Liverpool's Grade II-listed Cunard Building on George's Pier Head at Water Street, built in 1917, was used as the facade of the imposing headquarters of MACUSA, the Magical Congress of the United States of America, the US equivalent of the Ministry of Magic. The opening scene in the banking hall uses the interior of the disused ornate old Martins Bank, 4 Water Street, Liverpool, which has been closed for several years though there are on/off plans to convert it into a luxury hotel.

The ‘New York docks’ scenes were filmed in the vast Cardington Hangars, Cardington, a couple of miles southeast of Bedford in Bedfordshire, previously used for Christopher Nolan's trilogy Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises but the few practical locations were found in the UK’s northwest city port of Liverpool. The already enormous ‘New York City’ set of Production Designer Stuart Craig, encompassing almost an entire block, complete streetcar rails and even functioning man-hole covers, was extended with digital effects.

After being used for all eight of the Harry Potter blockbusters, Leavesden Studios, north of London in Hertfordshire, and home to the Harry Potter Studio Tour, was a natural to host for the first of the spin-off series which sees Newt Scamander ( Eddie Redmayne) arriving in 1926 ‘New York’ en-route to Arizona to release one of the ‘fantastic beasts’ into its natural habitat.Ĭlearly modern New York can no longer stand in for the city of the 1920s.

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