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There's a wonderful transition in Highlander where, after Connor's been kicked out of his village, there's a close up of his face replaced by a mural of the Mona Lisa, the camera then tracking Connor as he walks to his antique store/home.
I really love that transition. It's probably my favorite of the entire movie. And I've also been really curious as to where it was filmed -- the location never appears on any "NYC Highlander Filming Locations."
Well, last night, after returning from a work trip to Manhattan as it happens, I decided to give it a crack. There's just a short amount of footage before the camera cuts, but here's what I noticed.
Connor is on a street that intersects with WOOSTER Street. The street he's on turns to the left behind him, and there is some distinct architecture to the buildings on the right side of the road as it turns. There's also a sign for the Holland Tunnel.
Well, finding WOOSTER was pretty easy. There's only one street with that name in Manhattan, and it only runs a few blocks. Wooster is in lower Manhattan, which evolved from small communities, so lacks the grid pattern of much of the rest of the city, which (along with the Holland Tunnel sign) was a good indicator that I'm looking in the right area.
MacLeod is walking east on Broome Street, crossing Wooster. The Mona Lisa mural -- now gone -- was on a building at the intersection of Broome and Thompson. There were at least two images of the building I saw on Google Maps. Both feature a Bank of America billboard at the top, and then different illustrations below. On one view, I think I saw an advertisement for Paramount Plus' Star Trek offerings, but mostly it was a colorful painting featuring Lady Liberty wearing what appeared to be a sombrero.
If you freeze the Mona Lisa, to the left of her chin you'll see a two-pane window which is likely the top two-pane window of the existing building (the windows don't appear to carry up to the top story, or if they do, they must've been covered or painted over for the Mona Lisa mural, and are now completely obstructed by the BoA billboard). The building's roof line is not far above Mona Lisa's brow. In the background, the buildings I described earlier as "distinct architecture" by which I meant two stone buildings, the further one featuring curved lintels over the top-story windows, are also located on Broome Street, just west of 6th Avenue.
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