Severance fans whose outies are eager to visit the home of the show’s mysterious Lumon corporation will be pleased to learn that the real-life building is only an hour’s drive from New York City — and it’s open for business.
To viewers, the six-story, mirrored glass structure is well-known for being the eerily sterile office building where the show’s severed characters clock in for work every day.
However, to the townspeople of Holmdel, New Jersey — where the real-life building stands — it’s a multi-purpose space with offices, shops, and eateries open to the public.
Called Bell Works, the building was designed by Finnish-American modernist architect Eero Saarinen and constructed between 1959 and 1962.
It originally served as a “pivotal research and development hub” to Bell Labs, the research and development arm of AT&T, according to the Holmdel Historical Society.
It was abandoned in 2007 and later bought in 2013 and renovated by developer Ralph Zucker, who turned it into “a one-of-a-kind destination for business and culture,” per the Bell Works website.
While Severance isn’t the only TV show to shoot at Bell Works — it’s also been featured in American Horror Story and Emergence — the Apple TV+ series has certainly increased its popularity among tourists.
Speaking to Curbed about the building’s recent surge in visitors looking to take a selfie outside or inside the lobby, Zucker said: “I have heard that we have a lot more people coming in and taking pictures of themselves in the space. We have a whole team that works on social media, and they’re inundated.”
He noted that there are no formal tours available for visitors. Instead, they are given free rein to walk around the lower levels.
The building was discovered in 2019 by Severance’s director of photography, Jessica Lee Gangé, who was tasked with finding a filming location that would stand in for the show’s ominous Lumon Industries headquarters.
While searching the internet for dilapidated and abandoned malls, she came across Bell Works.
“When I saw the overhead of it, I was like, this can’t be true,” she recalled in a new interview with the New York Times. “Is this a real place?”
Of the “mind-blowing moment,” Gagné added: “There was a part of me that couldn’t believe how perfect it was.”
Bell Works’ central atrium, lobby, and wide-open parking lot were the main areas used as establishing shots for the show. The rest of the scenes were filmed on various sound stages around New York, according to Curbed.
Although the building is portrayed in Severance as “this empty devoid-of-life space,” as described by Zucker, he assured that “in reality, we’re literally teeming with life.”
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