Seinfeld Made 129 West 81st Street One Of Sitcom’s Most Iconic Addresses

As the main meeting hub in classic sitcom Seinfeld, Manhattan’s 129 West 81st Street is one of TV’s most iconic addresses. Some sitcom addresses are almost as recognizable as the shows they feature on, such as 742 Evergreen Terrace on The Simpsons or the Beacon Street, Boston location of the titular pub in Cheers. Seinfeld’s 129 West 81st Street – the apartment building where Jerry and his neighbor Cosmo Kramer lived – is up there with the Simpson family’s house and the Cheers pub as one of the most iconic locations in sitcom history.

Alongside the fictional coffee shop Monk’s Café, 129 West 81st Street – in particular, Jerry’s apartment 5A – was one of the main places the characters of Seinfeld congregated throughout the show’s nine-season run. Jerry’s apartment featured in almost every episode of Seinfeld, apart from a few notable exceptions like the season 3 episode “The Parking Garage” and the Emmy-winning episode “The Subway” which – as the title suggests – are set in a shopping mall parking garage and on the New York City subway respectively.

Unlike some sitcom locations, 129 West 81st Street is a real New York City location and on the same street where Jerry Seinfeld apparently lived during his stand-up comedy days before he started making Seinfeld. However, Seinfeld fans that make a pilgrimage to the Upper West Side address will probably be slightly disappointed as the exterior of the real 129 West 81st Street looks nothing like the building exterior on the show, as a quick look via Google Street View proves.

That’s because the building façade seen in Seinfeld is about as far from New York City as you can get in the contiguous United States. It’s actually the exterior of The Shelley, an apartment building located at 757 South New Hampshire Avenue in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood. It’s probably not too surprising to learn that like a lot of New York City-set sitcoms – Friends and How I Met Your Mother included – Seinfeld was rrally filmed in a Hollywood studio.

That’s not to say that all of Seinfeld’s exterior shots are not authentic New York City locations, however. The exterior shots of Monk’s Café, for example, are of a real New York eatery called Tom’s Restaurant located on the corner of Broadway and West 112th Street and the exterior of Elaine’s apartment building is a real townhouse in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Curiously though, Seinfeld’s most iconic location – 129 West 81st Street – might be a real New York address but technically it’s in Los Angeles.