As much as it was a show about Italian-American mobsters, “The Sopranos” was a show about New Jersey. From scenes of domestic life in a North Caldwell McMansion to after-hours debauchery at a Lodi strip club, the show captured a snapshot of the Garden State in the late 1990s and 2000s, captivating viewers with its local authenticity.
“The reality factor for ‘The Sopranos’ is what’s so important and so effective,” said Mark Kamine, the show’s location manager and author of the upcoming memoir “On Locations,” which details his time working on the show. “If you’re flipping houses in the suburbs, you can go to Long Island, you can go to Westchester.” But David Chase, the show’s creator, insisted that his Jersey characters were depicted in the real Jersey.
“I just didn’t think there was any other way,” Mr. Chase, 78, said in an interview. “It was part of the whole process of hiring only Italian-American actors from the tri-state area.”
It was a costly decision. When the crew first started filming “The Sopranos,” which premiered 25 years ago this week, New Jersey didn’t offer tax breaks for productions filmed there. However, much of the pilot episode and many of the show’s exterior shots were shot around local homes, businesses and streets.
“Obviously, it paid off,” said the 66-year-old Mr. Kamine.
Eventually, some of the interiors—including Tony’s house and Bada Bing’s back room—were built on sets in Queens, New York.
Here’s a look back at some of the iconic Jersey locations in the series, why they were chosen and what’s there today.
Tony Soprano’s House
Built in 1987 at the end of a cul-de-sac in leafy North Caldwell, this 5,600-square-foot McMansion was rundown compared to the house Tony grew up in — fitting for a character who had grown richer than his parents but felt he was missing out contact with their values.
Its location on top of a hill was decisive. Comparing it to the cliché of “the mobster who walks into the restaurant and wants to sit with his back against the wall”, Mr Kamin said the elevation added a protective element to Tony’s home. “No one will surprise him there.”
The first episode was filmed in the house, although the owner was reluctant to host a film crew. “After the pilot, he said, ‘We’re not doing this again. It was a disaster,” Mr Kamin said.
He convinced the owner to allow the show to film only the exteriors there, and eventually his attitude changed. “The fees would go up as the years went by and the show became successful, and he put an addition on his house probably in part because of us,” Mr. Kamin said.
Mr. Chase recalled touring several pre-production McMansions, some of which were “almost comical” in how fancy they were. One key requirement: It had to have a pool, Mr. Chase noted, “for the ducks to land on.”
Over the years, Mr. Chase, who grew up not far from Tony’s house, couldn’t help but notice the evolving landscape of New Jersey—forests being cleared for housing, natural beauty becoming commercial thoroughfares. Tony’s fascination with ducks is, in part, a sense that “something was wrong with our capitalist society, that we were destroying nature,” Mr. Chase said.
Livia Soprano’s house
About a 10-minute drive from Tony’s house, his mother, Livia, lives on a quiet street in Verona, NJ. Built in 1926, her house is smaller, older, and lacks the grandeur that they aim to project. Tony and his younger team. Home becomes a wedge between mother and son when Tony moves Libya to a retirement community.
“That palace you live in, up there on that hill,” Livia tells Tony in Season 2. “Ugh.”
The chain-link fence enclosing the property symbolized Livia’s cold, repulsive nature. Mr Kamine said the team often installed the fence when shooting there, only to remove it afterwards.
Logistically, the location was ideal. “This house was in the right place for us, production-wise,” Mr. Chase said. “It was close to other places we were filming.”
Banda Bing
The Bada Bing strip, where Tony and the crew partied in the front and did business in the back, is a real club called Satin Dolls, on Route 17 in Lodi, NJ. connections.
“I never feel completely comfortable in his office, I wonder if it has been hacked,” Mr. Kamin writes in his book. The owner initially gave the show permission to film there while the business was closed, but that proved difficult – the club was open from 11am to 2am, seven days a week. At first, they would buy his lunches on Mondays and Tuesdays, and as the show became more popular, “he would rub his hands together when he saw me coming and say ‘how much money are you going to give me this hour?’ said Mr. Kamin.
Over the years, the Satin Dolls have attracted legions of fans — even those who wouldn’t normally find themselves in an adult entertainment club. Vincent Pastore, 77, who played Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, recalled that at one point the club even offered a “Big Pussy cocktail.”
“This guy was cleaning,” he said.
Satriale’s Pork Store
Satriale’s — the pork and sandwich joint that Tony’s father took over when its owner couldn’t pay a gambling debt — wasn’t always Satriale’s. In the pilot episode, the hangout was Centanni’s, a real-life butcher shop in Elizabeth, NJ, but the store’s owners told producers that filming was too disruptive for the already thriving business. (It’s still open today.)
In need of a new location, Mr. Kamine found an empty storefront on a shopping street in Kearny, NJ that he thought might work. He tracked down the owner, who had bought the place to open a cleaning company.
“He was like, ‘I’m just starting my business, why would I do this?’ Mr. Kamin recalls. “But it ended up being very good for him because we said, ‘we’ll pay you a good rent to take over the shop and we’ll pay your rent for your office somewhere else.’
The production designer turned the storefront into a pork shop similar to what was seen in the pilot – including the pig mounted on the roof. The building was demolished in 2007 and is now a parking lot.
Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby Baccalieri, was disappointed to learn that he had been knocked down. “I would like to go to Satriale one more time, because I look at it, this time, with different eyes,” said the 66-year-old Mr. Schirripa.
Bucco’s Vesuvio
“It was a wonderful home away from home,” Mr. Pastore said from the restaurant where Tony regularly sat with his two families. “It was not a place where wise men took their girlfriends. It was a place Carmela and Tony used to go. It was a family restaurant.”
A family restaurant that blew up. The original Vesuvio, located on the ground floor of a building at the corner of South First Street and Elizabeth Avenue in Elizabeth, NJ, erupted during Season 1. To film the scene, Mr. Chase said, “we added a wing that it blew up that we destroyed,” Mr. Chase explained. “The real restaurant was not touched.”
The name was inspired by Vesuvius, a restaurant Mr. Chase went to growing up. “My parents used to go there on special occasions, and I was there as a kid and it had really good food.”
Today, the site is home to Del Porto Ristorante.
Pizza Land
Each week during the mood-setting opening songs, Tony would drive by this tiny pizza shack in North Arlington, NJ, making it one of the most recognizable faces in Sopranos lore — even though no scenes were ever shot there. At some point, its previous owner he saidthey would ship pies, wrapped and in dry ice, to fans across the country.
Its current owner, Eddie Twdroos, said he still gets plenty of visitors who want to take pictures — and maybe eat the pizza. After the shop’s previous owner died in 2010, Mr Twdroos was passing by when he saw Pizza Land had closed. He had done a few pizzerias before and recalled thinking, “It’s like a perfect location and a nice little shop with a lot of history behind it.” So he decided to save it.
“You want to keep everything as it is from the show — the same front, the same sign on top of the store, everything stayed the same,” said Mr. Twdroos, 53. “It’s a landmark.”