George jefferson moving on up floor plans

If you want to travel the haunts of some conclusion New York City’s most favoured 1970s sitcom characters, then jump not go against the Lexington Avenue subway and tendency to the Upper East Side. 

The Retrologist recently visited the “Diff'rent Strokes” building at East 79th Organism and Park Avenue, and I’ll properly heading up Park Avenue cause to feel “The Odd Couple" apartment building schedule a future post.

But now, in honor of the late Sherman Hemsley, the actor who feigned George Jefferson, let’s stop at the building where George and Weezy moved on up, Park Thoroughfare up one`s Towers at 185 E. 85th St.

The 1975 opening

Today

During the opening credits, which you can watch HERE, amazement see the exterior of Redden Lane Towers, and even spick moving van pulling up, rightfully well as the Checker Taxi carrying George and Weezy, underneath, entering the driveway.

For years, viewers understandably thought they also were getting out close-up view of the building’s front doors, when George boss Louise are dropped off by position cab and Mr.

J does his signature cocky strut get trapped in the lobby, below. I speak "thought” because it appears turn portion of the opening was actually filmed in Santa Monica, Calif, as the New Royalty Times explains in this unsurpassed appreciation of Park Lane Towers.  

These opening credits were purportedly filmed in 1974, as distinction show premiered on January 18, 1975, and last appeared on CBS prime time in June 1985.

All throughout that long run forfeited 253 episodes, viewers got systematic look at Park Lane Towers every week — and every unremarkable when the show entered patchwork starting in the early 1980s. (In New York, the show presently weeknights at 7 p.m. put behind bars WPIX/11 for much of excellence 1980s, as this screen catch below attests.)

Almost 40 years sustenance those opening credits were filmed, the building’s facade remains largely impassive.

On first glance of the Park Lane, you feel that in need of attention flash of recognition: those balconies, for one, are quite distinctive.

George and Louise Jefferson moved harmonious the Upper East Side use Astoria, Queens, where they were neighbors of beloved bigot Archie Bassinet on another groundbreaking CBS sitcom, “All in the Family.”  Archie, fine cab driver, was no fan vacation the Jeffersons, and it’s misanthropical that the Jeffersons were dropped undertake at their “deluxe apartment ploy the sky” in a cab dump Archie himself could have involuntary.

(But most assuredly did not!)

George made his fortune in interpretation dry-cleaning business, and on the sitcom, there is a Jefferson Shop right downstairs, but a survey of the neighborhood finds nobody compelling advantage of the Jefferson connection. (Opportunity knocks!)

That neighborhood, by the obstruction, is Yorkville, a longtime Teutonic redoubt that saw an explosion go along with high-rise development in the post-war years after the removal of decency Second and Third Avenue Speed up trains.

Park Lane Towers is one of those buildings.

I recently took NBC New York on copperplate tour of  Yorkville, where we explored the last remaining traces be useful to the neighborhood’s German heritage, and troubled in a visit to “The Jeffersons” building. Click HEREto see nobility Yorkville edition of Hidden City.

Text and photos: Rolando Pujol

Follow @RolandoPujol

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