Film · 2002

Gangs of New York

An entire neighbourhood of nineteenth-century New York, raised at Cinecittà in three months.

Act one

Ferretti's
gamble.

"Mid-nineteenth-century New York is essentially an Italian city of the same period."

— Dante Ferretti to Martin Scorsese, 1999
making the case to shoot at Cinecittà.

At the end of the Nineties, Scorsese has two paths: build a backlot on Long Island, or let Ferretti — his long-standing production designer — convince him to move the entire production to Italy. Ferretti wins. Between late 2000 and early 2001, five blocks of Lower Manhattan take shape at the Roman Studios on a one-to-one scale: 1,600 metres of nineteenth-century facades, thirty buildings along Lower Broadway, Tammany Hall, churches, saloons, theatres, a stretch of the East River with two real sailing ships afloat in a construction tank.

Overall view of the Five Points set under construction at Cinecittà — Five Points, overall view

Shop fronts, working balconies and tenement buildings on the set — Shop fronts and balconies

Cobbled street and building fronts of the Bowery — The Bowery, laid stone by stone

Act two

Ivano's
signature.

Ivano Ferrario arrives on the set of Gangs of New York after nearly twenty years at Cinecittà. He works alongside his mentor Carlo Maggi — the head plasterer with whom, since the mid-Eighties, he signs the scenography of the great international productions. For Gangs it is his hands that shape the cornices, mouldings, plasterwork and patinas on the facades of Lower Broadway.

It is the last big film Ivano does "as part of a crew": a few months after the set is delivered he opens his own company. Creation Art is born from the experience of build sites just like this one — and it is here, on a Scorsese set, that a lifetime's craft makes its leap into entrepreneurship.

Detail of a federal-style facade: classical cornices, lead window frames, plaster patinated by hand — Federal style, lead cornices

Painted bricks and burnt wood for the nineteenth-century patina — Painted brick, burnt wood

Detail of a corner building on the Bowery: cornices, window frames, plaster aged by hand — A Bowery corner, aged by hand

Behind the scenes

One thousand six hundred metres
of set, under Scorsese.

Working on Gangs of New York means working under a microscope. Martin Scorsese directs, with six Oscar nominations already on his résumé. Dante Ferretti signs the production design, by then already a two-time Academy Award winner. The cast is pure Hollywood — DiCaprio, Day-Lewis, Diaz — and the budget tops one hundred million dollars. On a set with these ambitions, every cornice, every plaster surface, every window frame has to hold up to the close-up and to Michael Ballhaus's light without flinching.

Saloon and general store on the south side of Five Points, still without signs and scene props. Cinecittà set, late 2000. — Five Points as the build wraps up. Cinecittà, late 2000 — the set's facades before the carriages, the signs, the extras.

Monumental scale

Five blocks of Lower Manhattan on a one-to-one scale, rebuilt from scratch on a 99-acre lot of the Studios. 1,600 metres of facades, thirty practical buildings along Lower Broadway, Tammany Hall, churches, saloons, theatres, a Fifth Avenue mansion, even a stretch of the East River with two real sailing ships floating in a construction tank. Not a backdrop: a city. Three months to do it.

Philological precision

Ferretti doesn't want "an idea of the nineteenth century": he wants the exact 1862. Cornices, mouldings, capitals, signs — all of them drawn from documentary sources of mid-century New York. Every cornice modelled by hand, every coat of plaster patinated in layers, every window frame forged the way they forged them a hundred and fifty years ago. Ferretti's standard borders on the philological: learning the Sixteenth Century to learn marble, and the Nineteenth to learn patina.

The patina of lived time

The hardest technical challenge isn't building: it's ageing. Every building has to tell the story of eighty years of sun, smoke, dust, rain. No uniform paint jobs, no "new pretending to be old". Finishes layered by rag, sponge and bleach, one pass at a time — across 1,600 linear metres. Ballhaus's light will come in millimetre by millimetre, unforgiving: anything fake has to look as though it has eighty years of life behind it.

1,600 m of nineteenth-century facades, 1:1 scale

90 days on site · October — December 2000

$100M production budget, zero margin for error

Blind courtyard with forced perspective and scene props. — **Forced perspective.** The blind courtyard plays with proportions to add depth to a close-up scene.

Side streets of the set, still empty of carriage traffic. — **The side streets.** Ready to take in the four thousand extras and horses of principal photography.

The set being handed over to the Miramax production. — **The handover.** A few days before principal photography — the production takes possession of the set.

Day-Lewis walks down Five Points lit by daylight, the words "PRAISE" and "COAL" painted on the walls of the Cinecittà set. — Five Points by day

Inside the Brewery: the great multi-storey wooden tenement with crowded galleries, lanterns, scaffolding — one of the most imposing sets in the film. — The Brewery, multi-storey tenement

The Nativists drawn up in top hats on Five Points, Cinecittà set. — The Nativists in formation

Snowy Five Points square seen from above: brick buildings and wooden shacks, two gangs facing off. — Paradise Square, wide shot

The Five Points gangs facing off in front of the wooden houses of the Bowery. — The gangs, in front of the Bowery

The crowd with the "HARDWARE" signs in the background — one of the film's iconic wide shots. — The riot, Hardware front

Citizens in nineteenth-century costume stroll through Five Points — in the background the still-under-construction facades of the set. — Citizens of Five Points

When I make a film, my goal is not just to recreate the past — it is to imagine it, as though I were living inside it.

Dante Ferretti Smithsonian Magazine, 2002

Second life

Twenty years on,
still standing.

More than twenty years later, one hundred and fifty metres of the original set's facades are still at Cinecittà: today you walk through them on the "Cinecittà si Mostra" tour, open to the public since 2011. Another parallel street exists at Castel Romano, inside the Cinecittà World park that opened in July 2014: Dante Ferretti, who served as the park's artistic director, redrew there a mirror of that same Manhattan as the entrance main street. Two places, one hand.

The street at Cinecittà World

Lower Broadway facades still standing at Cinecittà: 'St. Nicholas Hotel' sign, small balconies and windows of the Scorsesian set, photographed on the Cinecittà si Mostra tour. — **St. Nicholas Hotel, today.**
The original facades of the Lower Broadway set on the "Cinecittà si Mostra" tour. *Photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra · CC BY 2.0*

Wide view of the Five Points / Lower Broadway set as it stands today at Cinecittà: wooden buildings, a green screen behind, the surviving footprint of the Scorsesian set. — **Wide view of the set.**
The surviving stretch of Lower Broadway — a stage green screen behind, wooden buildings still standing. *Photo: Flickr · CC BY 2.0*

Tech sheet

One thousand six hundred metres of nineteenth-century facades

On a lot of about forty hectares of the Cinecittà Studios, Dante Ferretti has five blocks of Lower Manhattan rebuilt on a one-to-one scale — including Tammany Hall, the church, the theatres, the casinos, and a stretch of the East River with two real sailing ships floating in a construction tank.

Thirty practical buildings

Lower Broadway is rebuilt with thirty practical buildings, each one with balconies accessible to the cast, window frames that really open, working internal staircases. The decorative finishes — cornices, mouldings, frames, patinas — largely come out of specialist workshops like ours.

Three months on site

The build at Cinecittà lasts three months, from late 2000 to March 2001. A small city is raised from nothing, every cornice modelled by hand, every plaster surface patinated as though it were from 1862. Filming begins on 18 December 2000 and wraps on 30 March 2001.

Ten nominations at the 2003 Academy Awards

The film receives ten nominations at the 2003 Academy Awards, including Best Production Design (Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo). In the same year Ferretti wins the Nastro d'Argento for production design. The film's total budget: over one hundred million dollars.

All production data

Type: Feature film
Director: Martin Scorsese
Production designer: Dante Ferretti — Francesca Lo Schiavo
Director of photography: Michael Ballhaus
Main cast: Leonardo DiCaprio · Daniel Day-Lewis · Cameron Diaz · Liam Neeson
Production: Miramax Films · Touchstone Pictures
Filming: 18 December 2000 — 30 March 2001
Release: 20 December 2002 (USA) · January 2003 (Italy)
Location: Cinecittà Studios — Rome
Our role: Decorative craftsmanship, finishes and architectural set details under the direction of Dante Ferretti. Ivano Ferrario and the crew that would become Creation Art (the company is officially founded in 2000) work on the Five Points set throughout filming (December 2000 — March 2001).
Awards: 10 nominations at the 2003 Academy Awards · Nastro d'Argento for Best Production Design