Three of the best-loved shows on American television told their stories in Greenwich Village, and only one of them was really filmed here. Friends and Seinfeld were made on soundstages in Los Angeles. The Village lent them exterior shots, addresses and an idea of what New York life might look like. Sex and the City came with its cameras and shot on these very sidewalks, and the fans came after it. That's the story of this walk: what TV took from the Village, and what it gave back, crowds and cupcake lines included. You'll start at the Fifth Avenue building that played a married couple's home in Mad About You, see the garden where Miranda gets married, stop at the Stonewall Inn for the real history underneath it all, pass Carrie Bradshaw's front steps, Magnolia Bakery and the Friends building, and finish at the basement comedy club where Jerry Seinfeld rebuilt his act after his show ended. This is an unofficial fan walk, not made with or endorsed by the shows' studios or networks. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, about 2.5 kilometers from 51 Fifth Avenue to the Comedy Cellar on MacDougal Street.

Before you set off

Allow about 35 minutes of walking, and an hour or a little more with the stops. The route is flat city sidewalk, though the West Village streets are narrow, crooked and easy to get turned around in, so keep the map handy. The start is a few blocks south of Union Square, and the finish is about 200 meters from the West 4th Street-Washington Square subway station. Mornings are quietest. Three stops are private homes where people live right now. At those, stay on the sidewalk, keep your voice down, don't ring bells, and never sit on or block a stoop or a doorway. Magnolia Bakery often has a line. The Jefferson Market Garden keeps seasonal opening hours, but you can see it through the railings at any time. The Comedy Cellar is a working club, so check before you go if you want to catch a show at the end. Expect spoilers for all three shows.

51 Fifth Avenue (Mad About You)

You're on Fifth Avenue at the corner of East 12th Street, in front of number 51, an apartment building from the 1920s. Look up along its corner and its rows of windows. This is a private home, so enjoy it from the sidewalk.

From 1992 to 1999, this building played the home of Paul and Jamie Buchman, the married couple at the heart of Mad About You. The show used its outside as the face of their life in Manhattan. A shot of this corner told the audience where the story lived, and then the scene cut inside, to the couple's apartment.

Here's the trick that runs through this whole walk. That apartment was never here. The interiors of Mad About You were filmed at Culver Studios in California. What New York gave the show was a real corner, a real doorway and a real address, and that was enough to make a studio set feel like a home on Fifth Avenue.

Two more shows on today's walk followed the same pattern. They were made in California, and New York appeared in short establishing shots between scenes. You'll hear how far Friends and Seinfeld were from this neighborhood when the cameras rolled.

The third show did something different. Sex and the City brought its cast and crew to these streets and filmed on them, year after year. So the next stop jumps ahead in time, past the end of Mad About You, to that show's final season, filmed in 2003 and 2004, and to a wedding.

Walk one block south on Fifth Avenue to West 11th Street and turn right. Follow 11th Street west to Sixth Avenue, then turn left. The Gothic clock tower of the Jefferson Market Library rises ahead on your right, and the garden sits beside it behind iron railings. About seven minutes.

Jefferson Market Garden

Ivy-covered brick corner building, New York

You're at the Jefferson Market Garden, a small fenced green space with a lawn and a pond, right beside the Gothic tower of the Jefferson Market Library. If the gate is open, you're welcome to step in. If it's closed, the railings give you a good view.

In Sex and the City's final season, filmed in 2003 and 2004, this is where Miranda marries Steve. The show didn't build a garden on a soundstage. It came here and used a real one, a small, green, very Village place, for one of its last big moments.

And the garden has a story the show never told. For decades, this ground held the Women's House of Detention, a prison that stood here until the early 1970s. It closed in 1971 and was gone by 1974. Neighbors decided the empty lot should become a garden, and in the mid-1970s they made it happen, raising money with bake sales and drawing up the design as volunteers. Volunteers still run it today.

So when Miranda and Steve say their vows here, they're standing in a place the neighborhood built for itself. That's the first answer to the question this walk asks. Before TV ever arrived, the Village was already a community that made its own places.

A few minutes from here, that community made history of a much bigger kind. So we're about to leave television behind for one stop, and jump back more than three decades before that wedding, to a summer night in 1969.

From the garden, find Christopher Street, which begins where Greenwich Avenue meets Sixth Avenue, opposite West 9th Street, and follow it west. Walk on until you see a small fenced park on your left. The Stonewall Inn faces it, across the street. About four minutes.

The Stonewall Inn

You're on Christopher Street in front of the Stonewall Inn, at number 53. It's a working bar. Across the street is Christopher Park, and next door, at number 51, is the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center.

This is the real Village underneath the sitcoms. In the early hours of the 28th of June, 1969, police raided this bar. The raid set off an uprising, and that uprising became a turning point for LGBTQ civil rights in the United States. Accounts of that night conflict on many details, including who did what first, so we'll leave the legends alone and keep to what is certain: it happened here, and it changed the country.

In 1969 the Stonewall Inn took up both buildings, number 51 and number 53. Today they tell the story together. The bar became a New York City landmark in June 2015, and the area is now a national monument. On the 28th of June, 2024, the 55th anniversary of the raid, the visitor center opened at number 51, and it's free to enter. If it's open, it's well worth a few minutes.

Hold on to this stop as you walk on. The TV shows on this walk borrowed the Village's charm, its brownstones and its easy street life. But that life was won by real people, on streets like this one, long before any camera crew arrived.

Now back to television, and forward again, to the start of the 2000s. The next stop is a front stoop that fans made famous, and it belongs to someone who lives there.

Keep walking west on Christopher Street, across Seventh Avenue South, to Bleecker Street. Turn right on Bleecker, then right again onto Perry Street. Look for number 66, a short way along. About five minutes.