The First Purge – Filming Locations

The First Purge is set on Staten Island. It was shot almost entirely in Buffalo, New York (Make It Weird Davey’s hometown!), over the fall and winter of 2017. Gerard McMurray directed, James DeMonaco wrote it, and Blumhouse, Platinum Dunes, and Michael Bay produced it as a prequel to the original Purge. It came out July 4, 2018, and turned a $13 million budget into $137 million worldwide.

McMurray has said the city’s industrial edges and its housing stock were a big part of why Buffalo worked for the film. It doesn’t need much dressing to look like a place under siege. Here’s where it was filmed. As we say in my hometown: LET’S GO BUFFALO!

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Marine Drive Apartments

205 Marine Drive, Buffalo, NY 14202

This is the building visible behind Lex Scott Davis in several scenes, and it’s doing real thematic work. Marine Drive is public housing, seven towers built in 1952 by the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority, right on the water near downtown. It reads on screen almost exactly like what it is: a real housing complex standing in for the film’s Staten Island projects.

The towers are still standing and still occupied, though a redevelopment plan has been moving forward to eventually replace them with new construction. Real families live there, so be respectful if you’re shooting from the street.

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West Ferry and Grant

West Ferry Street at Grant Street, Buffalo, NY 14213

The official theatrical poster is a street scene shot at this corner, on Buffalo’s West Side. It’s the center of the Grant-Ferry neighborhood, a dense commercial strip that’s long served as Buffalo’s international marketplace, home to Burmese, West African, and Yemeni-owned businesses.

It’s one of the most lived-in commercial strips in the city, which is likely why it ended up as the poster image.

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500 Seneca Street

500 Seneca Street, Buffalo, NY 14204

Local news reported the production shooting here while it was underway in September 2017. The building is a former paper box factory in the Hydraulics District, built between 1901 and 1927 for the F.N. Burt Company, later converted into offices, apartments, and event space. Its old industrial interior makes it a natural stand-in for warehouse and processing-center scenes.

Don’t confuse this with Seneca One Tower a few blocks away. Same street name, different building, and some write-ups of the film have mixed the two up.

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Peter Machnica Community Center

1799 Clinton Street, Buffalo, NY 14206

This is a real city recreation center in the Kaisertown neighborhood on Buffalo’s East Side, named for a longtime city youth-sports supervisor. Production was spotted here in December 2017. An anonymous municipal rec center reads easily on screen as a processing site or shelter without any set dressing at all.

It’s still an active community center today, with a gym, a game room, and hours as a city cooling and warming center. Treat it like the working neighborhood building it is if you go.

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Fredro Street

Fredro Street, Buffalo, NY 14206

A cluster of houses on Fredro Street, also in the Kaisertown/East Side area near the community center, were used for residential scenes. Local station WIVB first reported the sighting in December 2017. These are private homes on an ordinary residential block, so as always, respectful visits only.

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None of this played on Staten Island first, either. The film premiered locally, with a special screening at the North Park Theatre on Hertel Avenue, where Universal handed out First Purge T-shirts and hats to a crowd that had spent the previous fall watching it get made a few miles from the theater.