In Honor Of Sherman Hemsley, Move On Up And Check Out The East ...

If you want to explore the haunts of some of New York City’s most popular 1970s sitcom characters, then jump on the Lexington Avenue subway and head to the Upper East Side.

The Retrologist recently visited the “Diff'rent Strokes” building at East 79th Street and Park Avenue, and I’ll be heading up Park Avenue to “The Odd Couple" apartment building in a future post. But today, in honor of the late Sherman Hemsley, the actor who played George Jefferson, let’s stop at the building where George and Weezy moved on up, Park Lane Towers at 185 E. 85th St.

The 1975 opening

Today

During the opening credits, which you can watch HERE, we see the exterior of Park Lane Towers, and even a moving van pulling up, as well as the Checker Cab carrying George and Weezy, below, entering the driveway.

For years, viewers understandably thought they also were getting a close-up view of the building’s front doors, when George and Louise are dropped off by the cab and Mr. J does his signature cocky strut into the lobby, below. I say "thought” because it appears that portion of the opening was actually filmed in Santa Monica, Calif, as the New York Times explains in this excellent appreciation of Park Lane Towers.

These opening credits were presumably filmed in 1974, as the show premiered on January 18, 1975, and last appeared on CBS prime time in June 1985. All throughout that long run of 253 episodes, viewers got a look at Park Lane Towers every week — and every day when the show entered syndication starting in the early 1980s. (In New York, the show aired weeknights at 7 p.m. on WPIX/11 for much of the 1980s, as this screen grab below attests.)

Almost 40 years after those opening credits were filmed, the building’s facade remains largely unchanged. On first glance of the Park Lane, you feel that instant flash of recognition: those balconies, for one, are quite distinctive.

George and Louise Jefferson moved to the Upper East Side from Astoria, Queens, where they were neighbors of beloved bigot Archie Bunker on another groundbreaking CBS sitcom, “All in the Family.” Archie, a cab driver, was no fan of the Jeffersons, and it’s ironic that the Jeffersons were dropped off at their “deluxe apartment in the sky” in a cab that Archie himself could have driven. (But most assuredly did not!)

George made his fortune in the dry-cleaning business, and on the sitcom, there is a Jefferson Cleaners right downstairs, but a survey of the neighborhood finds nobody taking advantage of the Jefferson connection. (Opportunity knocks!)That neighborhood, by the way, is Yorkville, a longtime German redoubt that saw an explosion of high-rise development in the post-war years after the removal of the Second and Third Avenue El trains. Park Lane Towers is one of those buildings.

I recently took NBC New York on a tour of Yorkville, where we explored the last remaining traces of the neighborhood’s German heritage, and worked in a visit to “The Jeffersons” building. Click HERE to see the Yorkville edition of Hidden City.Text and photos: Rolando PujolFollow @RolandoPujol

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