you right now you ain't gonna like this girl.”)
Maybe one day we’ll bring it back! Until then, if you’re ever in New York, and wish to follow in our footsteps, try this itinerary:
The Shop Around the Corner, 106 West 69th Street and Columbus Avenue: For devotees of You’ve Got Mail, this address is hallowed ground. A dry cleaner has since replaced Maya Schaper Cheese and Antiques, which Ephron used for the exterior of Kathleen’s independent children’s bookstore. The crew paid Schaper to go on a short vacation while they repainted the front of her shop and constructed a new awning. When she returned to the city, everything was back to normal and in its place, as though Meg Ryan hadn’t been there at all. (Who took home the awning? That belongs in my house! I mean: The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.)
Cafe Luxembourg, 70th Street and Amsterdam Avenue: Where Harry, Sally, Jess and Marie dine in When Harry Met Sally. The best line, courtesy of Bruno Kirby: “Nobody has ever quoted me back to me before.”
Gray’s Papaya, 72nd Street and Amsterdam: Where Joe and Kathleen have a friend date. Throw on some anti-fashion khakis and partake of a papaya drink and a hot dog with sauerkraut.
Verdi Square, 72nd Street and Broadway: Joe and Kathleen nearly bump into each other on their separate paths to work. Cue The Cranberries’ “Dreams.”
The Apthorp, 79th Street and Broadway: Ephron was obsessed with her stately gated home, enticing her sister Delia and friend Rosie O’Donnell to rent apartments therein. It is the site of a funny deleted scene from When Harry Met Sally as well as the backdrop of the hit Hulu series Only Murders in the Building, which Ephron would’ve loved. Before you visit, read her New Yorker essay about The Apthorp, “Moving On, A Love Story.”
Zabar’s, 80th Street and Broadway: Recall the scene in You’ve Got Mail when Joe sweet-talks a cashier (Sara Ramirez, pre-Che Diaz) into letting Kathleen use her credit card in the cash-only aisle. (Don’t forget to grab some incredible merch on your way out — to me, a Zabar’s tote is better than a Birkin.)
Starbucks, 81st and Broadway: Here, Joe and Kathleen have another friend date, and in a separate scene, Joe orders his commuter caffeine. Hanks, who got hooked on espresso during the making of Sleepless in Seattle, dubbed it a “legal addictive stimulant.” With her leading man in mind, Ephron wrote this rant for Joe: “The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etcetera. So, people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.”
Barnes & Noble, between 82nd and 83rd Streets: This much-loved third place among Upper West Siders never saw its close-up, but in spirit it closely resembled Fox and Sons Books, the fictitious superstore that squeezes out The Shop Around the Corner. Using Barnes & Noble as inspiration, Team Ephron built Joe’s company flagship inside Barneys’ former Chelsea headquarters further downtown.
Cafe Lalo, 83rd Street and Amsterdam: Where Joe and Kathleen engage in spitefully loaded verbal repartee that has yet to be outdone in any romantic comedy since. As Hanks told me for my book, I’ll Have What She’s Having: How Nora Ephron Saved the Romantic Comedy: “Meg does not suffer fools. She’s also low maintenance. At the same time, you better be on your toes working with Meg. You better be willing to pony up the same amount of cash that she’s bringing to the game. Otherwise, you’ll get dusted. You’ll lose. You got to be there.”
Barney Greengrass, 86th and Amsterdam: Kathleen and her loyal coworker, Birdie Conrad (Jean Stapleton) have lunch at the renowned deli, which was established in 1908.
Kathleen Kelly’s apartment, 328 West 89th Street, between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive: Ephron wanted Kathleen to reside on a serene side-street rather than a heavily trafficked thoroughfare such as Broadway. She settled on this elegant, unassuming pile of bricks for exterior shots. (She filmed interiors on a soundstage.) I believe the brownstone should be designated a national historic landmark and preserved in its 1998 state forever. Should I write a letter to that nut from The Observer, and get some publicity for my effort?
Joe Fox’s apartment, 210 Riverside Drive, near 94th Street: Yes, the You’ve Got Mail anti-hero resides at 152 Riverside, a nod to his AOL screen name NY152, but Ephron preferred 210’s tony, upper-crust facade and so she gave the entrance a fake awning. (Ugh, I want that one, too.)
Riverside Park: Joe reveals his identity to Kathleen at the 91st Street Garden. Cue goosebumps and Harry Nilsson’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
We skipped several nostalgic stops on our tour, including the now-shuttered Ocean Grill on Columbus (where Joe and Kathleen continued their friend dates) and Loeb Boathouse in Central Park (where Sally lunched with gal pals Marie and Alice), but the following fixtures remain worth seeing: From Sleepless in Seattle, the Rainbow Room (where Ryan’s Annie Reed broke up with Bill Pullman’s Walter) and the Empire State Building’s observation deck; and from When Harry Met Sally, Jess and Marie’s brownstone (32 West 89th Street and Central Park West), the Washington Square Arch (where Sally and Harry part ways after their disastrous road trip) and, last but not least, Katz’s Deli, the stage of the most famous orgasm … ever? An excerpt from I’ll Have What She’s Having:
A Lower East Side mainstay since 1888, Katz’s Delicatessen on Houston Street supplied pastrami, salami, and franks to locals including the neighborhood’s vibrant Jewish immigrant community that coalesced in the beginning of the 20th century. When that population declined—greener, more suburban pastures an idyllic option compared with cramped apartments—the 1960s wrought an era of crime-ridden urban decay. Katz’s stood still. But times were tough. Many customers steered clear after dark. Others stayed away because of rebuilding on the Williamsburg Bridge in the late 1980s.
“It wasn’t just the bridge; New York was in a pretty bad recession at the time,” says Katz’s co-owner Fred Austin. “The real-estate market collapsed; Wall Street was down. Our clientele was different. We appealed a lot to local people. People on their way home to Brooklyn or Queens would stop and take the Williamsburg Bridge, and with the bridge out we lost about a third of business then. You’d see it at 4 to 6 p.m. at night. The store was a lot quieter than it was previously.”
Katz’s was second choice. [Director] Rob [Reiner] and his crew wanted Carnegie Deli, the famed pastrami purveyor further uptown, but failed to make a deal due to cost and schedule restrictions. They needed a full day; Carnegie wasn’t prepared to close up shop for some movie. Next, they approached Fred and his fellow owners—father-in-law Martin Dell and brother-in-law Alan Dell—and won permission to rent out the institution. “When we were all talking about it, we knew it had to be someplace where there were a lot of tables and a big crowd,” recollects [production designer] Jane Musky. “And it couldn’t be fancy because it had to feel like they just stopped there, it was not expected. They were just meeting up.”
They hired extras to be servers. “For continuity’s sake, you need to have the same people in the same position—and our staff was too wild to contain,” explains Fred, half-joking.
Fred had no idea what the scene, let alone the movie, was about. He would be in for a surprise, that’s for sure. Although is anybody surprised by what happens in New York?
The rest, as they say, is history.
I’m a Californian now, and the colors are brighter on the golden West Coast, but sometimes I find myself in a New York state of mind. (Take it away, Billy.) The next time I get to Katz’s, I plan to order a pastrami on rye with extra mustard on the side as well as a basket of piping-hot fries and a cream soda, but if it’s not Dr. Brown’s, forget it, I’ll just have coffee — black with one spoon of sugar.
As always, thank you for reading, friends. In the near future, I’ll provide movie-location guides for Chicago and San Francisco. What other cities would you like to see? Let me know, and I’ll add them to my list!