Ghostbusters: From the Library to Spook Central

Ghostbusters opens in the marble reading room of the New York Public Library, where a librarian is startled by a floating, shushing apparition, until the Ghostbusters blunder in and fail to catch it. This is the film's first supernatural sighting. Filming was tight: the production was allowed into the main reading room only in the early morning and had to finish by 10 a.m. Outside, the Fifth Avenue steps are flanked by the library's two stone lions, and the building still works as a public research library.

Visitor guidance: The main branch is open to visitors on Fifth Avenue; the reading room is a working library.

When the dean dismisses their research and fires them, Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler decide to go into business for themselves. The campus scenes were shot at Columbia University, whose Havemeyer Hall stood in for the fictional Weaver Hall on condition the university was not named. The building's Room 309, a grand multi-level lecture hall designed by Charles Follen McKim, appears in the film and is still used for teaching.

Visitor guidance: Havemeyer Hall is on the Columbia campus and is a working academic building.

With their research discredited, the trio buy a shabby firehouse in Tribeca and turn it into Ghostbusters headquarters, with an underground containment unit for trapped ghosts. The exterior is the real Hook & Ladder Company 8 at 14 North Moore Street, and it is still an active fire station, which is why the interiors had to be filmed elsewhere. A Ghostbusters badge is painted on the pavement in front of the station.

Visitor guidance: Hook & Ladder Company 8 is an active fire station at 14 North Moore Street in Tribeca.

Business is slow until the Ghostbusters are called to the Sedgewick Hotel to deal with a gluttonous ghost, and their noisy, untested proton packs wreck the ballroom before they trap it. The fictional hotel was filmed at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, an ornate landmark at 506 South Grand Avenue on Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. The ghost they catch is carried back to the firehouse and locked in the basement containment unit.

Visitor guidance: The Biltmore is a hotel at 506 South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, near Pershing Square.

Louis Tully, Dana Barrett's neighbour, pounds on the window of Tavern on the Green to escape a ravening hellhound. The restaurant is housed in a former sheepfold in Central Park, near Central Park West and West 66th Street, a short walk from Spook Central, and it is still a restaurant.

Visitor guidance: Tavern on the Green is in Central Park at West 66th Street and is open to the public as a restaurant.

At the film's climax, the Ghostbusters climb to the roof of Dana Barrett's apartment building to fight Gozer. In the movie the building is the Shandor building, or Spook Central, designed by the architect Ivo Shandor as an antenna to summon Gozer. The real building is 55 Central Park West, an apartment block on the corner of the park; the studio painted on eight extra floors and a rooftop temple to create the rooftop where the final battle is fought. The Marshmallow Man steps on the church next door.