Ghostbusters Building (55 Central Park West)
55 Central Park West has no formal building name, but it’s called the “Ghostbusters Building” after the popular film comedy. Ghostbusters (1984) called the building “Spook Central” and changed its top for the film.
55 Central Park West was built in 1929 and has had many famous residents, including Rudy Vallee, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Ring Lardner, Jr. and Marsha Mason.
Wikipedia: 55 Central Park West
The building at 55 Central Park West, also known as the Ghostbusters Building, is a 19-floor housing cooperative located in Manhattan, New York City, U.S.A. The building was built in 1929 and designed by the firm Schwartz and Gross. Both the interior and the exterior possess unique architectural features that set the structure apart from its peers. The building is considered a contributing property within the Central Park West Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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The building also holds significance in American popular culture because scenes from the 1984 film Ghostbusters were shot there. In the film, the building is said to have been designed by an insane architect named Ivo Shandor, who started a secret society which performed rituals on the building’s roof as early as 1920. The building, however, was not built until 1929. Since the movie used the building in 1984 it has been known as the “Ghostbusters Building,” though it was portrayed as much taller and with a different roof in the film. Well known residents of the building have included Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Ring Lardner, Jr. and Marsha Mason.
The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations
Ghostbusters film locations
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Back in New York, ‘Spook Central’, Sigourney Weaver’s troubled apartment block, is 55 Central Park West at 65th Street, with a few upper storeys added in by the studio art department.
The chosen location was originally to have been 1 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village, an art-deco apartment tower block with Gothic trimmings and stylised gargoyles, but local residents finally nixed the idea. The building housed the (now gone) One Fifth restaurant, a location for Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Just across from Sigourney Weaver’s apartment, in Central Park, you can see the restaurant where Rick Moranis pounds on the window to escape a ravening hellhound. It’s another much-used location, the Tavern on the Green, Central Park West at 67th Street.
Google Books
New York City
By Martha Ellen Zenfell
Hong Kong: APA Publications; New York, NY: Distributed in the USA & Canada by Prentice Hall Travel
1991
Pg. 215:
There’s the Ghostbusters building at 55 Central Park West (it moved uptown after residents of the original Greenwich Village location. One Fifth Avenue, objected) ...
New York (NY) Times
A Gang of Ghosts Ready To Rumble
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: October 29, 1993
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New York’s ghostly legions do not terrify Mr. Stafford. He moves calmly through the swirling mists and the fearful apparitions. But one address pulls him up short. On the way to 55 Central Park West, the famous Art Deco “Ghostbusters” building, he pointed toward 1 West 64th Street and stopped for a moment. “Now there’s a building that’s scary in its own right,” he said. “Madonna lives there.”
New York magazine
November 7, 2005
One Apartment, 75 Years
How a Central Park West penthouse went from being a Depression-era rental to Calvin Klein’s home to years of unoccupied limbo.
By Steven Gaines
Ever since 1984, it’s been known as the Ghostbusters building, the place where Sigourney Weaver’s character lived and the demonic, hulking Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man met his demise. But when 55 Central Park West first opened as a rental building in 1930, Real Estate magazine said it resembled “Jung Frau, that most beloved snowcapped Alpine peak”—its cornices like Art Deco stalagmites.
Slate—browbeat blog
What Is Ghostbusters Really About?
By David Haglund
Posted Tuesday, June 11, 2013, at 10:38 AM
The trailer below made the rounds online yesterday. It’s for a movie called Spook Central, a name taken from Ghostbusters, which this film obsessively analyses. (“Spook Central” is what one of the Busters calls the Shandor Building—i.e., 55 Central Park West—where the characters Dana and Louis live.) Is the 1984 comedy classic really about sex? Obesity? The ostracism of smokers?