General Ghostbusters Discussion • Re: "The Marble Palace": a definitive history of Fire Station №23

I've recently been pointed to some great information by Stuart, who curates the Ghostbusters Reference Library, which was located on the account of Luke Whitelock, a layout artist who used SketchUp to plot out the sets for the replica of the Firehouse, covering both the replica of the exterior Hook & Ladder №8, the replica interior ground/first floor of Fire Station №23, and the sets for the upper storeys, which drew inspiration from the Los Angeles fire station.

From this point on, I'll let Luke's posts detail the process:

I can’t tell you the thrill of getting to Art Direct something as iconic as the Ghostbusters Firehouse. I started on the film sometime around December 10th 2022. My first task was to take the LiDAR scan of Firehouse no 23 in Los Angeles and get it to fit inside the footprint of Hook and Ladder 8 in New York. Some people probably don’t realise that in the original movies all interior scenes were shot at FH 23 in LA whilst all exteriors were shot in NY. We were going to attempt a composite set for the ground floor where we see both interior and exterior for the first time together on one set. The only problem is working out how to fit a 160’ long set into a 96’ long footprint and get it to fit on a stage where we also required at least 60’ of real estate to the front of the Firehouse in order for Ecto 1 to do its dramatic turn down Varick Street. So the first few days were spent working this out. I knew we needed to get drawings out after the Christmas break and that meant less than 3 weeks to get the lions share of the 3D model complete this included the Ground Floor interior and the second and third floor composite of all the living spaces. A ton of work and these first few pictures are of me working at home late into the evening to try and get ahead. Not something I would suggest and not something I would normally do (big shout out to my wife for her understanding) but I’m such a huge Ghostbusters fan myself I really felt the pressure to get this design right. Happy to answer questions below and please like and share and follow for more in my Art Department Diary of Frozen Empire.

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Yes that’s right I modelled the entire ground floor interior and exterior as well as the first and second floor composite sets in SketchUp and I did all of the construction drawings in LayOut. SketchUp is an incredibly powerful program when used correctly it beats all the competitors hands down, don’t let anyone tell you that this program is not the real deal. Not only did I do all my construction drawings from this model, I was able to share it with other set designers in the team who were working on other parts of the building in programs like Vectorworks and Rhino with no problem. We did CNC cultist from the model, Steelwork fabrication drawings, 3D printed elements that were also taken from a LiDAR scan all inside Sketchup not to mention some great renders that were done with VRay for SketchUp. If you want to learn my workflow check out my in depth SketchUp and Layout Courses available now on my website just click the banner on the reel and become a SketchUp and LayOut Master today. Beginners courses are also available. Let me know your thoughts on Sketchup below, do you love it or hate it? Let’s have a conversation.

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So prior to me starting on the picture, there was a LiDAR scan commissioned of both the LA Firehouse interior and the New York Firehouse exterior. This is the LiDAR scan of the ground floor of the LA Firehouse. My job at this stage was to work out how we would fit the interior into the ground floor footprint of the New York Firehouse. Luckily they were both the same width on the interior. But the length proved a problem. LA firehouse is 157’ long with the New York interior being just about 72’. I had to work out how to take some real estate out without compromising the original feel and scale. Firstly we were able to chip around 27’ out. We did this as the original location Venkmans office had 27’ of dead space behind it going to a secondary large exit door. So we just bought that wall right up behind Venkmans office wall. Secondly the front of the firehouse in LA had a large vestibule at the front which enabled us to cut a a further 10’ from the overall. I then took 6’ from where the jog happens. I needed the overall length to be around 111’ to fit the stage so the rest of the space was saved by taking around 6” out of each bay across the length. So what you see on screen is very very close to the original.

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Research is so important especially with a film like Ghostbusters. I like to think I know the Firehouse like the back of my hand but when I started researching I found so much info on Firehouse 23 (the interior location for the original ghostbusters Firehouse) it got really exciting when I found a website called GBFans.com. A video was uploaded to this site back in 2010 when a branch of Ghostbusters fans (the Denver Ghostbusters I believe) invaded the location and took loads of video footage of the ground floor and upper floors that were used in the original movie. Like a giant jigsaw I was able to take screen grabs of their footage and piece together info like what the newel posts on the staircase look like close up, what the mouldings on the stairs looked like. The patina on the wood of the lockers, the size and position of the drain covers in the floor, by studying the heights of the people I could scale the height of the tile dado, what’s inside the roller shutter. And best of all the upstairs rooms for which we used the panelling and introduced it into Gary and Callie’s bedroom verbatim. This is a small sample of the literal thousands of screen grabs I used to piece this all together. The colour of the vinyl floor around the pole holes, the lustre of the brass, how chipped the paint is around the safety rails. The hairline cracks in the glaze on the tiles. The brick floor - yes it’s a brick floor. The plaster details in the ceiling, the arch above the main doors - which was covered over in the original film with a plug however we see it revealed in the post credit sequence of “Afterlife” so it’s making decisions like should we keep the arch or not that define what we do as set designers, you are telling a story with the scenery. Filling in the gaps of the last 40 years. Are the lockers still there? Would they have replaced the roller shutter (more on this in another post) all fun talking points and one of the most fun and interesting research jobs I’ve ever had the pleasure of undertaking.

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-The video tour Luke makes reference to

Some new, never-seen-before photos of Fire Station №23 during its renovation:

So already in the first week we hit the ground running. I need to have a full set of Plans and elevations ready to go by January 4th. What I tend to do is block out the design in SketchUp, I’ll set up all my scenes (plans, sections and camera views) keeping everything pretty loose at this stage. I’ll then take this basic model straight into Layout and set up my viewports. This is a great way to work because once it’s set up in Layout I can just keep chipping away at the design in Sketchup and the drawing will automatically update as I go because it’s dynamically linked to the model. That also means that at any given time I can quickly produce a WIP drawing for either discussion purposes or basic costing. I think these first few passes were working out how I can nick some real estate back out of the length without compromising the design. You’ll see at this stage we had the original half moon window behind Venkmans office. You only see this for a split second I. The original movie when the OGs are viewing the firehouse for the first time. We decided to omit the window from a cost point of view. As a lot of the practical lighting will be rigged high in the ceiling it was also unlikely we’d ever see high and wide enough to see the window. So you see as we’re designing we are constantly adapting the design to suit factors like access, lighting, SFX rigs stage space, stage height and budget. This is also a fun part of the design process because I get to model up those iconic lockers, or Venkmans office and I was very lucky to see original drawings of the iron columns that survived since 84. You’ll notice the ones in this model are just proxy ones. As a Ghostbusters nerd this was like all my Christmases coming at once! Got any questions about the design process? Ask away.

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I think it's safe to say that Luke's work on the set spoke for itself, and it definitely deserved highlighting in it's own right.

The fact it's utilising so much information from Fire Station №23 is no-doubt one of the main reasons why the replica felt convincing, as was the effort the set builders went to replicate it.

Here is a selection of photos, both from Luke's Instagram page, and from the tiling company that was working on the set (and who posted these photos way too prematurely):




















For clarification: the floor with the kitchen and the floor with Trevor and Phoebe's bedrooms were physically connected, so you could either use the stairs or the firepoles to travel from one to the other, however they weren't connected to the street level set.

Statistics: Posted by Kingpin — March 27th, 2024, 7:00 pm

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