The ultimate Friends guide to NYC

Thanks to reruns and continued popularity on Netflix (WarnerMedia’s streaming service HBO Max will be the show’s new home in spring 2020), the Manhattan pop-up experience is targeted to new and old fans alike. Want to grab an umbrella and take a seat on that orange couch? That’s only one of many Instagram-worthy stops along this nostalgia-filled tour.

The FRIENDS™ Experience: The One in New York City

⭐ Step inside the world of FRIENDS™! With two floors of immersive experiences, it’s the ultimate experience for FRIENDS™ fans. You can pose on the iconic orange couch, sit at Monica and Rachel’s kitchen table, kick back and relax in Joey and Chandler’s comfy chairs, and so much more. Reserve your spot and save money by purchasing tickets in advance.

Tickets for The FRIENDS™ Experience: The One in NYC
🎫 Standard Tickets – includes entry into The FRIENDS™ Experience and one free digital download of the Central Perk commemorative photo

🎫 Premium Tickets – includes general access to the experience plus:

1 Exclusive The Friends™ Experience merchandise item
1 Free coat or bag check token
One free digital download of the Central Perk commemorative photo

🎫 Guided Group Tour – includes entry into The FRIENDS™ Experience first thing in the morning before we open to the general public and allows you to choose the group you attend with. Groups will be checked in and allowed entry into the experience five minutes apart to allow for your group to have a personalized experience through the space.

🎫 Flexible Entry Ticket – includes full access to the experience at any time on your selected date

This option is available in the calendar on this page in the first time slot
Final entry time is one hour before closing

🎫 Digital Photo Package Add-On – save $5 by purchasing your photo package now! Receive digital photos of yourself in front of the fountain, reenacting the Pivot! scene, and on the orange couch in Central Perk (only 1 needed per group)

Highlights
⛲ Dance in front of the fountain
🛋️ Hang out in Monica and Rachel’s apartment
😊 Kick your feet up at Joey and Chandler’s
☕ Order coffee from Central Perk
✨ Explore dozens of props and costumes, including Phoebe’s wedding dress
🤩 Ride Pat the Dog and so much more!

General Info
📅 Dates: July to December, 2023
🕒 Opening hours(time slots available every 15 minutes):
– Wednesday to Sunday: 10 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. (last entry)
– Guided Group tickets start at 9:30 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays
📍 Location: 130 E 23rd St, New York City, NY (Located on the corner of Lexington Ave. and 23rd St.)
👤 Age requirement: all ages are welcome. Guests 12 and under must be accompanied by an adult who is at least 18 years old. Children 3 and younger don’t need a ticket when accompanied by a parent or guardian
♿ Accessibility: the experience is ADA compliant and fully accessible for guests with many different disabilities and neurodiversities
🎁 To treat your friends and family to a gift card, click here
❓ Please consult the FAQs of this experience here

Description
Our flagship location has two floors of interactive experiences where you can step inside the world of FRIENDS™.

Pose on the iconic orange couch, explore newly added original props and costumes from the show like Chandler’s bunny suit and Rachel’s famous cow jacket, or hang out in Monica and Rachel’s living room.

I KNOW! Buy your tickets now for The FRIENDS™ Experience: The One in New York City!

The ultimate ‘Friends’ guide to NYC

Seventeen years after the last episode was broadcast, the cast of the popular show is back on our screens this week for Friends: The Reunion special looking back on the hit ’90s sitcom. But what about the iconic locations of the show?

Any Friends fan worth their salt knows the series was filmed in Los Angeles, but some of its most memorable exteriors were shot on site in New York. Here are 13 of our favorites, from legendary landmarks to lesser-known locales – yes, including that apartment.

1. The opening credits

The famous fountain memorialized in the show’s opening credits can be found on a Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, California – and a Boston-inspired one, at that. But that minor detail hasn’t stopped fans from seeking out watery doppelgängers around town. Central Park’s Cherry Hill Fountain is often mistaken for its onscreen counterpart, while Pulitzer Fountain at Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza is regularly cited as the inspiration for the one in those iconic scenes.

2. The apartment

The West Village building that served as the exterior of Monica, Rachel, Chandler, and Joey’s pre-war walk-up needs little introduction – it has its own tag on Google Maps, after all. Located at 90 Bedford Street, on the corner of Grove, the so-called Friends Apartment looks much the same as it did in the show’s heyday, fire escape and all, though you won’t find Central Perk on the ground floor. Instead, there’s a classy neighborhood joint called Little Owl, which slings its signature meatball sliders in lieu of macchiatos at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, seven days a week.

3. Ross’s homes

Ross cycled through three apartments during the course of the show, only two of which made it to the screen. Until he married Emily and moved out in season five, he lived at Washington Square Village, described by Village Preservation as a “modernist superblock of apartments built by Robert Moses in the late 1950s just south of Washington Square Park.” After their divorce, he floated around a bit before landing at Ugly Naked Guy’s apartment. On the show, it’s across the courtyard from Monica and Rachel; in reality, it’s across the street at 17 Grove.

4. Phoebe’s place

In the season seven episode “The One With Joey’s New Brain,” Phoebe found a cell phone at Central Perk, and when its owner called to retrieve it, she gave him her address: 5 Morton Street, a brick building on a quiet, tree-lined block, just a few minutes’ walk from the rest of the gang on Bedford.

5. Rachel’s first fashion job

After a disastrous stint as a waitress at the coffee shop and before she landed a plum position at Ralph Lauren, Rachel scored a job at Bloomingdale’s as an assistant buyer – until her department closed down and she was demoted to personal shopper. While the sales team at the department store’s Third Avenue flagship won’t let you walk in her shoes, they’ll let you buy a few pairs…along with all the designer clothes, bags, jewelry, and perfume you can carry in those trademark brown bags.

6. Ross’s workplaces

The ‘50s-themed diner where Monica had to don a blonde wig and take orders on rollerskates was a SoHo fixture for decades. Sadly, it’s no longer there, but her brother’s employers are still around, especially if you squint a bit. During the show’s early years, Ross served as a paleontologist at the oxymoronically named Museum of Prehistoric History – a thinly veiled stand-in for the Upper West Side’s American Museum of Natural History, where you’ll see a 94-foot model of a blue whale and yes, a whole lot of dinosaur fossils.

Following that, he got a gig as a professor at New York University, despite the fact that the real NYU doesn’t actually have a paleontology department. The downtown area around the school is still worth a visit, though, particularly Washington Square Park, a gathering place in the heart of the village. Just watch out for the chess hustlers if you want to leave with your savings intact.

7. Chandler’s office

No one knew exactly what Chandler did for a living, but they all knew where he worked: the Solow Building, a distinctive black-and-white skyscraper looming 49 stories above 57th Street, with a gently sloping facade reminiscent of a ski jump. Completed in 1974, it covers 1.4 million square feet and reaches heights of 672 feet, making for one impressive photo op.

8. Joey’s favorite theater

Joey racked up an impressive amount of acting credits over the years, from films and plays to soaps and indies. (He even appeared in print ads warning of the dangers of venereal disease – but more on that later.) Some of his most notable performances, including the musical Freud!, were staged at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, an Off-Broadway venue on Christopher Street known for its buzzy productions and star-studded history. See a play, catch a reading, or simply swing by and take a look at the Playwrights’ Sidewalk, a permanent monument to the city’s Off-Broadway theater writers.

9. Phoebe’s busking spot

She and her guitar may have been regulars at Central Perk, but in the show’s first episode, Phoebe tried to pick up some extra cash in a much less cozy locale: the Bleecker Street subway station. Just north of Houston, the 6 train stop is also where Joey’s potential date bailed when she saw his modeling effort – as the face of sexually transmitted infection in giant, poster-size form.

10. Madison Square Garden

For athletes and rockstars alike, few arenas hold the cachet of Madison Square Garden, the legendary home of both the New York Rangers and the New York Knicks. The latter may be a perpetual disappointment, but that didn’t matter much to the titular sixsome, who went to games, relied on spare seats to finagle dates, and dangled the promise of season tickets during that infamous apartment bet. The Rangers weren’t left out either: early in the first season, the guys went to a hockey game – and Ross caught a puck in the face.

11. The Pierre

When Monica and Chandler were planning their wedding, they didn’t pull any punches. Their venue was The Pierre, a luxurious landmark property on Fifth Avenue dating to the 1920s, and the couple went all out, inviting a ton of people, organizing a mouthwatering feast, and booking a swing band for the reception. You’re not likely to catch a similar event if you stop by, but the art deco bar in the hotel lobby is open to the public for afternoon tea or evening cocktails, as long as you dress the part. (Smart-casual, that is – no Friends cosplay necessary.)

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This article was first published March 2020 and updated May 2021

‘Friends’ Turns 25: Inside the NBC Sitcom’s Pop-Up Return to New York

Inside the sold-out ‘Friends’ New York City Pop-Up experience, which re-creates classic sets and quotable moments for fans to experience for the NBC sitcom’s 25th anniversary.

Jackie Strause

Managing Editor, East Coast

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Just when you thought they were on a break, Friends has come home to New York City.

Twenty-five years after Ross (David Schwimmer), Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), Joey (Matt LeBlanc), Monica (Courteney Cox), Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) first gathered at Central Perk, producers Warner Bros. Television is giving fans the chance to revisit some of the beloved NBC sitcom’s most quotable moments — and experience some for themselves — with an immersive pop-up space in downtown New York City that sold out before opening day.

Thanks to reruns and continued popularity on Netflix (WarnerMedia’s streaming service HBO Max will be the show’s new home in spring 2020), the Manhattan pop-up experience is targeted to new and old fans alike. Want to grab an umbrella and take a seat on that orange couch? That’s only one of many Instagram-worthy stops along this nostalgia-filled tour.

The Hollywood Reporter was given an early look at the iconic set pieces and memorabilia on display to celebrate the milestone anniversary. The space — which opens to the public Saturday and runs daily through Oct. 6. — begins with a maze of familiar cast moments with the six 20- to 30-somethings and a wall of definitions for the “Friends-isms” that have become a part of pop-culture vernacular since the show’s 10-year run. Ross’ state of Unagi (“total awareness”), Chandler’s indefinable “Wah-pah!” and Monica’s classic shout of “Seven!” all make the list, as does a how-to illustration to banging fists (the code for the middle finger) and Ross and Rachel-centric shout-outs like “We were on a break!” and “She’s your lobster.” The pop-up instructs visitors to take a seat on the couch among their Friends.

As fans continue to wind through the experience, they can indeed pitstop for their very own “I’ll Be There for You” photo montage and attempt to “Pivot!” Ross’ couch up a flight of stairs, offer up their best Monica Thanksgiving-turkey head shimmy and see what it looks like to be wearing all of Chandler’s clothes.

The museum-like experience begs fans to peek through Rachel and Monica’s purple door to see the cast shrines that have been erected inside.

A glance over the next chain-locked door delivers a re-creation of Chandler and Joey’s apartment — complete with the dual recliners, big white dog, foosball table and entertainment unit.

The tour then drops visitors off in a Central Perk time warp, where a nearby menu of drinks and pastries includes Chandler’s Licked Banana Nut Muffin and Phoebe’s Great Great Grandma’s Famous Cookies. The visit ends with a smattering of exclusive Friends souvenirs.

Five years ago, to celebrate Friends‘ 20th anniversary, a more intimate Central Perk pop-up also replicated the show’s famous coffeehouse set for fans. Now that the sacred sofa is back at a nearby SoHo location (at 76 Mercer St.) for the show’s biggest immersive experience to date — two familiar faces were called in for the launch.

“The last pop-up was my official retiring of Gunther,” says James Michael Tyler — who was not dressed like his coffee-pouring curmudgeon, unlike his appearance back in 2014 — when speaking to THR at the pop-up. “That was five years ago for the 20th and I thought, ‘This will probably be the last time they do a Friends thing. So, I’ll bleach my hair one last time and I’ll go and do the Gunther-y thing.’ I love that character. I have a lot of affinity for Gunther. He was a bit mysterious for 10 years and largely unexplored. Nobody even knew his last name.”

Maggie Wheeler — who appeared throughout the run as Chandler’s on-again, off-again girlfriend Janice, known for her cackling laugh and “Oh. My. Gawd” catchphrase — also spoke to THR on the Central Perk couch, which brought her back to her first-ever Friends scene with Matthew Perry.

“The role of Janice was initially for one scene — that scene in the coffee shop where she says, ‘I brought you socks. Mix and match — moose and squirrel,’” she says of the coffeehouse break-up between Janice and Chandler. “I can remember every detail about sitting in that scene with him and saying those lines and trying not to laugh when he was knocking back all those espressos. That’s why I created the laugh — that’s why Janice laughs the way she does — because Matthew was so funny. I knew that I needed a safeguard against cracking up in the middle of the scene, so that’s why I gave her a laugh.”

Neither of the recurring stars could have predicted how Netflix would continue to expand the Friends audience. But both say they recognized the lightning-in-a-bottle aspect from their first days on set.

“There was genuine camaraderie and love between the castmembers — that was not manufactured in any way,” says Wheeler. “So right away, you are in this warm environment where people really enjoy being together and that, of course, is rare and wonderful. It was also a very collaborative environment creatively; there was a lot of room for people to share ideas, work out a bit or try it a different way. Our ideas were welcome.”

Tyler adds: “A lot of other shows, when you go on set you say, ‘That person is going to be a star.’ And here it was where all of these people have that quality and this chemistry. They seemed like they had known each other for years.”

Despite leaning into Janice’s Long Island accent and “jappy” persona, Wheeler — who will next be heard voicing a character in the animated big-screen re-telling of The Addams Family — says she never worried about being typecast after Friends. Tyler, however, had a different experience.

“It’s taken a long time to get out of the typecast Gunther thing,” he says of taking a break from acting after Friends. After spending time working on writing scripts and producing music, Tyler has two projects lined up — short film The Gesture and the Word and an independent horror film, Processing. “I love acting. I have a master of fine arts in acting, which is kind of overlooked because of the whole origin story of [how I got the role of Gunther]. I just happened to be a non-working actor who worked in a real coffee shop and got this opportunity as an extra. It was just pure luck, having that bleached hair that a friend did the night before I went in. It was good luck, good timing. I don’t take any of that for granted whatsoever.”

And while both concede that a reboot of any sort seems to be off the table (though some of the cast have expressed interest), they each shared their own fan fiction of where Gunther and Janice might be today. “It ended on a really good note. It’s probably best to keep it there,” says Tyler of where the show left off. “I hope that Gunther is over Rachel. It’s been a while now. Maybe Gunther would be happily married with a couple of kids with hair brighter than the sun.”

Wheeler adds: “People ask me where Janice is now and we could pick a couple of different scenarios. But I think she has a clothing line of leopard and cheetah prints with matching bags. She’s selling it online and it’s doing very well. And I think she’s giving relationship advice, either in a blog or a podcast.”

The Friends New York City Pop-Up, a collaboration between Warner Bros. and events company Superfly, opens Sept. 7 and runs through Oct. 6, with the first day dedicated exclusively to AT&T customers through the AT&T Thanks program. The experience will be open seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., at 76 Mercer St. Tickets are sold out, but the email signup reads: “Like Janice you never know when we’ll be back.”