More DC Location Sites From 'The West Wing'

After visiting family in Washington, DC, this past spring, in October I made a return trip to the nation's capitol. While unfortunately the primary reason for my visit didn't turn out the way we had hoped (the St. Louis Cardinals did not do their part to make the National League Championship Series competitive, at all - but hats off to the Washington Nationals, this year's World Series champs!), I tremendously enjoyed my stay in DC. And, just as I did in the spring, I took advantage of some of my time there to track down some shooting locations used in the first three seasons of The West Wing.

It may not be particularly interesting to a whole lot of people, but just like I'm fascinated by maps, and old highways that have been bypassed, and the remnants of earlier forms of transportation, I'm also intrigued by going to places that have been frozen forever in time by being used in filming a movie or TV series. It's kind of cool to pick out familiar Chicago spots in films like The Untouchables, or The Dark Knight, or Transformers: Dark Of The Moon; or even places right by where I live in movies like Field Of Dreams or little forgotten films like The Final Season. Obviously, with The West Wing being set in Washington, DC, there are plenty of chances to see locations that visitors can come across while taking in the sights.

The vast majority of the series was filmed on soundstages in California, with some location scenes also filmed closed to the studio. About four times a year, however, the production would travel to DC to film on location in Washington, shooting scenes from several different upcoming episodes, to add realism and color to the show. You'll notice many of the scenes featuring Washington locations are set at night; that's often a necessity for the crews to use these locations without as much interference from tourists and traffic. Oftentimes these scenes were filmed overnight - so it's noteworthy to see the ones that actually occur during the day (and they're typically, although not always, in locations that are easier to clear of tourists and onlookers). Here are a few spots I was able to get to on my most recent visit - sometimes I tried to get a similar angle as was used on TV, but considering my memory skills aren't what they used to be, I wasn't always as successful with that as I might like.


"Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc"
Season 1, Episode 2

The second episode of the series had several Washington location scenes, and oddly, most of them involved Mandy (Moira Kelly). Right at the start of the episode, she's tracking down Senator Lloyd Russell, to chew him out for giving up on their plan to set up a Presidential run. Once she sees him, she rams her BMW up on a curb (apparently damaging the transmission, according to some later dialogue and scenes):

This spot is where 8th Street NW deadends at D Street, just north of the US Navy Memorial Plaza. In the opening shot, where we see Mandy driving down 8th Street looking for Russell, the large columned building in the background is the National Portrait Gallery (I'd highly recommend a visit the next time you go to DC):

Here's that very spot where Mandy jumped the curb with her Beemer:

Mandy then confronts Sen. Russell on the pedestrian walkway between D Street and the Navy Memorial. As the camera shoots the scene looking south, you see the flagpoles and signal flags of the memorial behind them, as well as the National Archives across Pennsylvania Avenue:

And here's how I found that spot 20 years later:

A bit later in the episode, Mandy goes back to her office and commiserates with her assistant Daisy (Merrin Dungey) about losing their only consulting client (Russell, naturally). As the camera sets the scene outside her office, we see Mandy's BMW being towed away (that transmission, obviously, although she must have driven it that far):

That scene was filmed in Georgetown on Thomas Jefferson Street NW, right along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Twenty years later that building is an artsy neighborhood bakery and coffeeshop (now missing the decorative metal railings on the second floor windows):

This second episode of the series also develops the relationship between Sam and Laurie (Lisa Edelstein). If you recall in the very first scene of the entire series, Sam meets a woman in a bar and they end up spending the night together. It turns out the woman is actually a high-priced escort, and the complicated relationship between the two plays out through the course of Season 1. In this episode, Sam confronts Laurie in a restaurant (called "The Farnsworth" in the show) where she's working, causing her to storm outside:

This scene was filmed on Pennsylvania Avenue NW and 6th Street, with the restaurant in the background actually The Capital Grille (that lion wasn't there 20 years ago):

The actors cross Pennsylvania Avenue and continue the scene on the southwest corner of the intersection (before crossing 6th Street and continuing by the Mellon fountain, which I visited last spring):

The Crackpots And These Women
Season 1, Episode 5

This episode opens with a basketball game outside the White House. Josh, Toby, Sam, and Charlie are playing a lively game of, I think, three-on-three along with President Bartlet (and several Secret Service members and a few police officers standing guard). What's particularly interesting about this scene is the pre-9/11-ness of it all; these actors and a television crew have set up to shoot a scene right on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Lafayette Park:

Oh, how things have changed in 20 years. During my visit, the north side of the White House was pretty much obscured by a reconstruction project on the fence around the grounds; but even so, Pennsylvania Avenue is now barred to vehicle traffic, and while this fence project goes on, not even pedestrians can be on the street immediately north of the White House:

Mr. Willis Of Ohio
Season 1, Episode 6

This episode features the climatic scene set in a bar in Georgetown. President Bartlet asked Josh to take the newly hired Charlie out so he can relax and have a good time. Josh invites Sam and CJ along, and Zoey and Mallory just decide to tag along as well. Some frat boys start harrassing Zoey, a scene is caused, and Josh uses Zoey's panic button to bring in the Secret Service.

Anyway, the establishing shot of the bar was an actual bar on M Street NW in Georgetown, at the time called Georgetowne Station (complete with the faux-old-timey extraneous 'e'):

I'm pretty much certain the interior bar scenes were not filmed on location; on my visit this fall I actually went to Georgetown (which is really cool, by the way) and not only did I get a shot of the exterior (now an Irish pub called Ri Ra Georgetown), I ate lunch there. A nice burger and a pint of Guinness Red was tasty, although the service (while friendly) was terribly slow:

The Short List
Season 1, Episode 9

While the main plot of this episode was the President's eventual nomination of Judge Roberto Mendoza (Edward James Olmos) to the Supreme Court, this is also the one where Danny (Timothy Busfield) gives CJ a goldfish. Gail the goldfish appeared on CJ's desk throughout the rest of the series. Of course it turns out when Josh told Danny CJ liked goldfish, he meant the crackers and not the actual fish. That particular scene between the two guys was filmed outside the Old Executive Office Building, on 17th Street NW just west of the White House:

The building was originally called the State, War and Navy Building upon its completion in 1888. Those cabinet offices eventually moved out by the late 1930s, and the building was nearly demolished in 1957. In time it regained use as government offices, including those of the Vice President (if you recall when Vice President Hoynes invites Leo to join him at his AA meeting in Five Votes Down, those meetings take place in the basement of the OEOB). The building was renamed the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in November of 1999, just before this episode aired. Anyway, here's what that site looks like today:

What Kind Of Day Has It Been
Season 1, Episode 22

The final episode of Season 1 is a dandy, tense cliffhanger, featuring a guns-blazing assassination attempt near the site of the Newseum, which at the time was located across the Potomac from DC in Rosslyn, Virginia. (The Newseum since moved to a prime location on Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol Building and the White House, but serious financial losses forced them to sell the building to Johns Hopkins University for their graduate programs. The Newseum is closing at the end of 2019, and their future whereabouts are in limbo.)

The general outline of the shooting location remains about the same today, even without the Newseum present. The presidential party walks down a ramp and some steps as they exit the Newseum and head to where the motorcade is parked:

The stairs and the walkway are still there, pretty much the same:

And while we get some nice overhead shots of the parking area with the motorcade, along North Kent Street in Rosslyn:

I naturally wasn't able to get that same overhead angle, being on the ground and all:

One interesting change: A tree on the median has grown tall enough so that I believe it would block a lot of the line-of-sight for a gunman in the building that was used as the shooters' perch in the episode. You can't really see it here, but that tree is definitely in the way in 2019.

Here's the shot of the assassins in the building across the street:

That building is still there:

There's a quick shot of a portion of the Berlin Wall and a wall watchtower, which was on display as part of the Newseum:

Of course that wall section and tower moved to the new Newseum site in DC itself when they moved into their new building:

And here's the area where the wall and tower were displayed:

In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen, Part I
Season 2, Episode 1

This is the episode that not only reveals that both President Bartlet and Josh were wounded in the assassination attempt, but also begins the backstory of how the characters were drawn together in the campaign that founded this administration. You may remember that when Aaron Sorkin wrote What Kind Of Day Has It Been to wrap up Season 1, he didn't know for sure who had been shot or what the events would be to open Season 2 ... so to get the elements of In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen together, the cast and crew had to go back to Rosslyn to re-shoot the aftermath of the shooting.

The place where the wounded Josh was discovered at the beginning of Season 2 doesn't really match with where we saw him at the end of Season 1 - considering there's at least three shots in the Season 1 finale that show him at the bottom of the stairs, even past the fence right by the parking area:

(Of course, other things have changed, too, like the colors of the flowers along the stairway and even which side Sam parts his hair on.) But as we return to Rosslyn to film what happened after the events of What Kind Of Day Has It Been, we see Josh seriously wounded partway up the staircase behind a wall:

And here's that spot in 2019:

Noël
Season 2, Episode 10

At the end of this holiday episode, after Josh has spent the day reliving his shooting and working out his PTSD with Dr. Stanley Keyworth (Adam Arkin), Josh and Donna leave the White House grounds through a gate near a guardhouse and walk by a group of choral singers on Pennsylvania Avenue. This scene is remarkable in ways similar to the basketball scene in The Crackpots And These Women - White House officials actually allowed Bradley Whitford and Janel Moloney to be on the grounds and use a guardhouse gate for that scene.

And then the choir was right outside the fence on the Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalk:

Of course 9/11 changed so much of that. During my visit this fall, again, fence construction around the White House blocked much of the view from the north side, not to mention the fact I could get no closer to the White House than the Lafayette Park sidewalk - but here above the protective wall you can see the roof of the guardhouse that Josh and Donna used to exit:

And this is a similar angle to the shot of the choir:

The Fall's Gonna Kill You
Season 2, Episode 20

As the end of Season 2 hurtled through the revelations of President Bartlet's MS and the repercussions for the staff and the administration, we had a few more Washington location shots to add to the visual palette. This episode featured the meeting between Josh and Joey Lucas (Marlee Matlin) at Reagan National Airport, where Josh confided to Joey about the President's health issues and asked her to come up with a poll that might give them some information without spilling the truth. The meeting between Josh, Joey, and her interpreter Dale were filmed in the main concourse of the airport:

And I found nearly that same spot early in the morning when I was preparing to fly back home from DC:

Josh and Joey have their secretive conversation in a little cafe area, which was set up right in that same concourse along the massive windows overlooking the runways:

That shot was made from the check-in level, which is where I was when I found that same floor mural in 2019 (no such cafe exists there, though):

At the end of the episode Josh and CJ have a conversation about the looming uncertainties facing all the staffers as the news of the President's condition is about to break. CJ is walking home, again next to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building along 17th Street NW, and the final shot shows her crossing Pennsylvania Avenue heading north:

18th & Potomac
Season 2, Episode 21

This gripping episode dealing with the shocking, unexpected death of Mrs. Landingham also laid the groundwork for Josh's miscalculation that he had to cope with at the beginning of Season 3 - the government's lawsuit against Big Tobacco and how to fund it. A scene was filmed outside the Department of Commerce on 15th Street NW, just southeast of the White House, with Josh talking to Rep. Andy Ritter (John Rubenstein) about trying to get that funding:

And I ended up pretty darn close to that exact spot:

Ways And Means
Season 3, Episode 4

At least for this post, we end up in nearly the same spot in which we began: the US Navy Memorial Plaza. Donna and the legal counsel to the Republican House Ways and Means committee, Cliff Calley (Mark Feuerstein), have been fixed up on a blind date by Ainsley Hayes. After their meeting, they're walking along when Calley realizes his recent move to the Oversight Committee means he'll be involved in the investigation of the administration's coverup of the President's health issues, and he can't be involved with Donna at all. Just before he comes to this realization, the couple are walking in the Navy Memorial Plaza (this is along the Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalk side - straight ahead and to the right just a little bit is the spot where we saw Mandy and Senator Russell have it out in "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc"):

And here's the plaza in daytime, in 2019, with the fountains turned off (a chain fence has been added, while the shrubs have been removed):

And that's what I've got! Add this display to the pictures I got last spring (the DAR headquarters, the Mellon fountain, the Korean War memorial, part of the Grant memorial, the Kennedy Center, the Tidal Basin), and there's a decent chunk of locations used in the first 2-plus seasons of The West Wing. Perhaps, before too long, I'll get another trip to Washington and track down some more spots!