Hollywood has a habit of embellishing when it comes to locations, with characters often living well beyond their means onscreen. Take “Friends’” Monica Gellar (Courteney Cox) and Rachel Greene (Jennifer Aniston), two twenty-somethings who somehow manage to afford a massive Greenwich Village apartment. And Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), who calls a charming Upper East Side walk-up with a massive closet home on “Sex and the City,” despite seemingly eeking out only one column a week. But the opposite is true when it comes to “The Goldbergs.”
The hit ABC series, which debuted in 2013, is based upon the childhood of creator Adam F. Goldberg, who grew up amongst a spirited family in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania in the 1980s. Most storylines are taken directly from Adam’s youth, culled from countless hours of home video footage he taped of his parents and two siblings on his ever-present RCA camcorder over the years. Though Adam did change the gender of the oldest Goldberg child for the show – Eric became Erica (played by Hayley Orrantia), as he thought adding a girl to the mix would enhance the family dynamic – otherwise, “The Goldbergs” sticks very close to real life.
Yes, Adam’s mother, Beverly (portrayed by Wendi McLendon-Covey), is indeed a “smother” – she readily admits to sleeping in Adam’s dorm room during his first semester of college. (“Hand to God true,” she tweeted in 2016.) The car belonging to Goldberg patriarch Murray (played by Jeff Garlin) was actually flipped off a cliff while Eric was on a secret trip to the Poconos. And Adam’s first love was a girl named Dana Caldwell (played by Natalie Alyn Lind). (They’re still friends today!)
But when it comes to the Goldbergs’ residence, the show greatly deviates from reality.
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Image Credit: Sony Pictures Television The dwelling that serves as the backdrop to the television series, which can be found at 3071 Earlmar Dr. in Los Angeles’ Cheviot Hills, is a very traditional blue clapboard property with a decidedly Anywhere, U.S.A.-style. The somewhat modest, yet picturesque residence consists of four bedrooms, three baths and 2,419 square feet. Unlike its depiction on the show, the pad is actually only one level. The four dormer windows that line the roof are fakes added by the production team.
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Image Credit: Google But the house where Adam actually grew up, located at 405 Newbold Rd., is anything but traditional or modest! Measuring in at eight bedrooms, five and a half baths and 6,708 square feet, the handsome Tudor-style property is a veritable mansion. In fact, it is the largest house in all of Jenkintown!
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Image Credit: Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Fox & Roach Realtors Known as the Gimbel Estate, the 1925 dwelling was formerly owned by Ellis A. Gimbel of Gimbel Bros. department store fame. (Fun fact – Erica gets a job at Gimbels during the first season of “The Goldbergs.”) When Ellis passed away, the property was transferred to his son Col. Richard Gimbel, who lived on the premises until his death in 1970. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Richard’s heirs sold the pad to Murray in December 1971 for $87,500. Another deviation from real life? Murray, who passed away in 2008, was actually a doctor of osteopathic medicine and not the owner of a discount furniture store as portrayed on the show.
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Image Credit: Trulia To say the Gimbel Estate is grand would be an understatement. Just a few of the opulent amenities to populate the interior include an impressive entry with a hand-carved Chestnut stairwell, a formal living and dining room, a library paneled in Mahogany, a billiards parlor and an owners’ suite with his and her changing rooms.
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Image Credit: Trulia The manse also boasts three fireplaces, numerous stained glass windows and hardwood flooring throughout. Don’t go looking for a basement hangout area like the one featured regularly on the series, though. As a past real estate listing notes, the basement of 405 Newbold Rd. is unfinished.
Outside on the sprawling 0.78-acre corner lot are gardens, a huge expanse of lawn, a wrap-around brick patio, an inground swimming pool and a tennis court. The place reads more like a Catskills resort than a single-family home and is, indeed, quite a breach from the Goldbergs’ TV house.
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Image Credit: Trulia The interior shown on the series is a set that exists inside of a soundstage at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City. Overabundance of wallpaper aside, said set does not resemble the Gimbel Estate in the slightest, which is not a surprise considering it was modeled after a home in L.A. – not the Cheviot Hills house where exteriors are shot, but another location entirely.
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Image Credit: Sony Pictures Television The pilot episode of “The Goldbergs” was lensed at a different, but similar-looking traditional home located at 4545 Del Moreno Dr. in Woodland Hills. Both the exterior and interior (the latter of which was given a major 1980s overhaul) were featured extensively in the episode. When the series was eventually picked up by ABC, the interior of that home was re-created at Sony. Exterior filming, though, switched to the Earlmar Dr. property, which is in much closer proximity to the studio.
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Image Credit: Trulia But, oh, what McLendon-Covey’s Beverly wouldn’t do with the Goldbergs’ actual former kitchen, which houses a large island with two ranges, a wealth of counter space and multiple Sub-Zero refrigerators – each chock full of chicken parm, no doubt!
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Image Credit: Trulia Adam explained to Vulture that many aspects of his family life had to be toned down for the series, saying “If I did what was real . . . if I really showed what my mom was like, no one would watch the show.” Nowhere is this tempering more apparent than in Murray and Beverly’s bedroom. Though the set version could never be described as minimalist, the couple’s actual bedroom truly puts the space to shame with its patterned extra-ness!
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Image Credit: Redfin The unequally-sized school portraits that famously hang above Murray and Bev’s bed on the series are a décor element taken straight from the actual house, though, in reality, the pictures were displayed in the family’s den. But the real Beverly did indeed show a bit of favoritism toward Adam by blowing up his photo much larger than those of his brothers.
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Image Credit: Trulia In the recently-aired season eight episode “Geoff’s New Hat,” Murray attempts to appease Beverly by installing a hot tub in the basement, complete with a nature backdrop displayed behind it. That, too, is a real element of the Jenkintown property. The manse boasted an indoor “spa room” with a built-in step-up whirlpool surrounded by decking, greenhouse windows and a wilderness backdrop.
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Image Credit: Trulia Beverly sold the Gimbel Estate for $760,000 in 2011, two years before the series debuted, and now divides her time between Margate, New Jersey and Delray Beach, Florida with her second husband, Stan. Though she offloaded the house, she fortuitously kept virtually everything inside it and “The Goldbergs” prop department is the lucky recipient of her stockpiling. Much of her retro stash has wound up on the show, including furniture, framed photographs and many loud sweaters. As she told The Philadelphia Inquirer, “It got to the point I was sending even sheets and blankets and they put them on the beds. I get a kick out of it.”
As narrator Patton Oswald says in the season four episode titled “Stefan King,” “Turns out the best stories are the ones that come from a real place – the ones that come from home.”
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Adam F. Goldberg’s real-life childhood home is located at 405 Newbold Rd. in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. Disclaimer: Please remember this is a private home. Do not trespass or bother the residents or the property in any way.