Inside Apartment 7A, America's biggest haunted house

At the beginning of the 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby, a young woman falls from the seventh floor of a posh New York apartment building at 1021 West 72nd Street. But an empty apartment in one of New York City’s most exclusive buildings, the Bramford, is too great an opportunity to pass up – even if your new neighbour chose to leave via the window rather than using the building’s lift. And unsuspecting couple Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) move in, to the delight of their other next door neighbours, secret Satanist cult leaders Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer). 

Now let’s rewind…

The woman who left the apartment so abruptly, dancer Terry Gionoffrio (Julia Garner), flies back up into her apartment, and we keep rewinding all the way until the moment everything went wrong, right back at the start of new horror film Apartment 7A. It’s 1965 and Terry’s dreams of Broadway stardom hit a roadblock when she falls and mangles her ankle partway through a performance. 

After battling recovery and getting by on painkillers, an increasingly desperate Terry follows Broadway producer Alan Marchand (Jim Sturgess), hoping to confront him and plead her case. But before she can, Terry suffers a bout of nausea from her pain medication right outside Alan’s apartment building, the Bramford. Seeing her collapsed in the street, “kindly” Bramford residents Minnie (Dianne Wiest) and Roman Castevet (Kevin McNally) pick up the poor dear and hustle her inside up to their home to help her to recover. After hearing her sob story, Minnie and Roman offer Terry the key to the apartment next door to theirs, which they own. But why? Who cares! Rent-free in New York City? Terry will take it, thank you. 

We have bigger questions to dig into, like how did the Apartment 7A production team recreate the 1960s interiors and street views of the Bramford? Fortunately we don’t have to crack an ankle to find out.

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The Bramford and the Dakota

In real life, the Bramford exterior matches the famous Dakota building at 1 West 72nd St, New York City. While Apartment 7A’s interiors were shot on a soundstage in London, the production team went to great lengths to recreate street-level details of Dakota’s exterior, entrance and lobby. 

Security at the Dakota had been tight even before one of its residents, musician John Lennon, was shot dead by a fan-turned-stalker at the entrance of the building on 8 December 1980. While apartment prices are eye-gouging, money alone is not enough to get you in. The building’s board has turned down everyone from Cher to Madonna, Billy Joel to Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. Their residents don’t want film crews traipsing in and out where even Madonna fears to tread. The Rosemary’s Baby crew weren’t allowed inside, either. 

With no chance of drone shots, the Apartment 7A team shot images of the Dakota exterior from the street, then used visual effects to merge these with footage of their London exterior location, while adding in street details essential for establishing the action in the mid-1960s. 

Director Natalie Erika James admitted that production designer Simon Bowles (the talent behind both sci-fi comedy series Avenue 5 and action horror A Quiet Place Day One) also got sneaky. After the Dakota management refused to let his team measure the sentry box where the doorman sits, he had someone distract the doorman briefly, while other crew members scampered in with a tape measure and took some quick reference pics. 

In his nomination for an Art Director’s Guild Award, Simon reveals, “We needed four key sets that matched the original film: the Castavets’ apartment, the corridor, the basement laundry room, and the exterior of the Bramford apartment, which was originally filmed at the Dakota in New York. Since this movie was shot entirely in London, we were tasked with finding an exterior location that resembled the Dakota's proportions and materials. The Foreign Office in Westminster was chosen, and additional scenery and composite photography were used to blend the two buildings seamlessly. The rest of the sets were newly scripted.”

Inside the Bramford

The Apartment 7A team had no access to any surviving props or sets from Rosemary’s Baby, either. For the interior layouts, they drew on postings of previous listings at the Dakota that were still available on estate agents’ websites, which allowed them to get to grips with the Dakota’s unique interior architecture. They combined these references with re-watching Rosemary’s Baby to pick up on period-accurate details, from staircases to door handles, to light switches and light fixtures. And the estate agent images, combined with the exterior shots, allowed Simon and his team to mock up a workable floor plan for the Bramford apartments we see on screen.

As the film was not shot in chronological order, the art department were able to make some sets do double duty, keeping the floorplan but changing details to show how the different residents personalised their space. Simon’s team came the closest to replicating the Rosemary’s Baby sets in the Castavets’ apartment, which keeps its original grungy tobacco browns and 1940s details. This set was then re-dressed to create Alan Marchand’s apartment, as the set designers added the living room archway and added all his mid-century modern 1960s bachelor pad decor. 

And that lost ballet slipper isn’t the only relic from the Castavets’ past victims. To hint at all the young women who’d been lured into apartment 7A before, Simon’s team added all the details that made it look more run-down than you’d expect for an apartment in such a posh building. They peeled wallpaper, added water stains, and went around scuffing and scratching the surfaces. 

Setting the stage

After the Casavetes drug Terry so they can set up her hookup with the devil himself, she hallucinates a dance sequence between herself and Alan Marchand (at least, at first it’s just Alan) that hints at the horror her body is experiencing while her mind is off fantasising. Broadway baby that she is, Terry imagines them dancing on a set with a giant, German Expressionist cutaway of the Bramford building, showing the interiors of the Casavetes’ apartment, like a doll house where all the angles are off kilter. 

Something is not right at the Bramford. But those high ceilings? Those wood-paneled walls and marble floors? And rent free? Well, better the devil you know. 

Five fun facts about the Dakota building

• Singer Sewing Machine Company founder Edward Clark commissioned the building of the Dakota, planning to move in with his family. His sixth floor apartment was luxurious down to the last detail – from its 17 fireplaces, to its sterling silver floors.
• The original floor plan boasted nine stories and 65 suites (now divided into 94 units) in which no two apartments were alike, so the difference in architecture between apartments in the Bramford is spot on. The original construction drawings have been lost, so the layout is known only from written descriptions.
• The building has no fire escapes. Sit with that for a moment. Instead the architects designed thick, soundproof and fireproof walls and floors, and insulated walls with mud from Central Park.
• When renovating, modern residents are required to salvage original details, including the carved marble fireplace mantels like the one seen in Alan Marchand’s apartment. These are all stored in the Dakota’s vast basement complex. 
• Previous residents include film legends Judy Garland and Lauren Bacall, conductor Leonard Berstein, the Steinway family (as in Steinway pianos), U2 musician Bono, and, until very recently, musician and artist Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s widow. 

Stream Apartment 7A now.