From reality TV to horror films, we can’t help but be fascinated by the houses, rooms and walls that surround the people we watch —love ’em or hate ’em.
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Archie Bunker’s broken-in wing chair from which he barked every Greatest Generation member’s tired complaints about a changing America, now rests comfortably and quietly in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Not too far from the Bunker’s middle-class Queens abode stands 900 Park Ave. and atop it, the fictional, spacious, multi-story spread of millionaire Philip Drummond, his daughter Kim, housekeeper Mrs. Garrett and two adopted sons, Willis and Arnold.
Its gothic, curved staircase; chef’s kitchen; spacious balcony; and the 20-foot-plus-tall great room showed America in the early 1980s what it must be like to live under a blanket of Wall Street wealth in the big city, much in the same way the Ingalls family’s three-room cabin in rural, late-1800s Minnesota painted scenes of American progress during the rough-and-tumble era of westward expansion.
The homes in these time-honored television shows became as memorable as the characters in them and the story arcs they told. It’s no different today.
From reality TV to horror films, we can’t help but be fascinated by the houses, rooms and walls that surround the people we watch—love ’em or hate ’em. If Netflix’s The Watcher is teaching us anything about the American homeowner, it’s that we’re all voyeurs to some extent.
Dutton Ranch main house | Hookedonhouse.net
And now, thanks to the internet and some startup named Google, we know who among today’s television families own, rent or play in the most web-searched homes.
Brentwood Los Angeles Realtors conducted a study to determine the Top 20 Most Googled fictional TV homes based on average monthly searches, which found that with 43,300 queries every 30 days, Monica’s apartment from Friends edged out one of San Francisco’s real Painted Ladies, made famous for housing the grossly cute and moderately funny Tanner family from Full House.
Real fans of Friends will know that Monica and Ross’s grandmother was the original tenant of the glass-walled Manhattan flat and that it’s not easy to carry a couch up its stairs.
In third place with a mere 14,300 searches was the New Mexico-based place of origin for television’s most notorious chemistry-teacher-turned-meth kingpin, Walter White.
The Albuquerque home at the fictional address of 308 Negra Arroyo Lane is as blandly suburban as its owners, which is kind of the point, helping Walt hide in plain sight. It eventually became a three-bedroom piece of decrepit DEA evidence, but not before it served as one of many landing places for flaming jetliner debris after a mid-air collision above the city, which of course, Walt had a hand in causing.
In a cool twist of fate, fourth place in the study belongs to the bewitching ladies of Charmed, part of the flailing CW Network’s one-time prized lineup of shows depicting super attractive people as supernatural beings.
Like the Tanners, the Halliwell sisters and their Victorian Manor resided in San Francisco. In truth, the house used for exterior scenes is in Los Angeles.
Among other famous TV homes in the top 20 include mafioso Tony Soprano’s New Jersey McMansion, John Dutton’s sprawling Montana ranch house in Yellowstone and the Conner’s Lanford, Illinois, craftsman inspired by a real house in Evansville, Indiana, according to a fan site for the show.
Here’s the full list. Did your favorite TV home make the survey?
