Steiner Studios

Full disclosure, hunter: the old version of this post was describing a completely different studio. Everything it said — the 1920 build, Paramount’s original home, Sesame Street, the landmark status, the white gate on 35th Avenue — belongs to Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens. This is the correction, and it’s a good story on its own: Steiner Studios, at 15 Washington Avenue inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard, is a 21st-century production city inside a 19th-century shipyard — one of America’s largest studio complexes outside Hollywood.

The Scene

Steiner opened for business in November 2004, and the first film through its doors was Mel Brooks’s The Producers (2005) — a fitting christening, a musical about show business opening a studio built for show business. Since then the stages have hosted a roll call of modern New York filmmaking: Martin Scorsese’s Boardwalk Empire built its Atlantic City there; The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel constructed its elaborate period sets on the lot (the Gaslight Cafe interiors among them); and the credits run through Inside Man, Enchanted, The Adjustment Bureau, Across the Universe, Chapter 27, Inventing Anna, Spielberg’s West Side Story, Tick, Tick… Boom!, and And Just Like That…. Television staples like Damages, Bored to Death, and In Treatment called it home too.

Fun prop lore: after Chapter 27 (2007) — the film about John Lennon’s assassination — wrapped, the production’s replica of the Dakota’s entrance door was left behind on the lot, a ghost of 1980 leaning against a 2004 soundstage.

The Backstory

The studio was founded in 1999 by Douglas C. Steiner of Steiner Equities — a father-and-son real estate family who looked at a working waterfront and imagined Hollywood East. The Brooklyn Navy Yard launched warships from 1801 to 1966 (the USS Arizona was built here); after the Navy left, the Yard reinvented itself as an industrial park, and Steiner bet that film production needed a real New York home.

The numbers tell the story: 30 soundstages, roughly 780,000 square feet of production space, on a 50-acre private enclave with round-the-clock security — the press has called it the city’s first gated studio. And since 2013, the lot has housed the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema — Brooklyn College’s film school, the only one in the country on a working studio lot.

What to Look For

Honesty first: this is a working, gated production campus — there are no public tours, and the soundstages are behind security. The hunt here is exterior and atmospheric. The studio sits deep inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and the Yard itself is worth the trip: a 300-acre waterfront of dry docks, cranes, and 19th-century industrial architecture, with the Navy Yard’s own exhibits and public areas to explore. You can photograph the studio’s signage and gate areas from the Yard’s public roads, watch production trucks come and go, and stand on a waterfront where battleships were once launched and prestige TV is now built.

Getting There

Steiner Studios, 15 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205 — inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Transit: take the F train to York St (about a 15-minute walk to the Yard), the G to Clinton–Washington, or the B57/B69 buses, which serve the Navy Yard gates. The NYC Ferry’s Astoria route docks right at the Brooklyn Navy Yard — you step off the boat into the shipyard.

Trivia

• The first film into production at Steiner was The Producers (2005) — Mel Brooks’s Broadway-musical-turned-movie-musical, opening a brand-new studio.
• The studio was founded by Douglas C. Steiner with his father David Steiner of Steiner Equities — a family real estate firm betting on film.
• The Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, on the Steiner lot since 2013, is the only film school in America on a working studio lot.
• And the record, set straight: Goodfellas (1990) predates Steiner’s 2004 opening by fourteen years, and The Irishman shot at Kaufman Astoria and the Marcy Armory. Both belong to the Queens half of this story.

The Hunt Clue

Where the battleships were born of steel,

And now the cameras turn the reel —

Fifteen Washington, behind the gate,

Where Maisel’s sets and Scorsese wait.

No tours inside, but hunt it true —

Dear hunter, the Navy Yard’s calling you.

photo by Charles Nguyen via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0