ADAM STOCKHAUSEN, WEST SIDE STORY

For Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, production designer Adam Stockhausen was tasked with turning modern New York City streets into authentic representations of how they’d have looked in 1957, taking inspiration from his research of the neighborhoods during that time period.

“Let’s look at the highs and the lows of everybody in these communities,” Stockhausen explains of his research approach. “So, we’re looking at crime photographs, but we’re also looking at Better Business Bureau documentation of businesses and the success stories.” He continues: “The story wanted to be focused really centrally on the actual destruction of the neighborhood of San Juan Hill, to do the redevelopment and the construction of Lincoln Center and Lincoln Towers … focusing on the reality of that gentrification event, [which] is what triggered all of this stuff to unfold and to begin.”

Since the film called for scenes of extreme demolition not possible to replicate in the middle of Manhattan, Stockhausen and his team were able to spend months creating their exact vision outside the city in Paterson, New Jersey. “They had a site that they could allow us to take, and we closed it for a long, long time to do this really huge build there.” Still, much of the film was shot on location in New York City, which necessitated a great deal of community outreach. “We were all over the place. I think, in fact, we were in all five boroughs,” he says, adding, “It’s about trying to layer the work, so that you can do it in a way that isn’t impacting [local businesses] and making them close their businesses any more than is absolutely necessary.”

Above: The construction of New York City’s Lincoln Center in what was known as San Juan Hill, where West Side Story takes place in 1957.

Below: David Alvarez and Ariana DeBose with the West Side Story ensemble.

Adam Stockhausen’s designs depict the 1950s-era gentrification of Manhattan.