Dexter: Resurrection Filming Locations: the Seneca Nation Clinic
The Location: the Seneca Nation Clinic.
Q.
What is it supposed to be on the show?
A. A hospital.
Q.
Where is it supposed to be on the show?
A. On the Seneca Indian reservation, in or near Iron Lake, in upstate New York.
Q.
When did we see it on the show?
A. We see the hospital at the very start of Episode 1, of Season 1, when Dexter
wakes up from the induced coma that the doctors put him in, following
his being shot in the chest by his son Harrison (at the end of New Blood).
It's at this hospital where Dexter (while in the coma) hallucinates
encounters with the Trinity Killer, Miguel Prado, and James
Doakes.
It's here that he undergoes rehab therapy to help him recover from injury.
And it's here that Dexter is shocked to encounter none other than Angel
Batista, who tells him that Angela originally accused him of being the
Bay Harbor Butcher, something that has obviously raised suspicions in
his old friend from Miami Metro.
When it becomes clear that Angel Is planning to dig deeper into the
matter, Dexter distracts Angel, beats a hasty retreat out a window,
steals a truck, and hits the road to New York.
I
Q.
What is it actually in real life?
A. A small, empty building in an abandoned former Nike missile facility, in what is now a public park.
Q.
Where can I find it in real life?
A. While the interior hospital scenes were shot in the studio, the exterior scenes (of Dexter escaping the hospital and stealing the truck) were filmed up in the woods above Sparkill, at Nike Overlook Park in the community of Orangeburg, NY,
about two miles northwest of Sparkill, NY, where they filmed the Iron
Lake scenes of Teddy's diner and of the Cedar Pines Clothing Store.
The specific building that served as the clinic is located in a clearing in the park, at 2 Nike Lane. It's a mostly empty building , sharing the woodsy clearing with a second building that houses the park caretaker.
When you hear the name Nike, most people will think of the shoe company (or perhaps the winged goddess of victory from Greek mythology).
But long before that corporation existed, there was a more ominous meaning to the word: the Nike missile,
created during the Cold War, when the nation lived in fear of Russian
bombers dropping nuclear weapons on our cities. The Nike missile was
designed to intercept and destroy those incoming bombers before they
could deliver their atomic payload. And they were deployed in rings
around America's major cities , including New York.
This park was once a US Army military facility
where those Nike missiles were deployed. Fortunately, they were never
needed, and when the invention of ICBM missiles made the Nike missiles
obsolete, this facility was shut down, and the land was eventually
purchased by the city of Orangetown, NY, and reopened as a public park
(although it is still mostly woods and hiking trails, with a few
abandoned buildings and some rather creepy tunnels).
Here is aGoogle StreetView of the entrance to the park:
A. I believe there’s virtually no chance that I would have found this location on my own .
There is no StreetView.in the area to check out the setting for myself. And it is deep in the woods of upstate New York.
In order to stumble across it, even if I had been in New York State,
even if I had been 25 miles away from New York City, in the Orangetown
hamlet of Sparkill, I still would have had to leave the last-known
filming location (the small park where they filmed the Cedar Pines store
scene), and then drive miles up into the woods surrounding Sparkill,
take a relatively obscure side road off the highway, enter an abandoned
facility that used to be a Cold War missile site, and then drive a
quarter mile deeper into the woods, until I reached the gated end of
that aging
road, then gotten out and walked on foot the additional distance to a
small clearing in the woods, where there are two nondescript, empty
buildings that have probably been forgotten about by virtually everyone
except the city caretaker who lives in one of them. All without knowing
where I was going.
I like to think I’m good at tracking down locations, but I’m not that damn good!
I did originally think that the building would be somewhere near Sparkill, so I
had spent an inordinate amount of time scouring the area, using
StreetView and aerial photos to look for that small L-shaped building,
but to no avail.
And I eventually realized that I couldn’t even be certain that the clinic building was in the same area. I assumed it
would be, because I knew they had shot
three scenes in what was supposed to be the area in and around Iron
Lake (Teddy’s diner, the Cedar Pines Clothing Store, and the Seneca
Nation Clinic), and it simply made sense that they would shoot all three
while they were in that upper New York state region. But after looking
for weeks and not finding it, I had to acknowledge that it could
actually be just about anywhere in the state.
So, having exhausted, every available clue, I did something I rarely do:
I resorted to contacting someone in the town where they had filmed two
of those three scenes (Orangetown, NY, of which Sparkill is a hamlet ), explained that I knew about the
other two locations, and asked if they knew where that third (hospital)
scene has been shot.
And fortunately for me (and my readers), I didn’t run into the usual
bureaucratic wall, but instead reached a sympathetic soul who was
willing to answer my email. (Thank you, Carmel.)
And even after she told me where they had filmed that scene, I still had
to use aerial photos to find that small clearing in the woods, and the two
buildings, that were barely recognizable from that height.
Without
StreetView, I couldn’t quickly confirm that it was the right building,
but fortunately, when I zoomed in as close as I could in those aerial photos,
there were a few tiny details that stood out, including a number of
round hedges in front of the buildings, and a barely-visible flagpole at
the corner of one of them. It was enough to convince me that it was
indeed the right place.
But when I used Google Earth to offer a
three-dimensional version of those buildings, the result left no doubt.
But the city went the extra mile by pointing me to a collection of photos
of the park, which,included a few great close-up
shots of the buildings (see above), confirming 100% that it was, indeed, the
location used as the Seneca Nation Clinic.
Normally, I might not have gone to that much trouble to find a single
location, particularly since I had already acknowledged that since I am
in Los Angeles and they were filming this season in New York, I
wouldn’t be able to find every single filming spot this time around.
But this wasn’t just any location. It was the very first location seen
in the new series, and the hospital where Dexter comes back to life
after being killed in the previous season (New Blood). So I was determined to track it down.
Sparkill and its surrounding communities seem like a nice place to
visit. While I would recommend visiting the Noble Café, and Eleanor
Stroud Park, if you are in the area and are checking out Dexter locations,
I wouldn’t suggest going all the way out to this former Nike missile
base. Given the nondescript nature of the small, empty buildings, there
really isn’t much to see there, unless you happen to enjoy hiking
through the surrounding woods. (For dedicated hikers, there are trails
in the park to allow just that.)
