For Film Schenectady Commissioner Donna Pennell, seeing the hustle and bustle of production crews descend on the city was a welcome sight. “I began working with location scouts for [‘The Gilded Age’] four years ago,” Pennell said. “It was a matter of timing.
With the 17th and 18th century buildings, it was not hard to transform the neighborhood to the 1880s.” The HBO drama has been no stranger to the Capital Region during its production run, using downtown Troy and Albany’s Washington Park as previous filming locations, but this week marked the Electric City’s debut. “The script calls for what our Stockade District can offer,” Pennell said.
“It’s great to see our region as a whole being tapped into for this series.” “The Gilded Age” isn’t the first major series to use Schenectady as a backdrop in recent years. Amazon Prime Video’s “Modern Love” used the city as a production base for much of its second season in 2020, and another HBO-backed project, “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin,” was filmed at Armory Studios in 2022.
The city — and surrounding Schenectady County — provides plenty of versatile locations to utilize, which Pennell said makes the area attractive for productions. “I always smile from ear to ear when I have productions coming in and we do these scouts around the city,” she said. “Within a certain radius, they’ll go from our beautiful new Mohawk Harbor area, and then in a stone’s throw, you’re going back.