Helene Stapinski

But I was already wide-awake. I was on Stage 21 on a set at Broadway Stages in Brooklyn, 9 miles north of my actual house in Windsor Terrace. Yet, here it was, my barrel-fronted red brick two-family, with its bone-white stoop with dirt on the edges, the signature red door whose paint I had picked out seven years ago, and the gold number of my address in Delancey typeface etched on the glass transom. Inside were 14 carpeted steps leading up to the family bedrooms. Our decorative white heating vents were scattered here and there.

Except no heat would ever come out of those vents, the bricks were hollow when you tapped them, the stoop was 2 feet wider than usual, and the carpeted steps led only to a lighting grid and catwalk. There was no ceiling, just stage lights and cables.

I got a funny feeling in my stomach when I saw the replica of my kitchen with its aqua backsplash and deep farmhouse sink, whose twin I had just washed dishes in an hour earlier. The cabinets were slightly darker, but everything else was identical, down to the wall sockets.

The pilot for the new Fox dramedy “Almost Family” was shot in my home last April, but when the show got picked up for prime time, the producers decided to re-create the house on a soundstage. And here I was, stopping in for a visit. Actress Emily Osment’s frowning face greeted me in my fake living room while a crew of more than 100 milled about.

Trippy was an understatement. I expected Rod Serling to climb out of my fake closet and start his opening monologue for an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

This strange trip began one cold afternoon last February when I heard my mail slot creak open. I went to see if my bills had arrived and saw that it was a flyer from a scout looking for a shoot location in our neighborhood.

I flung open my red door, searching for the scout, who was already down our tree-lined block. I quickly called his cell number from the flyer and enthusiastically invited him in, telling him this was the place he was looking for. With a son in college and our daughter soon on her way, we could use the extra cash, which I had heard could climb into the mid-five figures for TV shoots.

The scout, Ethan Yaffe, said they were looking for a house for a new show, as yet untitled. It was based on a popular Australian show called “Sisters,” which is about three women trying to forge a relationship after they suddenly discover they are related. Their father — played by Timothy Hutton in the new American version — is a famous fertility doctor who, it is discovered, used his own sperm decades ago to impregnate dozens of patients.

The sight of film crews and production trucks lining the streets of Windsor Terrace is not all that unusual. Location scouts have long admired its picturesque brick row houses and wood-frame town houses. “Windsor Terrace offers a Brooklyn look that isn’t the expected look you might find in Brooklyn brownstone neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens or Park Slope,” said David Ginsberg, the location manager for the show. “It gives a more outer borough feel without looking too far away from the city.”

The last big production shoot on our street was Vince Vaughn’s 2013 “Delivery Man,” a feature film which, strangely enough, covered the same terrain as this “Sisters” spinoff, with Vaughn meeting his dozens of sperm-donor children.

No one could forget the shoot that got the film ball rolling in Windsor Terrace: “As Good As It Gets,” which was shot at the Howard Place home of my friend Lisa Sack back in 1997, starring Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt.

Sack remembers the day Nicholson’s germaphobic character spent a better part of the day climbing her stoop and ringing her doorbell again and again, take after take. “They told me not to answer,” she said, laughing. On a visit to Sack’s house that autumn during the shoot, I had come face to face with Hunt in her front hallway and said the first thing that popped into my head, “You’re Helen Hunt!” She pursed her lips and nodded her head in trademark Helen Hunt fashion, as if to say: “Why yes, yes I am.”

For years, “Boardwalk Empire” had filmed in our neighborhood — and seemingly on every other block in Brooklyn. Every time I angrily moved my car for production, I enviously wondered when a scout would darken my doorstep. If you were going to lose parking to crew trucks and vintage cars, you might as well get paid for it.

After my enthusiastic welcome, Ginsberg, the location manager, returned the next day with the show’s director, Leslye Headland. Then, a few days later, they descended with 30 studio department heads for a tech scout. They fell in love with the same things we had when we bought the house: the moldings, the heavy wooden five-panel doors, the bright light that streams into our dining room from our backyard.

We got a call in March that the pilot would be shot in our house. “It’s sort of rare,” said Ginsberg, “to build a set for a pilot, since we don’t know if it’s going to get picked up or not. We prefer to do it on site.”

Within days, the house was measured and painstakingly photographed so that Susan Ogu, the set decorator, could clear out our belongings and fill it with different furniture, drapes, lamps and wall hangings. The first week of April, we left for my mother-in-law’s place in Prospect Heights, and our furniture was moved to the basement and onto a truck. Our house was now officially “Julia’s house” — what’s called a hero house in production parlance — where the main character lives, in this case Brittany Snow, of “Pitch Perfect” fame.

“The character wouldn’t live in a brand-new building in Williamsburg,” explained Neil Patel, production designer for the pilot. “She would live in a house with character, history and soul. Her house is important because it becomes the home for these newly discovered sisters.”

A layer of clutter was added to give the place a truly lived-in feel. Several of our paintings, art photographs and our 19th-century Japanese woodblock prints were kept for the shoot. We made sure the artists who were still alive were paid for the rights to show their work. (The crew asked us to email a detailed list of all the artists and contact information.) The producers also donated some money toward the annual block party so our neighbors wouldn’t hate us too much for those lost parking spaces. The shoot itself was only two days, at $7,500 per day, although there were prep days and wrap days as well, which paid less.

In May, the show was picked up. Since “Julia’s house” would appear in several scenes each episode, it made sense to build a faux version rather than keep coming back to our house to shoot.

Within days, Jim Feng, the show’s art director, showed up with an assistant, spending a whole afternoon measuring everything again for the studio set, right down to the creaky mail slot on my front door. By this time, Patel had signed on for a new Apple TV Plus series about Emily Dickinson, so a new production designer was brought on to adapt our house to a soundstage.

“If we had to come each week and empty out your house and put you out each week, you would be a little upset,” Feng said. “It’s also more efficient for us. We can control things a little bit more. It’s more economical to be onstage. And it makes it more pleasant for your neighbors since we always take up parking. We’re like a little army that moves around. We’re annoying.”

We were ambivalent about the shoot moving off-site, since we would have loved more money but were more than happy to have our house back. Our teenage daughter was glad to see them go.

Two art directors drew up blueprints for the new “house.” Then a half dozen carpenters, a team of electricians, and about a dozen scenic artists — plasterers, painters and wallpaperers — got to work in the hangar-like studio in Greenpoint. Some of the scenic artists made the new construction look old and lived in, placing marks on the front door and smudges on windows.

The house itself was recreated to the smallest detail. The pine floor was meticulously copied, and the period molding was replicated. “Under your stairs, the molding collides in a funny way,” said Feng. “It’s unique and quirky, which lends to our character, so we kept that. It’s part of the character of your house.” It was a detail I hadn’t even noticed before, and there it was, recreated in Greenpoint.

The antique Japanese prints were replaced with cheaper knockoffs.

To the undiscerning eye, the set looks exactly like our house. But production designer John Kasarda eliminated the middle room — my office — on the first floor because it wasn’t needed, got rid of the second door in our vestibule and made that space 27% larger, widened several doorways, added a few panes to the French doors in the dining room and stretched some of the rooms by as much as 3 feet in width.

“It gives us more breathing space, which we need for the cameras,” said Kasarda. They added a wooden back deck to the yard with hot sun-like lights streaming in the back door and a leaded glass window in the middle of the hallway to give the illusion of light coming in.

“So it doesn’t feel so dark,” said Feng. “It’s a happy show.”

Neither Feng nor the producers would discuss how much it cost to build the set, but one veteran television director estimated it would typically run upward of $1 million (close to what we paid for our actual house in 2012).

Of course, I’m not the only one who has experienced this Bizarro World phenomenon.

Kaylie Jones, an author whose childhood home in Sagaponack, Long Island was duplicated in Wilmington, North Carolina, for a Merchant Ivory film 21 years ago, was invited down for the shoot of “A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries.” (The movie is based on Jones’ novel of the same name.) And she still remembers every last recreated detail.

She had just given birth to her daughter and brought the baby with her to the set of the two-story saltbox farmhouse. She knew it would be strange to see a copy of the house where she had grown up, but she didn’t realize just how strange.

“It was a mind-blowing feeling,” she said. “It was like this parallel universe.” It wasn’t just the house itself, but everything in it was copied: antique furniture, including Louis XIII chairs and a Tiffany lamp, a pulpit that her father had converted to a bar and a Calder mobile. Her father had been close to death in that house, and played by Kris Kristofferson, would fade again right in front of her eyes. “I burst into sobs,” she said. “I’m walking through where my father is dying, with a small baby in my arms. Doom is coming and there’s nothing you can do to change it.”

Elisabeth Martin and Michael Duddy, Park Slope architects whose neo-Georgian house was used to create the home of Tea Leoni’s character in “Madame Secretary” five years ago, had a much more cheerful experience when their house was copied.

Scouts and production crew came to their home on Carroll Street four times, measuring and shooting photos, but never committed to filming inside. “They kept coming back and coming back,” said Martin. “But we thought this is never going to happen.” Finally, the scout asked if they could shoot the exterior of the house, with its grand white columns and its arched Palladian doors opening onto the second-floor Juliet balcony.

He also told them that they had already built much of the house on a set at Silvercup Studios in Queens, so there was no need to do interiors in their actual house. Martin and Duddy, who had had Martha Stewart and a couple of commercials shoot in their home over the years, knew the disruption involved, so they were fine with that.

Martin and Duddy don’t have a television, so when the show finally aired, they went across the street to watch it with their neighbors. And sure enough, there were their glass-fronted kitchen cabinets and the suite bathroom, the baby grand piano near the elegant white-spindled staircase.

“We all just squealed when we saw it,” said Martin. “And every time we saw it, every Sunday night, we squealed. The four of us go into a squeal chorus. It never ceases to amaze us.”

Martin and Duddy were friendly with their neighbors with the television, but because of the viewings and the dinner parties that have accompanied them, they’ve become best friends. They’ve also donated money to the block party, to spread the love. “It’s this little joyful moment in our lives,” she said. “And it’s had this wonderful ripple effect.”

The production team returned regularly each season to shoot new exterior shots, although “Madame Secretary” is now living in the White House so the set was taken down this summer. And sadly, it’s the last season. “We didn’t even have a television, and now we’re totally addicted,” said Martin.

When the pilot for “Almost Family” finally aired last month, my son came down from college in upstate New York to watch the show with us as a family. Not “Almost Family,” but our actual family. The four of us huddled on the couch, seated in the very living room where the action was unfolding on the television screen in front of us. It was all very meta.

“This is really weird,” said my 16-year-old daughter.

Then it got weirder. Emily Osment, a second sister, appeared in a towel on-screen right where we were sitting, taking up permanent residence in “Julia’s house” and “sleeping” in my son’s upstairs bedroom.

When the doorbell in the show rang and the third sister — Edie, played by Megalyn Echikunwoke — showed up, my son quipped, “Now everyone is coming over to our house.”

Indeed. The 100-strong cast and crew has been back once so far to shoot exteriors and a few inside scenes of our house, although it remains to be seen whether those visits will continue and if the show will be picked up for a second season.

The reviews have not been great, with just a 27% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But every Wednesday night, my mother tunes in to see my house and we DVR it so we can fly through the commercials. There have been especially weird moments, like when Edie falls into bed with a fellow lawyer in our library, 10 feet from where we are sitting on the couch.

And we get a certain pang every time we see our phony red door swing open and a new character walk through it on the television screen, the house itself almost like a family member who’s helping put our children through college.

This article originally appeared in

What It's Like to Watch TV Replicate Your Home

NEW YORK — It was like a dream. One of those dreams where you think you’re at home, except it’s not really home but a weird, alternate version of home.

Overhead were polished Guastavino tiles, original Edison light fixtures and space for eight more bodies, marble lids propped up and ready. “It’s sort of like a hostel situation,” Duncan said, glancing up at the empty bunks. The general, Thomas Eckert, left varying degrees of inheritance to his children, who wound up bickering and perhaps decided not to spend eternity together, Duncan explained.

Eckert’s vault doesn’t get family visitors anymore, but provides the grand finale of a 90-minute candlelight catacombs tour, opening up one of New York’s most secret spaces to the public. St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral — often referred to as the other St. Patrick’s Cathedral — recently developed this and other programming to help pay for the church’s upkeep and its historic outdoor cemetery, the only active Roman Catholic cemetery in Manhattan.

“We have a long way to go in making the grounds the way we want them,” Monsignor Donald Sakano, who took charge of the Nolita Parish a decade ago, said. “The gravestones are deteriorating as we speak, the soft stone losing inscriptions.”

The outdoor cemetery, filled with 200-year-old gravestones, some damaged and piled on the perimeter, is also part of the catacombs tour that is helping to enlighten tourists and New Yorkers about the sacred ground behind the block-long brick wall on Prince Street.

Tour guides carry flashlights and large sets of keys, unlocking door after door and gate after gate to reveal the cathedral’s history, using pocket projectors to display old photos and other images on the darkened walls of the catacombs. Thomas Wilkinson, who dreamed up the tour in partnership with the church and is the name behind Tommy’s New York walking tours, said the candlelight was his idea. It gives the sensation, he said, “of what it would have been like to come down here when the catacombs first opened in 1815 when there was no electricity and you would have entered by candlelight or torch.”

On the tour, visitors learn that the cathedral was the largest in the United States when it was completed in 1815, and the seat of the first bishop of the Diocese of New York. Its wall was built between 1832 and 1833 to protect against marauding bands of Protestants, who were burning down Roman Catholic churches in New York City. Ironically, much of the wooden cathedral interior burned to the ground in 1866 in a fire sparked by an ember from a stove. (LED candles are now used on the subterranean tours.)

There are no bones scattered in these catacombs, as in the more ancient ones in Paris and Rome. Visitors, holding their small LED candles, are led down the sparsely lit 120-foot-long crypt corridor with marked, sealed vaults on either side.

Five priests, two bishops and 33 families were buried here. Many of the figures were famous at the time but are now mostly forgotten: People like Archbishop John J. Hughes, known as Dagger John because of his aggressive nature and the cross he placed next to his signature, which resembled a dagger. (Hughes was disinterred after 18 years and moved to the new St. Patrick’s Cathedral uptown, which opened in 1879.)

Among the others: Countess Annie Leary, a friend of the Astors, a Catholic benefactor who helped both the Irish and Italian communities; “Honest John” Kelly, Boss William Tweed’s successor at Tammany Hall; Charles O’Connor, the lawyer who took down Tweed; and the Delmonico family, restaurateurs credited with introducing baked Alaska, eggs Benedict and lobster Newburg.

Visitors are led through the upstairs cathedral as well, which Francis Ford Coppola used in the baptism scene in “The Godfather.”

“That baby was Sofia Coppola,” Duncan told the group, standing on the altar. “It was bring your daughter to work day or maybe he couldn’t find a sitter.” The small crowd laughed.

They were then taken up through the cathedral’s Erben pipe organ, the size of a New York City townhouse. While the organ was being tuned, Duncan led the crowd past its nearly 2,500 pipes, its bellows and intricate workings.

“After 150 years it doesn’t sound as clear as it used to,” he explained. “A lot of the pipes have developed soot. It wheezes and coughs. Some of the leather is torn and the wood cracked.”

The church has formed a nonprofit group to raise $2 million to restore the organ, and had Martin Scorsese, the most famous altar boy from St. Patrick’s, headline a fundraiser last fall during which he talked about growing up in the neighborhood.

“Donate 1 million dollars and they will name the organ after you,” Duncan told the visitors. “If you’re interested, I can put you in touch.” They laughed again.

The tours have provided much-needed income for the parish, Frank Alfieri, director of development and the cemetery, said. St. Patrick’s operates six buildings — including a rectory, a youth center, a former convent, the Shrine Church of the Most Precious Blood and the former Russian Catholic St. Michael’s — and is constantly besieged with roof repairs, plumbing issues and cemetery upkeep.

“The church struggles to pay the bills here,” Alfieri said. But the money has not been the only benefit of the tour, which has been around 18 months. “It’s become a source of understanding the church and what it’s meant to this neighborhood for the past two centuries,” he said. “We have opened up these exclusive spaces that have never been open to the public.”

Heather Walker, who was with a group of women from Fort Worth, Texas, said they had picked the tour because it was quirky and not your run-of-the-mill walking tour. “I loved the history of it and how he brought it all together,” she said. “It wasn’t just a hole in the ground.”

The only tour in the city that bears a resemblance to this one is the annual Halloween crypt crawl at St. John the Divine, a space that’s used mostly for storage but includes the tombs of two bishops and a church dean.

Wilkinson, who oversees three to four tours a day, seven days a week at St. Patrick’s, became so enamored of the church that he’s now a parishioner. The tours are such a success that he is developing other programming, including an audience-participation re-creation of one of the first over-the-top weddings in America, The Diamond Wedding, which was held at the cathedral in 1859. A copy of the elaborate Victorian wedding gown will be designed and sewn.

“Think ‘Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding’ but more high-end,” Alfieri said. Wilkinson is also developing a tour called Pull Out All the Stops, focusing on the musical history of the church, including an organ recital.

In addition to the tours, the cathedral is bringing the catacombs into the 21st century (and raising extra income) by selling cremation niches for those looking for a final resting place. To date, 352 niches have been filled, but hundreds more are being built and sold on a first-come, first-served basis. Niches in the underground catacombs sell for $10,000 to $15,000.

A full family crypt, the last of its kind in the cathedral, is available for $7 million — the cost of a two-bedroom apartment on Elizabeth Street by current real estate standards. But the crypt can be broken up, with individual coffin burial starting at $850,000. (By comparison, Eckert’s entire crypt cost $83,000 back in 1904. Today that would be the equivalent of more than $2 million.)

“People from the neighborhood look over the wall longingly,” Sakano said. “It’s almost like you want to stay in the neighborhood with your eternal affordable housing.”

Catacombs of New York: A Historic Underground Tour

Tours are offered daily at the Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in NoLIta; tommysnewyork.com/catacombs.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/arts/st-patricks-old-cathedral-catacombs-tour.html" id="bd0f3381-bd2c-310c-a001-62d0a819cbb4">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — On a warm spring day, nine people were gathered inside a cold crypt beneath the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mulberry Street. “This is the size of a standard New York apartment,” the tour guide, Brandon Duncan, said to the Texas and Austrian tourists standing in the spacious room — the final resting place of a long-forgotten Civil War general.

The Secrets of a Sacred Underground

<h1>One couple came on their anniversary, a gift from husband to wife, and riding up in the elevator she wondered if he was taking her to a sex party. </h1>

She was relieved to find that where the bed would normally be was a sushi bar — and behind it the exuberant, wisecracking chef David Bouhadana.

Sushi by Bou Suite 1001 — Bouhadana’s latest project and part of his growing line of dining experiences — opened in December. It is a speak-easy like no other. New Yorkers love a hideaway or secret place, and this one the NoMad neighborhood has never quite been done before.

Bouhadana, with the help of investors Michael Sinensky and Erika London, has partnered with the 32nd Street hotel to install a four-person sushi counter in one of its rooms. He is there every night, making his creations, from 5 p.m. to midnight, bouncing to disco music and encouraging diners to drink deeply from the Sake machine. Each 17-course meal lasts 60 minutes and costs $125 (not including sake), reasonably cheap by New York omakase standards.

His constant physical motion, jokes and lessons on fresh fish and its preparation come in rapid-fire delivery, some words in Japanese, but most in English. There’s the lesson on Tokyo Bay and what lives there, the talk on how to prepare salmon roe properly and the riff on giant clams, smacking one with his knife and making it dance ever so slightly for his small audience.

“In New York, the best sushi chefs generally don’t speak much or don’t speak English,” said one visitor. “You can’t talk to them. So this is a different experience. He doesn’t stop talking.”

Because of his big mouth, Bouhadana has met with some controversy the past few years. He openly boasted to the Department of Health that he doesn’t wear gloves. Even though most sushi chefs don’t, they generally do not advertise it. His restaurant at the time, Dojo, was shuttered and he was fired, even though the Times review gave it two stars.

His next venture was Sushi on Jones, where he served a 30-minute, 12-piece omakase menu in an al fresco box which drew long lines and serious buzz. Then two years ago, Eater — previously a big fan of his — criticized him for talking in a fake Japanese accent while serving diners at the Gansevoort Market. The piece went viral. Followups called him a racist. Death threats were made. His Jewish background was attacked. His mother got very upset.

Bouhadana said he sometimes uses Japanese inflection when placing the sushi on the plate, just as he was taught by his Japanese teachers. “If I did offend somebody, I absolutely do owe them an apology,” he said, speaking publicly about it for the first time since it happened. “Maybe somebody walked by and was offended. But I want that person to sit down and eat with me.”

That person will be lucky to get a seat at the sushi bar. Suite 1001 is booked through early February. “The controversy is the reason I know the name,” said a recent diner who remained anonymous for fear of being pulled into the conflict. “But his reputation is good sushi. That’s really why I’m here."

Sushi by Bou has three locations and is opening two more in February, one in the lobby of Hotel 3232 and one in Miami at the Versace mansion. In March, another will open on Union Square.

As a Jewish sushi chef, he is the odd man out, but at the same time, stands out from the crowd. He constantly refers to his “sensei,” Andy Matsuda, the chef and teacher who sent Bouhadana to live with the Matsuda family in Japan for six weeks. He stayed for three years. And the results can be seen in his creations.

Silky sea scallops with charcoal salt, hamachi belly lightly charred with a blow torch and his egg custard, which one woman compared to flan, both beautiful and delicious, are a few of the courses he serves five times a night, seven nights a week.

All the while, the chatter and jokes keep coming. He congratulates a woman for buying her first apartment in Alphabet City — the neighborhood where he lives. They discuss the L train. He talks about his background growing up with a Moroccan dad and a French mom in Florida — “the sushi capital of America,” he jokes. “Every hour, same joke. Different customers.” They all laugh.

Diners who arrive early or who want to hang out after dinner and hear Bouhadana riff can sit in a small lounge next to the sushi bar on two chairs and a leather couch. Outside is a 20-seat patio, since this was originally conceived as a party room when the hotel opened five years ago. But the weather has been too cold recently for the patio.

Bouhadana swiftly moves back and forth between the bar and a small hotel closet that contains tableware instead of terry cloth robes. He twists to keep his body loose, his hands in constant motion, clapping every now and then to remove excess water as he prepares each piece and places it on a bright red square plate. Three times a week he gets a massage in nearby Koreatown to relieve the physical tension and strain from standing and bouncing behind the bar for more than eight hours a night.

Behind him is a framed painting of a large black and white fish that Japanese street artist Pesu created. The fish is beautiful, swimming in gold, but is ripped up, with bite marks in its flesh. “It’s me,” said Bouhadana, glancing at the image, which serves as his logo. “One of a kind in a school of fish I don’t belong in.”

A Hotel Room With a Sushi Bar Instead of a Bed

NEW YORK — They come two by two, sometimes solo, or in fours, key card in hand, to the small room on the 10th floor of Hotel 3232. Some know what to expect, but others are in for a surprise.

A hotel room with a sushi bar instead of a bed

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Helene Stapinski

Articles written by the author

What It's Like to Watch TV Replicate Your Home

The Secrets of a Sacred Underground

A hotel room with a sushi bar instead of a bed