Ghostbusters (1984)
When Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz, and Peter Venkman were expelled from Columbia University, they needed a base for their new ghost-catching enterprise. Ray, using his parents' home as collateral on a loan, financed the purchase of the firehouse. Egon initially found it unacceptable: the structure was in poor condition, the wiring was inadequate for their equipment, and the neighborhood was rough. Ray, however, was immediately and childishly delighted with the building, particularly the fire poles, so his partners accepted it.
The building quickly became the operational center of a growing business. Dana Barrett was among their earliest clients, interviewed on the second floor while connected to the Aura Video-Analyzer. Winston Zeddemore responded to a newspaper want ad and was hired by Ray on sight after walking in through the front door. In the basement, Ray showed Winston the procedure for depositing a trapped ghost into the Containment Unit, which he called a "very simple process."
As the Ghostbusters' caseload expanded, the Firehouse began showing signs of strain. Egon warned that the Containment Unit was getting crowded and that psychokinetic energy readings in New York were spiking to alarming levels. When EPA inspector Walter Peck returned to the Firehouse with a court order, a Con Edison worker, and a police captain, he forced the shutdown of the Containment Unit's power systems against the team's warnings. The resulting explosion tore through the roof and released a column of psychokinetic energy into the sky, freeing every contained entity and sending debris raining down on the street. The building was left significantly damaged and occupied by police and fire fighters while the Ghostbusters were arrested.
Ghostbusters II
Between 1984 and 1989, the Firehouse was repaired and the team returned to operation. The second floor received a new lab and kitchen layout. A photo development lab and an R&D room were added. The basement Containment Unit was rebuilt. Business resumed briskly: upon a new call, all four Ghostbusters slid down a pole to the garage bay and departed in Ecto-1.
During this period the team used the second floor lab to run experiments on the Psychomagnotheric Slime found in the Van Horne subway tunnel, discovering it reacted to human emotional states. A notable demonstration involved an animated toaster dancing to Jackie Wilson on the billiards table. The photo darkroom was used to analyze Peter Venkman's photographs of the Vigo painting, where Ray and Egon discovered multi-planar Kirlian emanations consistent with a living presence trapped in the canvas.
On New Year's Eve, with the Ghostbusters occupied at Parkview Psychiatric Hospital, Janine helped Louis Tully into a spare flight suit at the Firehouse. Louis charged outside in full Proton Pack gear before quickly noting that the equipment was heavy.
After Ghostbusters II and Into the 1990s
Business declined sharply through the early 1990s. Hauntings became infrequent, calls dropped to roughly one a week, and the team struggled to keep up with their mortgage on the building. Egon, convinced the world was ending, began advising clients that their ghost problems were irrelevant. Ray arrived one morning to find Ecto-1, Egon's Proton Pack, all the Traps, and fuel gone along with Egon. The final blow came when the surrounding Tribeca real estate was bought up and the team lost the Firehouse. The building became a Starbucks. In the 1990s, vagrants stripped its copper wiring and plumbing.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009)
The Firehouse serves as the central hub in the Terminal Reality version of the game. Players can move between floors, slide down fire poles to replay missions, and visit Ecto-1 in the garage to continue the story. The building is filled with callbacks to the two films: spare Ecto-1 car doors, the Ghostbusters II outdoor sign, a P.K.E. Meter design that recalls the animated series version, and disc-shaped Traps resembling Extreme Ghostbusters props. A large sub-basement storage area was also modeled, appearing to be a former abandoned subway platform with a partially bricked tunnel.
In the Redfly Studios stylized version, the Firehouse is more simplified: main floor with Ecto-1, basement with a non-interactive containment grid, and an upstairs section serving as Egon's lab.
The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters (Animated)
In the animated continuity, the Firehouse carries the address 3960 Ince Boulevard, New York, and has a more detailed room-by-room layout that was fleshed out across the run of The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters series.
The basement houses the Containment Unit above the city's sewer tunnels. The first floor holds the garage, Janine's secretary desk (with its large red alarm button), a back room behind the Containment Unit, and a workroom. Peter's office is accessible from the first floor.
The second floor contains a rec room with a home entertainment system and library, a kitchen (perpetually under-stocked due to Slimer's appetite), and access to the back room that Egon later converted to include a restroom. A case holding a Peter Venkman statue in uniform was eventually added to the rec room area.
The third floor holds individual sleeping quarters, a bathroom with an extended phone into the shower, Egon's lab, and a hall with spiral staircases. Egon's lab served as the team's R&D division: it contained his computer, clustered monitoring instruments for the Containment Unit, and P.K.E. reading equipment. Slimer occupied a small space in the attic above the third floor.
The roof varied by episode but generally featured a water tower, antenna arrays, a satellite dish, at least two smokestacks, a stairwell, and at various points a landing pad and Slimer's own clubhouse.
Egon installed ectoplasm-proof shutters throughout the building at one point, allowing ghosts to be contained within the structure when necessary. The shutters were notably used once against the Copycat. By 1997, during the Extreme Ghostbusters era, an elevator lift was added running from the garage bay up to the rec room and third floor. Roland Jackson used a ground-level workshop space converted from across the alley from the Firehouse for equipment repairs and modifications.
The Firehouse was once nearly demolished: the city planned a new expressway through the neighborhood. The Ghostbusters were saved when a freak accident involving an overloaded Trap sent them back to 1959, where they helped Engine Company 93 repel a ghost invasion. On their return, they found the Mayor had declared the Firehouse a national monument to honor Company 93, removing it from the demolition list.
The Firehouse's phone numbers evolved: the original number was NO-GHOST (664-4678), later an advertisement gave 555-BUST (555-2878), and by the Extreme Ghostbusters era it was 212-555-GOST (212-555-4678).
IDW Comics
In the IDW Comics continuity, which follows on from the two films and incorporates elements from the Video Game, the Firehouse remains the team's base of operations across years of storylines. It has been the site of numerous significant events: the installation of the Interspatial Teleportation Unit in the basement (used for cross-dimensional travel), multiple incursions by entities including Chi-You's thralls, the Cerberus Manifestation, and Proteus, as well as the building suffering severe structural damage on more than one occasion requiring expensive contractor work.
Notable Firehouse moments in the IDW run include:
- Kylie Griffin using a Wall-Trap installed on the second floor to fight off supernatural threats
- The Containment Unit nearly reaching meltdown due to a cascade of interdimensional escapes, prompting Jenny Moran to sacrifice herself into it to stabilize it
- A proximity alarm being added to the building's perimeter after repeated incursions
- Egon's near-death and the parallel-dimension version of Egon working out of the building during the recovery period
- A crossover with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in which Optimus Prime parked in the alley while Starscream was trapped inside
The prime-dimension Firehouse also had a counterpart in Dimension 50-S (the Sanctum of Slime universe) that appears in crossover storylines.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
After the events in Summerville, Oklahoma in June 2021, Winston Zeddemore purchased the Firehouse and began restoration. In a brief but significant scene, Winston entered the run-down building, looked up at a fire pole in the garage bay, motioned Ecto-1 in through the opened doors, and placed a hand on its hood. In the basement, the Containment Unit's red light was blinking, its power still running despite years of dormancy.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife comics continuity (Back in Town, Dead Man's Chest)
In June 2022, the Spengler family (Callie, Phoebe, and Trevor) and Gary Grooberson drove three days from Summerville to move into the Firehouse. Winston welcomed them and disclosed there were still outstanding issues: plumbing, electricity, HVAC, mold, and mice. Repairs proceeded slowly, complicated by ongoing ghost activity. The building was invaded by a sewer-formed amalgam ghost (part cockroach, alligator, and goldfish) in the team's first bust at the new headquarters; during that fight a fire pole was torn from its foundation and landed on Ecto-1's light bar. Gary later fixed the pole, cutting himself twice in the process.
The basement Containment Unit continued to operate on backup power through several outages. Cockroach Acolytes flooded in and briefly shut down the unit during one crisis, releasing a Green Slime Ghost, before the situation was resolved. The No Ghost sign was re-hung outside at the conclusion of the Back in Town arc.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
By summer 2024 the Ghostbusters were well-established at the Firehouse but the Containment Unit was failing: frosted over, structurally weakened from a Death Chill incursion by the ancient entity Garraka, and critically overcrowded. Winston and Janine convened a meeting on the second floor with ghost researcher Lars Pinfield to discuss the crisis. A new, larger Containment Unit had already been engineered by Winston's team at the Paranormal Research Center, but before it could be brought online, Garraka's assault came to a head at the Firehouse itself.
Mayor Walter Peck condemned the building and had the Proton Packs confiscated following a destructive incident at the New York Public Library. The team briefly lost access to the Firehouse before breaking back in. During the climactic battle, Garraka froze the building's interior and punctured the Containment Unit, releasing his ghost army. Phoebe Spengler, armed with a brass-plated Proton Pack (the brass sourced from a fire pole she cut from the third floor), delivered the decisive stream that forced Garraka back into the unit. The original Containment Unit, pulled in reverse polarity by Ray, Peter Venkman, Winston, and Janine together, drew Garraka in and sealed shut. As Peter put it: "one more dance left in it."
For Frozen Empire, the Firehouse interiors were filmed on a purpose-built studio set in Reading, United Kingdom, rather than returning to Fire Station 23.
Filming Locations
The Firehouse as seen in the films is a composite of two real-world buildings. The in-universe headquarters is given the canon address 110 N. Moore Street, while the real building used for the exteriors sits a short distance away at 14 N. Moore Street. The exterior shots throughout the live-action films (Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) are of Hook & Ladder Company #8, a working FDNY firehouse at 14 N. Moore Street in Tribeca, Manhattan. It remains open as an active fire station and is a popular destination for Ghostbusters fans visiting New York City.
Interior shots for the original two films and Ghostbusters: Afterlife were filmed at Fire Station 23, a decommissioned Los Angeles fire station at 225 East 5th Street. That building has appeared in numerous other productions including Big Trouble in Little China, The Mask, Flatliners, and National Security.
For Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, interior sets were built at a studio facility in Reading, United Kingdom.
The animated firehouse in The Real Ghostbusters carries the in-universe address of 3960 Ince Boulevard, a real street in Culver City, California.
References
- Ghostbusters (1984)
- Ghostbusters II (1989)
- The Real Ghostbusters animated series (1986-1991)
- Extreme Ghostbusters animated series (1997)
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009, Terminal Reality and Redfly Studios versions)
- IDW Publishing Ghostbusters comic series (ongoing, 2011-2018)
- Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
- Ghostbusters: Back in Town #1-4 (IDW, 2022)
- Ghostbusters: Dead Man's Chest (IDW, 2023)
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
