Revisiting the places in ‘Trading Places’: 41 years later

On June 8, 1983, Trading Places was released in theaters. Starring former Saturday Night Live stalwarts Eddie Murphy (as Billy Ray Valentine) and Dan Aykroyd (as Louis Winthorpe III), it’s remembered as one of the most popular comedies of the 1980s, one that combined biting social satire with a great deal of screwball comedy. Forty-one years later, the film featured at the second spot of The Inquirer’s best Philly movies list.

The film begins with a memorable montage of different Philadelphia neighborhoods and landmarks, from Boathouse Row to the Italian Market to the Liberty Bell, and a long list of recognizable Philly locations.

Some places have changed less than others — Independence Hall hasn’t changed its look much over four decades — but the film also includes a shot from the period when the Rocky statue stood in front of the Spectrum. Built the year before Trading Places, for the production of Rocky III, the statue moved permanently to the base of the Art Museum in 2006. The Spectrum’s demolition was completed in 2011; Xfinity Live! now stands in its place.

We revisited several of the film’s most recognizable locations, to see if they look much different than they did when the film came out in 1983.

Some of the locations are outside Philadelphia, including the Duke brothers’ mansion, while most of the third act is set on Amtrak trains, and later at New York’s Commodity Exchange Inc. While there was once a Center City restaurant, Winthorpe & Valentine, named for the movie’s characters, that Westin Hotel eatery has since been rebranded as Lea Restaurant & Bar. If you click on the videos, they show you the way these locations looked in the film.

“Philadelphia is beautifully represented here,” wrote Philadelphia Daily News movie critic Joe Baltake on June 10, 1983. “Trading Places is one of those films that inspire the viewer with a yearning to be there, where it was made.”

Seen during the opening montage, Joseph Brown’s work was dedicated in 1981, two years before the film. Located just north of City Hall, the sculpture looks much the same now as it did in Trading Places, as do the buildings behind it.

Say what you will about the conditions in modern-day Center City, but you definitely won’t see a ”XXX-rated live nude sex show” within steps of City Hall. That place, which shows up in the opening montage, was also featured in another famed movie of that era, 1981′s Blow Out (fifth place in our Best 50 Philly movies list). Demolished in the 1990s, it’s now a parking lot.

The scene early in the film in which Murphy impersonates a blind and legless Vietnam veteran was shot in Rittenhouse Square — specifically, the walkway near the intersection of 18th and Locust Streets. The buildings behind the action are similarly shaped but mostly used for many different purposes these days; the restaurant Parc is now located in one of the buildings behind the scene’s action.

The exterior of the police station that’s shown multiple times in the film — including when Jamie Lee Curtis’ sex worker character confronts Aykroyd — is not a police station at all, but rather the front of the Community College of Philadelphia. Today, it still looks similar to its 1983 incarnation, except for the fake “Philadelphia Police” sign, and the style of the lamps and railings has changed.

The well-apportioned home of Aykroyd’s character — and later Murphy’s — may be the film’s most iconic location. The townhouse was listed for $6.95 million in 2021, likely due to its size, luxury, location, and its status as a famous movie location. The front of the house looks remarkably similar to when the film was made, except a large tree appeared in front of it.

The business headquarters of Duke & Duke, the brokerage led by evil billionaires Randolph (played by Ralph Bellamy) and Mortimer Duke (Don Ameche), is located a couple of blocks south of City Hall, across South Broad Street from the Union League. While it still contains a Wells Fargo branch, Wells Fargo vacated its offices there in 2020, and the building is called by its address these days. The building has gone by many names over the years, including the Wells Fargo Building, Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Co. Building, and the Wachovia Building. The names are different but the building’s facade otherwise hasn’t changed much.

The fancy club frequented by the Dukes, in front of which Aykroyd’s character first confronts Murphy’s character, is actually the Curtis Institute of Music, steps away from where the Rittenhouse Square scene was shot. Its stairs now look slightly different.

Ahead of the film’s finale at the Commodity Exchange, Aykroyd and Murphy travel by train from Gate 9 at 30th Street Station, famously disappearing down the escalator while facing Jamie Lee Curtis’ character. Of course, the train station has changed a lot in 40 years, with both that gate and the station itself a lot more digitized than it used to be, while newspapers and flower shops were a great deal more prominent back in 1982.

A previous version of the article misidentified the film’s New York location. It is the Commodity Exchange Inc. (COMEX). It also misrepresented the scene filmed at the Curtis Institute, which is where Dan Aykroyd’s character first confronts Eddie Murphy’s character.