Line #27 Main/FultonStreetFolly


1	Even though there are 4.85 other boroughs in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity ([[FanonDisContinuity if you count]] [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg Staten Island]]), Lower Manhattan is used disproportionately often in many films and shows because it's easier to film in; the Financial District empties out like a GhostCity on the weekends. Many of the streets are already blocked off, and there are few residents to complain if an entire neighborhood is overrun by camera crews and catering trucks.
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3	As a result, anything which is nominally set (or could be set) in other parts of the city will still have scenes filmed downtown even if there's no compelling reason for the characters or action to be there. A story about stock brokers makes sense, but for everything else, it's because it's an easy shooting location.
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5	The corner of Wall and Broad Streets is a popular spot because, being the location of the New York Stock Exchange, it's been closed to traffic for years. It's also the location of Federal Hall, which easily doubles for any other columned government building. Hardly a weekend goes by without something being filmed there.
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7	The trope name comes from [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fulton Robert Fulton]], whose 1807 steamboat, the ''North River Steamboat'',[[note]]colloquially known as the ''Clermont'', a name that never used while she was in service; see [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_River_Steamboat#Known_as_Clermont The Other Wiki]] for more details[[/note]] was [[ItWillNeverCatchOn contemporaneously ridiculed]] as "Fulton's folly"[[note]]Previous steamboats had been woefully underpowered, leading the Unwashed Masses™ to believe the technology was completely infeasible[[/note]], and who has a prominent local street named for him and is buried at nearby Trinity Church.
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9	A subtrope of BigApplesauce, where things happen in New York even though they could be reasonably set in any other city, state or country, as well as NewYorkIsOnlyManhattan, where in works focusing on New York (State or City) only Manhattan gets prominence.
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11	Not to be confused with ''Fulton Street Foley'', the sound of urban combat and mobilized emergency vehicles as Lower Manhattan falls under lockdown.
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13	!!Examples
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15	[[foldercontrol]]
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17	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
18	* ''Crossing Delancey'' is a film-length {{Lampshade}} of this trope.
19	* Sonny in ''Film/BigDaddy'' lives near the South Street Seaport for no apparent reason yet spends a considerable amount of time hanging out in Central Park.
20	* Much of the first act of ''Film/{{Cloverfield}}'' takes place near City Hall.
21	* Justified in ''Film/DeepImpact'' when the tidal wave visibly destroys Lower Manhattan, as that's the portion of the island facing the bay.
22	* ''Film/DieHardWithAVengeance'' features a Wall Street subway bombing. ([[spoiler:And subverts it by using the explosion to break into the Federal Reserve (which is actually a couple blocks away).]])
23	* Film/{{Godzilla\|1998}} in the 1998 movie makes its first appearance stomping up Broad Street and stepping ''over'' Federal Hall.
24	* ''Film/IAmLegend'' (2007) is set mostly downtown and uses South Street Seaport as the broadcast rendezvous spot.
25	* ''Film/InAndOut'' includes a Federal Hall scene in the award-winning movie-within-a-movie.
26	* The headquarters of ''Film/MenInBlack'' are located under Battery Park.
27	* ''Film/NationalTreasure'' features scenes at Trinity Church. Justified in that the treasure was hidden there around the time of the Revolutionary War, when a majority of Manhattan Island was undeveloped.
28	* Lower Manhattan doubles for Metropolis in many of the street scenes in ''{{Film/Superman\|FilmSeries}}''.
29	* ''Film/TheBoneCollector'' is largely set downtown. The manhole-cover bomb scene takes place at Wall and Broad Streets, between Federal Hall and the New York Stock Exchange.
30	* ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'' was mostly filmed in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and New York City. The Stock Exchange that Bane and his men attack 40 minutes into the movie is represented by the J.P. Morgan Building at 23 Wall Street (on the exterior, at the least; a facility in Los Angeles was used for the interior).
31	[[/folder]]
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33	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
34	* The filming of the ''Series/{{Fringe}}'' episode where skin grows over every orifice of the victim's bodies had this: the first guy getting attacked at the magazine stand was filmed on Fulton Street.
35	* Averted in the ''Series/LawAndOrder'' franchise, which roams up and down Manhattan. Although the Federal building does feature in most episodes, that's because it's the ''courthouse''. Ironically, the "courthouse" used on ''Law & Order'' is the civil courthouse. The criminal courthouse is a block away, but doesn't look as cool.
36	* Surprisingly averted in ''Series/{{Gotham}}'', a TV series set in DC Comics' Gotham City and showing the rise of a young Bruce Wayne into Batman. It films in ''the Bronx'', not lower Manhattan. The production team explained that they did this on purpose, ''citing'' this trope (not by name) - they explained that ''so many'' TV shows and movies are filmed in lower Manhattan that they're visually too familiar to viewers. They wanted Gotham to look like an alternate fictional city, sort of "New York Gothic" in tone but not quite recognizable, as part of the AnachronismStew they were also shooting for (cars and furniture mostly from 1940's Noir, but everyone has cell phones, etc.) Thus they scouted out relatively unused locations in the Bronx, like an old courthouse which ''actually was'' part of "New York City" architecture in the 1930's, but which no one really thinks of that way anymore because TV audiences are so used to seeing the updated looks of lower Manhattan.
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39	[[folder:Music]]
40	* Music/RageAgainstTheMachine played "Sleep Now in the Fire" on the steps of Federal Hall (across from the NYSE) on a weekday, without a permit, for their video.
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43	[[folder:Video Games]]
44	* At the end of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'', Big Shell and Arsenal Gear crash into Lower Manhattan, resulting in Raiden and Solidus dueling at the top of Federal Hall. [[GainaxEnding Maybe.]]
45	* The very first mission of ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare3'', "Black Tuesday", revolves around a Russian jamming array atop the New York Stock Exchange. Broad Street and Federal Hall can be prominently seen along the way.
46	* Almost all of ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}} 2'' takes place on Manhattan. Subverted when the final mission takes place in Central Park [[spoiler:which the aliens have suspended half a mile off the ground.]]
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49	[[folder:Real Life]]
50	* High-level politicians and candidates often deliver speeches at Federal Hall because the side streets are already sealed off and it's easier to shut down a museum rather than film at a working government building.
51	* Interestingly, since 2001, the Financial District has begun developing into a residential area. The [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11 attack]] scared off a number of banks and financial institutions, and the credit crunch of 2008 didn't help either, all leading to a number of buildings standing empty. Residential developers bought and renovated them into luxury apartments, and "[=FiDi=]" (following the [[FunWithAcronyms naming traditions]] of New York neighborhoods that coined [=TriBeCa=] and [=SoHo=]) is now considered an up-and-coming neighborhood, especially for the new generation of yuppies (young lawyers, investment bankers, and the like).
52	* The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that spread to the general "Occupy" phenomenon in late 2011 started in the Financial District. However, Occupy Wall Street soon took root not on Wall Street proper (which was quickly barricaded by [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCityCops the NYPD]], causing no end of havoc to local residents), but the nearby Zuccotti Park.
53	[[/folder]]

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