Manhattan Locations (Dressed to Kill) Dressed to Kill
Dressed to Kill was shot primarily on location in New York City between October 1979 and January 1980, with the museum interiors filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The film uses Manhattan geography as both setting and narrative mechanism -- the elevator building, the subway system, the psychiatrist's office, and the museum are all specific places whose spatial properties determine how scenes play.
Dr. Elliott's office is in a basement at 162 East 70th Street
The psychiatrist's office where Kate confesses her frustration, Peter scouts the appointment book, and Liz springs the seduction trap is the basement of 162 East 70th Street near Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side. De Palma uses the street-level entrance and narrow stairway to establish the office as a contained space -- a box that characters enter and from which, in beat 29, the killer emerges. (movie-locations)
The Tweed Courthouse at 52 Chambers Street doubles for Bellevue Hospital
The interior of Bellevue Hospital -- where Elliott is confined after the reveal, and from which he escapes in Liz's nightmare -- was filmed at the Tweed Courthouse at 52 Chambers Street in the Civic Center. The actual Bellevue stands on First Avenue; the Tweed Courthouse provided the institutional architecture De Palma needed without the restrictions of filming in an active hospital. (movie-locations)
The Philadelphia Museum of Art stands in for the Metropolitan Museum
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York rejected De Palma's production -- they considered the script in bad taste. Because De Palma grew up in Philadelphia, the interiors were moved to the Philadelphia Museum of Art at Benjamin Franklin Parkway and 26th Street. New York exteriors maintain the Manhattan setting -- the audience sees Kate entering what appears to be the Met, but the galleries she wanders through are in Philadelphia. See The Museum Sequence for the full analysis. (phillyvoice)
Cinematographer Ralf D. Bode had shot the same building four years earlier -- the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps sequence in Rocky (1976). See Ralf D. Bode.
The subway system provides the film's most dangerous public space
The subway chase in beats 18-19 was shot in the actual New York subway system. Nancy Allen described the energy that on-location filming brought to the thriller:
"New York is a rather energetic city, so there's immediately that hum that's under everything you do that really energizes, particularly when you're running around and it's a thriller." -- Nancy Allen, SlashFilm (2015)
The subway functions as the film's most threatening public space -- the gang harassment, the absent transit cops, and the blonde pursuer all converge in a setting where Liz cannot escape and cannot control who enters the train car.
The apartment building elevator is the film's most important single location
The elevator where Kate is murdered is in the same building where she spent the afternoon with the stranger -- the geography forces her back through the murder site on her way out. The elevator's confined space, mirrored ceiling, and opening-and-closing doors create a visual trap: Kate cannot flee, the blonde cannot be avoided, and Liz arrives when the doors open to find a body and a razor. The building's address is not publicly identified in production materials, but the New York exteriors establish it as a residential building on the Upper East Side or Upper West Side.