NYC Trip – Shadowhunters/The Mortal Instruments Part 1
So! This past September, your intrepid podcast hosts traveled to NYC, and, short of a plan other than ‘lets walk around, and eat food!’ embarked upon a mission to visit key sites from both the Shadowhunters TV show and The Mortal Instruments book series. Below you will see the results of this 14 mile, 2 day journey in photographic form. This post will be divided into chunks to save it being to image massive!
Here’s some links for your reference:
1) The freeform ‘Map The Shadows!’ web page.
2) The map that Cassandra Clare shared on MortalInstruments.com (this correlates with the map in the begining of the UK Walker Books edition of the TMI series (0781406307627 – ISBN for CoB)
3) Our compiled google map with all the locations from the above maps.
Some things to bear in mind.
- The blobs on the TMI map above are rather large, covering a couple of blocks that are not marked specifically.
- The points on the show map on the other hand are quite specific but on a map with most of the street markings removed. Also the markings, we strongly suspect after having done our journey, are not supposed to indicate the specific spot in terms of exact distance down exact street.
- The show map is Season 1 specific – there is new info in regards to both Magnus’s loft and the Institute provided in season 2 which are reflected in the photos but not on the maps.
- Bearing the above in mind we visited the destinations as close to the exact marking as possible, and then found the most appropriate site at that location.
- Finally we had a bit of a technical calamity with a loss of some of the photos, we have therefore supplemented with some photos from google maps.
Here is a quick view of the map sites, colour coded (blue for book, pink for show), the numbers correlate to the discussion points and photos below!)
1. Hotel Dumort
The locations of the show and book Du Mort are quite radically different, with the book placing the Vampire headquarters in Harlem, on the east side, whilst the show’s Du Mort is located on the Upper West side.
Show:
Description from the Shadowhunter wikia:
The Hotel Dumort is the headquarters of the Brooklyn vampire clan. The building looks like a simple, derelict building in construction on the outside, while it still looks glamorous and high-class inside, likely due to Camille’s involvement. The hotel appears, to Mundanes, under the guise of a building that’s been under construction for years by a company called DuMort Construction, where a sign outside has a vampire pun: “Live your way now… and forever.”
The street in question really did not look much like the street we see Simon walk down so many times in Season 1, which looks flat and quite industrial. We were drawn, however to the dramatic church building (v. vampiric) and the scaffolding on the shorter building. There was also a basement entrance that seemed reminiscent of the door Raphael so unceremoniously shoved Simon out of at the end of S01E03 Dead Mans Party.
Book:
Description from the Shadowhunters wikia:
The Hotel Dumort is a derelict hotel inhabited by the New York vampire clan. It is found in East Harlem in Manhattan, New York City.
The hotel was once known as the Hotel Dumont, a glamorous hotel that was built in what was then known as the Italian Harlem; back then, it stood out from everything around it.
We were quite excited to discover that our air b’n’b (located at 125th and Madison-ish) was a literal stones throw from the Hotel Du Mort book map point. This was in truth the fact that inspired our quest. The street corner at 125th and Lexington Ave. provided some atmospheric shots that certainly fit with the decomposing grandeur that is the Hotel Du Mort. Couple this with a neighborhood full of generous elegant brownstones now divided into a dozen apartments each, gave the whole area an air of decayed decadence that seemed absolutely perfect.
2. Entrance to the Seelie Court/Meliorn’s tent
The show and the book differ quite a lot in their treatment of the entrances to the seelie realm. The book describes the entrance as being somewhere in Turtle Pond itself, while the show depicts Meliorn’s tent in the woods, presumably in central park also, the glade that Jace and Clary cross to the alternate dimension in, and then, in season 2, the entrance in the pond accessed from the bridge.
Book:
Description from the Shadowhunter wikia:
There are several entrances to the land, most of which tend to be hidden and unguarded and are normally found in natural surroundings rather than in man-made areas; they are often given away by some aspect of their natural appearance that is “wrong” or “off”—like a reflection in water that does not match the world above the reflection. One known entrance is through Central Park, accessed by stepping backwards into the reflection of the moon on Turtle Pond; this path leads to the Seelie Court.
Turtle pond is one of the smaller ponds towards the middle of Central Park, it is within spitting distance of Belvedere Castle and the Shakespeare garden. It has no bridges, but does have a jetty. We could not locate a wooden gazebo, like the one Jace, Clary, and Simon find Izzy sitting in, though the jetty has a bench that would make for a convenient place to wait.
Show:
Description from the Shadowhunter wikia:
The Seelie Court, also known as the Seelie realm or Seelie Glade, is the hidden dwelling of the Seelies. The Seelie realm is in tune with nature, mostly having the look of a forest. Found in the Seelie realm is a glade that contains one of their most guarded secrets: an intersection with an alternate dimension that can be accessed through a dimensional doorway protected by the Seelies. There are several entrances to the land, most of which tend to be unguarded but well-hidden, almost impossible to stumble upon unless you know what you’re looking for.
We never receive a fixed location for Meliorn’s tent in the woods, nor even confirmation as to whether it is in the seelie realm or the normal world. Given the casual way Isabelle and the others pop in and out of it, it is probably safe to assume that it is glamoured and in the depths of the park. The show map marks the location as the ‘entrance to the seelie realm’ and a ‘Shaded Glade’ (the labels change if you switch from mundane to shadowhunter view), suggesting that this is the location Clary and Jace went to to portal to the alternate dimension. The point marked on the map is disappointingly very close to the 79th street cut through the park, meaning that there is a shortage of peaceful glade and fairy like clearings. We have done the best we could.
Finally, in season 2 we have the entrance to the seelie court via swan dive off a bridge. We are assuming that this bridge is somewhere in central park (as previously mentioned the freeform map is Season 1 specific). It turns out that in spite of having a huge amount of water, central park has only 3 true bridges.
Oak and Bow bridges on the Lake, and Gapstow bridge on the Pond.
Oak Bridge
Bow bridge
Gapstow bridge
We’ll leave you to make a call as to which one works best.
3. The Institute
Like the Hotel Du Mort, the primary difference between the book and show’s institutes are their locations, whilst both are glamoured Gothic churches, the book places the Institute on the Upper East Side, at the north end of the park, whilst the show brings the location some 75 blocks south in Midtown not far from the Village (in season 1 at least).
Book:
Description from the Shadowhunter wikia:
The New York Institute refers to the Shadowhunter Institute in New York. It is where the New York Conclave meet, provide protection to Shadowhunters, and, in some cases, mundanes and Downworlders in need of their help.
The Institute is said to look like an old gothic cathedral. As it is covered by a glamour, mundanes see the church abandoned and almost in ruins because of it. The Institute also has a glamoured brass plate next to the entrance—a set of double doors—with the Institute’s name etched into it. The interior of the Institute is enormous, with several corridors and hallways adorned with arches. The nave of the Institute, still with its pews, is also well kept, with witchlight and tapers in candelabras as its main source of light.
There are two churches in the immediate vicinity of book’s institute location. St Lucy’s Roman Catholic church, and East Ward Missionary Baptist (both pictured below). As you can see, neither are gothic in design, nor are they particularly run down. they were also a little far from the map point for comfort.
Our conclusion therefore was that the institute might be located somewhere like the below. Certainly big enough for the institute, pleasingly neglected looking, with a big fence to keep curious mundanes out. After all, whose to say they’ve not tightened security and gone completely invisible in the past couple of years?
Show:
Description from the Shadowhunter wikia:
The New York Institute refers to the Shadowhunter Institute in New York. It serves as their headquarters and a high-tech and highly-protected operations center. Being hidden beneath glamour, the Institute is seen as an abandoned, run-down gothic cathedral by mundanes without the Sight. The exterior is in fact a large, magnificent church, while the inside of the Institute is enormous, with several interconnected corridors, hallways, and large rooms.
We get into some slight complication when it comes to the show’s institute.
The map locates it in mid town, around 20th street and 6th avenue. We had more luck in our dramatic Church hunt at this spot. Whilst not Gothic, the church below was right on our map point, and has appropriately even been converted from Church to fitness centre. We were inspired by the way the Church seems to nestle into the more prosaic buildings around it, an old building the city has built itself around.
We get into some trouble in season 2, as the institute seems to have moved from 20th and 6th to Battery park at the very southern most tip of Manhattan, on the Hudson. See this screen shot of the scene in which Maryse tells Alec he’s got to cut Jace out like a cancer for reference.
So assuming that this is the new location the institute seems to be placed sort of straight in the middle of the park.
the only Church immediantly on Battery park is St Elizabeth Ann Seton Shrine:
4. Taki’s
Description from the Shadowhunter wikia:
Taki’s Diner is a Downworld café or restaurant in Manhattan, New York, frequented by several Shadowhunters, Downworlders, and even some mundanes.
It offers food and beverages for all of their varied clientele; aside from a selection of food for humans, there is also a section on the menu that lists food for Downworlders, such as animal blood for vampires, raw meat for werewolves, and whole raw fish for faeries.
As yet there is no equivalent to Taki’s in the show, the shadowworld diner that Jace, Alec, and Izzy frequent.
It is located a stones throw from the book institute location.
See part two for (5) Pandemonium, (6) the Jade Wolf, (7) Magnus’s Loft, and (8) The entrance to the City of Bones
3rd September 2022 @ 10:33 pm
The church at 20th and 6th was an insanely popular club in the 90s, and probably the inspiration for Pandemonium, called Limelight.
3rd July 2022 @ 9:03 pm
Veselka, from the first chapter of “City of Fallen Angels” is a real place exactly where the book places it!
14th May 2019 @ 4:24 am
I thought it would be great to have the “Shadowhunter” sites be real brick and mortar places in our real world. Apparently, they’re not real places, but an artistic rendering of an imaginary place located in New York’s Central Park that comes and goes like Brigadoon that resurfaces as a real place every one hundred years, as does the town in the play of the same name.