# was hill street blues in pittsburgh? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 15, 2001, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340 "2001-08-15T05:21:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![funguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/58f4c7/32.png) [@funguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/funguy)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/1 "2001-08-15T05:21:15Z")
got this from another thread and i hope i didnt screw up but i always thought the hill was in a section of pittsburgh ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/2 "2001-08-15T05:26:56Z")
I don’t know. I always had the impression it was a district of Chicago. ---
**Author:** ![funguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/58f4c7/32.png) [@funguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/funguy)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/3 "2001-08-15T05:29:35Z")
never been in chicago but always had the impression of being flat ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Lao](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@Dr.Lao](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Lao)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/4 "2001-08-15T05:37:47Z")
I always got the impression that it took place in San Francisco. Weird. According to IMDB, Hill Street Blues took place in an anonymous inner city. Filming was done in Chicago and LA. It is a good bet that most of the exteriors were shot in Chicago while the sets were in LA. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/5 "2001-08-15T05:39:34Z")
I don’t recall them ever actually identifying the municipality. probably on purpose. The may have intended for it to be a genaric big city, genarics being popular in the late 70’s early 80’s:p The squad cars and uniforms did look like Chicago’s did at the time. Maybe it was Pittsburgh. Maybe in was Glenbulah. ---
**Author:** ![Chas.E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Chas.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chas.E)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/6 "2001-08-15T06:21:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Dr. Lao \* > \*\*According to IMDB, Hill Street Blues took place in an anonymous inner city. Filming was done in Chicago and LA. It is a good bet that most of the exteriors were shot in Chicago while the sets were in LA. \*\* Most of the outdoor scenes were shot in LA. There are parts of downtown (like where I lived) that are sufficiently generic looking that film crews use them constantly. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/7 "2001-08-15T12:37:24Z")
Hmmm. So Andy Sipowitz switched cities but remained a detective when he went to NYPD Blue? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/8 "2001-08-15T12:37:36Z")
The only real clue: the city had a National League baseball team. In one episode, someone mentioned an NL team coming to town. ---
**Author:** ![Shiva](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Shiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shiva)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/9 "2001-08-15T13:18:51Z")
Yes. The Hill District is on the North side of Pittsburgh, Steven Bochco went to Carnegie Mellon University, Kiel Martin was born in Pittsburgh, James B. Sikking was born in Pittsburgh, Bruce Weitz went to CMU and I believe Barbara Bosson went there too. Did they ever specify that it was in fact Pittsburgh? No. From: [http://www.salon.com/ent/col/srag/2000/05/25/hoblit/index.html](http://www.salon.com/ent/col/srag/2000/05/25/hoblit/index.html) > [@](#): > > “What city is this?” > > It was fun, because the first several years – before people got onto the fact that it was Chicago, in the main, because they figured out that the cop cars were the same color as Chicago police cars – people in Baltimore, Detroit, Boston, Philly, all thought it was their city. We purposely did not designate a city: We wanted it to be any big city where there was weather, where you got rain and snow and a sense of urban decay. The Hill itself was named after an area in Pittsburgh: a tough area called the Hill and the precinct there. Bochco had gone to college in Pittsburgh, at Carnegie[-Mellon]. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/10 "2001-08-15T14:06:51Z")
I seem to recall two times that there were film crews in my neighborhood in Chicago. One was for the film Code of Silence, the other was for Hill Street Blues. I think all they filmed for Hill Street Blues was the El going by. I thought in the movie Fresh, they were intentionally not being specific about where the story was set, though it was some place with an El. Ebert says it was Brooklyn, though, but I thought they only had subways up there. ---
**Author:** ![LateComer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5ac83/32.png) [@LateComer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LateComer)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2001, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/11 "2001-08-15T16:40:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shiva \* > **Yes. The Hill District is on the North side of Pittsburgh** The Hill District is actually East of downtown Pittsburgh, the area between Uptown and Oakland. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2001, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-hill-street-blues-in-pittsburgh/76340/12 "2001-08-16T05:21:59Z")
The exterior of the Hill Street station was the [7th District (Maxwell Street) Police Station in Chicago](http://www.ci.chi.il.us/CAPS/AboutCPD/PressReleases/PressReleases97/MaxStreetClose.html). Also, in one of the episodes I recognized an intersection on Lincoln Avenue north of Fullerton where the elevated crosses it.