I was fooled along with everyone else when, meandering down Marcy Avenue at Madison Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant in 2014, I saw this large painted ad for “McCann’s Hats” on the side of the Madison Street facing building. In reality, McCann’s Hats was entirely fictional and was commissioned by the set dresser for the 2013-2014 HBO TV show “The Knick” set in a fictional Manhattan hospital in 1900; the show concerns the personal lives of the staff as well as depicting the medical innovations under way at the dawn of the 20th Century (if you don’t like the sight of blood, it’s not for you). British actor Clive Owen stars as cocaine-addicted, usually annoyed chief surgeon John Thackery (tetchy doctors like Leonard McCoy and Gregory House are TV staples).
I am currently rewatching the show and I am fascinated by how seamlessly Boy’s High School across Madison Street “became” Knickerbocker Hospital, at the dawn of electric lighting and general anesthesia. I have always been attracted to oak-paneled interiors and hanging interior gardens, lit sumptuously by open windows in the era prior to air conditioning.
As for the hat ad, there are still actual period ads seen around town (fewer and fewer since the dawn of the Forgotten NY era in 1999) that look like this. The ad was quickly removed after filming ended, but similar ads were installed for another series set in the same period, “Boardwalk Empire” and several can still be spotted in Port Richmond, Staten Island. Unfortunately the old-school telephone pole lamps installed for the same series in Richmondtown are long gone.
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7/27/26
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For another example of a historical movie set ad, see this essay on Orchard Street.