A. The rooftop of the high-rise Hotel Carmilla.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. In Dallas, Texas.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 9, of Season 2  ("I Will Rise Up").

Sookie & Bill have been staying at the unique Hotel Carmilla, a hotel for vampires.

After Sookie is captured by the Fellowship of the Sun fanatics, she meets an ancient vampire (who looks like a young teenager) named Godric, who is Eric's maker.

In this scene, Godric, who has been experiencing a crisis of conscience, decides to end his life (after 2,000 years) by exposing himself to the rays of the rising sun. A weeping Eric begs him not to do it, but Godric's mind is made up.

Sookie stays with Godric until it is over, and her tears for him bring him joy & wonder, as he serenely accepts death - bursting into flame at the touch of the sun's rays.

Q. What is it actually, in real life?

A. The rooftop of a high-rise.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. Although the Sofitel Hotel (where they filmed the interior scenes of the Hotel Carmilla), does have a rooftop with a helicopter landing pad - not unlike the one seen here - they did not film this rooftop scene there. Instead, they moved production some 10 miles east to downtown L.A.

This scene was shot on the roof of the 1000 Wilshire Building, at 1000 Wilshire Blvd, in downtown Los Angeles, CA.

The 22-story, marble-clad, financial office building was built in 1987 as the first post-modern high rise in L.A.
It's leading tenant (their name is on the side of the building) is Wedbush Morgan Securities.

You'll find it right next to (east of) the Harbor/Pasadena (110) Freeway. It's bordered by Wilshire Blvd on the north, by Francisco Street on the east, by 7th Street on the south, and by the freeway on its west side.

They added a fake 'Hotel Carmilla' logo to the red "bulls-eye" that marks the center of the roof's helicopter landing pad. (There's normally at "10" in the middle of that circle.)

That is, the scenes looking west (on the show, away from the sunrise) were shot on that roof. In reality, the camera is looking south/southwest.

   (The building has its own website at www.1000wilshire.com.)


The scenes looking the other way (east), towards the rising sun, feature the skyline of Dallas, recognizable from the distinctive clock tower on the left. (See the third photo from the top.) That clock tower belongs to the old Mercantile building, a 33-story tower at 1800 Main Street, in Dallas. And the camera is indeed looking east towards that clock tower. (Here's an aerial photo.)

According to the Dallas News, they did some rooftop filming in Dallas to get that shot of the clock tower. Whether they then just green-screened those images in behind 'Godric' in L.A., or whether the actor playing 'Godric' actually went to Dallas to shoot the scene, I can't be sure, although I suspect the former. But there's no question that most of the scenes (and all of the scenes that show Sookie's face) were shot on that 1000 Wilshire roof in L.A.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A. It wasn't hard. I know the skyline of L.A. well enough to recognize it when I see it. The only effort (since you couldn't see the building itself, just the rooftop), was to figure out exactly which L.A. high-rise building was used.

It was clear that the camera was looking south/southwest, because that tall, somewhat odd-shaped building in the background (of the top photo on this page), on the right, is the new L.A. Live Hotel, being built in 2009, down near the Staples Center, which is south of downtown. It was then just a matter of using Bing aerial photos to look south and match up the two other buildings seen on the left side of the frame. I've labeled the photo below with the names of the buildings.



The brown building to the left of that L.A. Live Hotel is the TCW Tower, at 865 South Figueroa Street. The roundish, white building to its left is the 53-story 777 Tower, at 777 S. Figueroa. To its left is the Ernst & Young Plaza, at 725 S. Figueroa.


Here is an aerial photo of the area, with the rooftop heliport marked. And here is a map link.
And here is a Google StreetView.