New York Sees TV, Film Production Increase Beyond the Big Apple as Facilities Expand

variety.com:

Todd Longwell Horse-drawn carriages were back on the streets of Troy, N.Y., in August, alongside equipment trucks, honey wagons and camera cranes.

HBO’s “The Gilded Age” had returned to shoot scenes for the second season of the series, which explores the lives of monied families and the people who serve them in 1880s New York.

The previous year, the production had covered the streets of Troy’s Monument Square with truckloads of dirt to turn it into a period-correct downtown Manhattan shopping district, and also utilized other well-preserved 19th century structures in the town (population: 51,400), 152 miles north of Manhattan, including the Rensselaer County Court House, the Savings Bank Music Hall and the Troy Public Library, along with its Washington Park neighborhood and the Oakwood Cemetery.  “The buildings [in Monument Park] were built between the 1820s and 1880s, and many of them are perfectly restored,” says the show’s location manager Lauri Pitkus. “You can walk down whole blocks and feel like you’re in the West Village or near Gramercy Park or possibly on the Upper East Side [in the late 19th century].” While Manhattan still has a substantial amount of 19th century architecture, Pitkus says, “there isn’t a block of New York City where we could really shoot.

The city is covered in scaffolding.” Troy is just one of the locales in the state outside of New York City’s five boroughs experiencing a dramatic increase in film and TV production.