The Cassidy Apartment is a Land Without Magic location featured on ABC's Once Upon a Time. It first appears in the first episode of the second season.
History
At some point after fleeing to Canada to avoid being arrested, Neal arrives in New York and settles into an apartment. Sometime during this, he begins researching a way to destroy magic and writes down all his findings in a journal, with one piece of information including a lead at the Midtown Manhattan library. One day while listening to his iPod, Neal walks into his room and notices it has begun raining. As he goes to close the open window, it becomes stuck. When he pushes the latch too hard, his iPod and earphones slip onto the escape ladder below. A moment later, a dove carrying a postcard arrives, which, unknown to Neal, was sent to him by August, who promised to send him a postcard if and when Emma managed to break the Dark Curse in Storybrooke. On the card front, he sees a photo of a clock tower with the phrase, "Greetings from Storybrooke", and upon flipping to the back, only one word is written on it, "Broken". ("Broken," "Tallahassee," "Only You")
Emma, owing Mr. Gold a favor from a previous deal, travels with him to New York to find his son, Baelfire. In an apartment complex, Emma instinctively notices one of the rooms has no resident name, so she presses the call button. When Neal picks up on the other end, she pretends to be delivering a UPS package. For reasons unknown, he hangs up and bolts out the window. Rushing outside, Emma, Henry and Mr. Gold see a man, his face obscured by a hood, jump down the fire escape and run off. Following a chase, Emma discovers he is Neal; her ex-boyfriend and Henry's biological father. Neal, not wanting his father to find him, asks her to let him go. Emma resolves to do so because Neal never knew she was pregnant with Henry. When she lies to Mr. Gold about his son getting away, he breaks into the apartment room. Inside, Emma notices a dream catcher that she and Neal once had, and her recognition draws Mr. Gold's suspicion. Before things get heated, Emma tells Henry to wait in the bathroom. As Mr. Gold angrily accosts her, Neal bursts in to stop him. Henry, hearing the commotion, walks in and casually asks if he is Baelfire. In disbelief, Neal hears Emma say the boy is her son, to which he realizes Henry is his son as well. Forced to come clean, she admits, to Neal and Henry, about their actual familial connection with each other. An upset Henry climbs out to the fire escape while Neal allows his father to talk to him. Mr. Gold desires to be a family again and make up for his mistakes, but Neal bitterly remembers his father choosing the Dark One's powers over him. Emma apologizes to Henry for lying, as she previously told him his father was dead, while the boy expresses disappointment that she, like his adoptive mother, has lied to him. Later, Henry and Neal become acquainted with each other. ("Manhattan")
As Neal gets to know Henry, he swears the boy to secrecy about his past venture in trying to find a way to destroy magic, and that he documented all his research in a journal. ("Only You")
After sightseeing around town, Neal agrees to show Henry around the museum. While they head up to the apartment to grab a camera, Emma and Mr. Gold wait in the lobby. Suddenly, Hook bursts in, shoving Emma aside, before plunging a poison-coated hook into Mr. Gold's chest. Without magic outside of Storybrooke, Mr. Gold is unable to fight back. Before Hook can deliver another blow to kill his nemesis, Emma uses a trash can to knock him unconscious. At the commotion, Henry and Neal rush back downstairs. Neal later traps Hook, while he is still out cold, in the storeroom. ("The Queen Is Dead")
Following Neal's journey to Storybrooke to save his father's life, he decides to stay in town for Henry's sake. Phoning his fiancée in New York, he asks her to join him and meet his son. At some point, Neal returns to his apartment and discovers Hook is missing from the storeroom. ("Selfless, Brave and True")A year after Emma and Henry start new lives in New York City with the false memories Regina gave them, Hook escapes another curse and tries to persuade Emma to come back to Storybrooke. He provides a written address for her and tells her to go there as proof that he is not lying about Storybrooke and her family. Upon arriving at the address, she goes in and looks around, eventually realizing the apartment belongs to Neal. Emma notices a dream catcher hanging on the window, which she recalls from her past with Neal, before noticing a camera strap that has Henry's name on it. Unsure of how Neal knows of her son's existence, she also takes the camera film roll to see what kind of photos are on it. ("New York City Serenade")
Starting over in New York City, Robin Hood and his family searches for Neal's old apartment, which Regina designated as their new home. Unbeknownst to him, his wife Marian is actually Zelena in disguise. After they settle into the apartment, Mr. Gold arrives, trying to throw them out until he collapses from a heart attack. While Marian stays with Roland at the apartment, Robin takes the older man to the hospital. Later, Robin returns to his family after procuring an elixir to heal Mr. Gold. As Roland is eating an egg omelette, his mother fetches him a glass of milk. When Marian questions why he didn't let Mr. Gold die, Robin is shocked by her words since it's not something she'd say. She explains her change in attitude is because of the circumstances they are in now, but he refuses to let go of his honor code. With her own plan in mind, she switches out the potion so that her husband ends up delivering a fake one. After this, Robin gathers Neal's belongings from the apartment for Mr. Gold, who refuses to take it as they are a reminder of the man his son became after he abandoned him. Mr. Gold tells Robin to follow his heart's desire and never let it go. Marian, finding Regina's number on Robin's mobile, pushes him to choose her or her former lover. Recalling the love they once had and the sacrifices she made for him, he picks her and deletes Regina's number. As they passionately kiss, the mirror casts Zelena's reflection, without Robin's notice. ("Heart of Gold")
Sometime during his stay in the apartment, Robin shelves a book that Regina gifted him prior to his departure from Storybrooke. The book contains stories on the various incarnations of Robin Hood, and he eventually writes a letter to Regina that he keeps inside it. In the letter, Robin laments over his separation from Regina and tells her that she'll always be the hero he fell in love with. ("Only You")
Nine weeks later, on Mr. Gold's directive, Regina phones Robin. Marian answers, before morphing out of her disguise, to reveal herself as Zelena to her sister. ("Heart of Gold")
Intending to rescue Robin from Zelena, Regina knocks on the apartment door, after arriving in New York with Emma and Lily. Robin is surprised but happy to see her, giving Regina a hug, before she blurts out the truth about Zelena and Marian. He is astonished at her claims, and when Marian returns, she seeks her husband's protection when Regina begins threatening her. Robin Hood manages to make Regina stop just as Marian pulls out her six leaf clover and reverts to Zelena. With the truth out in the open, Regina urges Robin to grab Roland and leave with her, but he refuses, eventually admitting that Zelena is pregnant with his child. ("Lily")
While Regina and Robin leave to talk privately, Emma and Lily stay behind in the apartment with Zelena. Lily curiously wonders who the apartment belongs to, and Emma tells her it used to belong to someone important to her until Zelena killed him. Zelena, hearing Emma's remark, sardonically apologizes. When an angry Emma moves towards her, Zelena makes her stop by asking her to consider the baby. Later, Regina and Robin return, deciding everyone, as well as Zelena, will be going back to Storybrooke. ("Mother")On a mission to destroy magic, Henry leads Violet Morgan to New York City, where he tells her that his father Neal was once on the same quest and never finished it. At the apartment, the teens find an old record for the song "Only You", which is the song they bonded over when they first met in Camelot. They read through Neal's old journal, which provides a lead for them at the Midtown Manhattan library. Henry looks up information about the library on the laptop, but before leaving with Violet, he erases the internet history. When Emma arrives with Regina, she runs a scan on the laptop to recover what Henry attempted to erase. Regina notices the shelf has the book that she once gave to Robin Hood, and she opens it to find an unsent letter that Robin wrote to her, in which he praises her for being the hero that he fell in love with. Conflicted over her darker instincts, she comes clean to Emma about her struggles. Regina explains how being good has made her suffer losses and that she has to live with the evils of her past, or risk giving into darkness again and losing her loved ones. Emma believes she will prevail, but the latter thinks being miserable either way is her fate. ("Only You")
The night before returning to Storybrooke, the heroes and their new ally Jekyll rest up at the apartment. Snow joins Regina on the roof to talk to her about her struggle with darkness. While Regina has resigned herself to a life of being miserable, Snow suggests that she can make a clean break from the Evil Queen. Jekyll, as thanks to the heroes for saving him, gives them the last of a serum meant to separate the good and bad sides of a person. Snow and Emma stay in support of Regina as she injects herself with the serum and confronts the Evil Queen. After mustering her strength, Regina rips out the Queen's heart and crushes it, killing her darker self. ("An Untold Story")Trivia
On-Screen Notes
- On the day Neal receives a postcard from Storybrooke, his bed is in the same room where the door to the apartment is.[1] When he reunites with his father, the bed has been moved into the neighboring room, and a couch is sitting where the bed used to be.[2] This is seen more clearly when Emma, Henry, Mr. Gold and Neal prepare to leave New York City after Mr. Gold is poisoned with dreamshade. ("Broken," "Manhattan," "The Queen Is Dead")
- The apartment number is 407.[3] ("Manhattan")
- The address is 89 Wooster Street, New York, NY, 10012.[4] ("New York City Serenade")
- The city view from the top of the apartment building[5] is the same as the view seen from the top of Emma's apartment building in "New York City Serenade",[6] indicating that the two buildings are located in the same neighborhood. ("An Untold Story")
Production Notes
- The apartment is situated across the street from the back building of real-life Italian pasta supplier Piemonte Ravoli located on 162 Mulberry Street[7] (note that the frontal retail store is on 190 Grand Street)[8] in New York City. ("Broken")
Popular Culture
- Beside the shelf next to the door,[9] there is a black skateboard with the words "NOMEANSNO" from the Canadian punk rock band Nomeansno's The Day Everything Became Isolated and Destroyed album logo. ("Broken")
- Interestingly, one of the album tracks is called Beauty and the Beast.
- Among the titles sitting in the bookshelf by the door are The Complaints by Ian Rankin, Cat Councillor by Vicky Hall, Lasher by Anne Rice, The Reversal by Michael Connelly, Stolen Prey by John Sandford and Blind to the Bones by Stephen Booth. The rightmost title on the bottom shelf is another book by John Sandford, but the title is illegible.[10] ("Manhattan")
- The novel Deep Lie by Stuart Woods is sitting on one of Neal's bookshelves.[11] ("Manhattan")
- Emma finds the LP record Upstairs at Eric's by Yazoo in the apartment.[12] It contains the song Only You, which Neal used to play for Emma. ("Dreamcatcher", "Only You")
- Pleading Guilty by Scott Turow,[13] a hardcover edition of Closing the Ring by Winston Churchill[13] (from The Second World War book series), Howard Ruff from A to Z by Howard Ruff,[13] Acts of Betrayal by John Trenhaile[14] and In the Company of Heroes by Michael Durant and Steven Hartov[14] are sitting on Neal's bookshelf. ("Only You")
- Howard Ruff from A to Z is also sitting on a shelf in the Underbrooke library in "Firebird",[15] indicating that it's a re-used prop.
Neal's apartment is decorated with poster promoting musicians signed to the Vancouver-based record company Mint Records:
- A promo poster for Life Through One Speaker,[1] a 2003 album by the indie pop band Young and Sexy. ("Broken," "Manhattan")
- The album photo by the window[16] is Canadian singer John Guliak's 7 Stories & 13 Songs. ("Broken" et al.)
- Over Neal's bed,[17] there is a promotional poster for the studio album release party of Canadian garage rock band The Pack A.D.[18] ("Manhattan")
- There is a poster[20] promoting a "mint night" concert at The Brickyard (a former bar in Vancouver[21]) on October 17, 2003.[22] The performers listed are the Canadian indie rock band The Buttless Chaps, The Ramblin' Ambassadors and the Canadian indie pop band[23] The Gay. ("Manhattan", "Heart of Gold")
- There is a promotional poster for The Queen of Vancouver Island, a 2012 album by the Canadian alternative country singer Carolyn Mark, over Neal's bed.[17] ("Manhattan")
- There are[24] two advertisements for Sled Island,[25] an annual independent festival held in Calgary, Alberta. The poster says "Mint Records at Sled Island!", and lists performances by The Pack A.D., the Canadian rock band The Ramblin' Ambassadors, the Vancouver-based indie rock band Hot Panda, the Canadian garage rock band The Evaporators and the Canadian indie pop Novillero. ("Manhattan", "The Queen Is Dead")
- Over Neal's couch, there is a promotional poster for The Ramblin' Ambassadors, promoting their 2012 album Ramble On.[26] ("Manhattan", "The Queen Is Dead")
- Two poster promoting the 2005 album Brigadoon by the Canadian indie pop band P:ano.[27] ("Manhattan", "New York City Serenade", "Heart of Gold")
- A promo poster for Vancouver-based band Vancougar.[28] ("Manhattan", "New York City Serenade")
- There is a promo poster[29] for Carolyn Mark and the Canadian alternative country and bluegrass band Luther Wright and the Wrongs, and their Owner Operator Tour from 2012.[30] ("Manhattan", "Heart of Gold")
Props Notes
- The dreamcatcher hanging in Neal's apartment was given to him by Emma. ("Broken" et al, "Tallahassee")
- One of the letters addressed to Neal is from a Ms. C. Marion.[31] ("New York City Serenade")
- This is a reference to Cheryl Marion, an art director on the show.
- Cheryl Marion is also listed as one of the reviewers on the book blurb for Isaac's novel Heroes and Villains.[32] ("Operation Mongoose Part 1")
Set Dressing
- Neal has a collection of clocks,[1] just like his father, Mr. Gold, and his son, Henry. ("Broken")
- There is a sign in the apartment that reads "Cleaner & Hatters".[1] ("Broken" et al.)
- Next to the sign,[9] an Aesthetic Apparatus "Bike Ride" poster is hanging.[33] ("Broken" et al.)
- The apartment[1] has a framed Aesthetic Apparatus poster called "Control & Capital",[34] containing the image of a red hand, which was created for the Communication Arts Magazine 2008 May/June issue.[35] ("Broken" et al.)
- Neal has many vintage items in his apartment such as an array of old radios, old microphones, classic cameras, records and record player, cobbler's wooden shoe forms, old pencil sharpener and an old telephone. ("Broken" et al.)
- Neal's son Henry also has a collection of vintage items in his own apartment in Seattle.[36] ("Hyperion Heights" et al.)
- The poster next to the locker Henry is searching[37] is an alternatively colored Aesthetic Apparatus artwork.[38] ("Manhattan")
- "330 Vegetarian Recipes For Health" can be seen on Robin and "Marian'"s bookshelf.[39] ("Lily")
- When Emma and Regina are in the apartment, an Aestethic Apparatus poster done for the Scorched Art Gallery show at the La Luz De Jesus gallery in Los Angeles,[40] is hanging on the wall.[41] ("Only You")
- The prop used for the flying carpet on Once Upon a Time[42] and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland[43] doubles as a rug in Neal's apartment in "An Untold Story", where it is seen lying under the coffee table.[44] This can also be glimpsed in the previous episode, "Only You".[45]
Filming Locations
- 161 Mulberry Street in New York City doubles as the entrance of Neal's apartment in "Broken".[46]
- The Canvas Lounge[47] in Vancouver, British Columbia doubles as the exterior of Neal's apartment in "Manhattan".[48]
Appearances
Once Upon a Time: Season Two | ||||||||||
"Broken": | "We Are Both": | "Lady of the Lake": | "The Crocodile": | "The Doctor": | "Tallahassee": | "Child of the Moon": | "Into the Deep": | "Queen of Hearts": | "The Cricket Game": | "The Outsider": |
Appears | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent |
"In the Name of the Brother": | "Tiny": | "Manhattan": | "The Queen Is Dead": | "The Miller's Daughter": | "Welcome to Storybrooke": | "Selfless, Brave and True": | "Lacey": | "The Evil Queen": | "Second Star to the Right": | "And Straight On 'Til Morning": |
Absent | Absent | Appears | Appears | Absent | Absent | Mentioned | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent |
Once Upon a Time: Season Three | ||||||||||
"The Heart of the Truest Believer": | "Lost Girl": | "Quite a Common Fairy": | "Nasty Habits": | "Good Form": | "Ariel": | "Dark Hollow": | "Think Lovely Thoughts": | "Save Henry": | "The New Neverland": | "Going Home": |
Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent |
"New York City Serenade": | "Witch Hunt": | "The Tower": | "Quiet Minds": | "It's Not Easy Being Green": | "The Jolly Roger": | "Bleeding Through": | "A Curious Thing": | "Kansas": | "Snow Drifts": | "There's No Place Like Home": |
Appears | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent |
Once Upon a Time: Season Four | ||||||||||
"A Tale of Two Sisters": |
"White Out": |
"Rocky Road": |
"The Apprentice": |
"Breaking Glass": |
"Family Business": | "The Snow Queen": |
"Smash the Mirror": |
"Fall": | "Shattered Sight": |
"Heroes and Villains": |
Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent |
"Darkness on the Edge of Town": |
"Unforgiven": | "Enter the Dragon": | "Poor Unfortunate Soul": |
"Best Laid Plans": | "Heart of Gold": | "Sympathy for the De Vil": |
"Lily": | "Mother": | "Operation Mongoose Part 1": |
"Operation Mongoose Part 2": |
Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Appears | Absent | Appears | Appears | Absent | Absent |
Once Upon a Time: Season Five | |||||||||||
"The Dark Swan": | "The Price": | "Siege Perilous": | "The Broken Kingdom": | "Dreamcatcher": | "The Bear and the Bow": | "Nimue": | "Birth": | "The Bear King": | "Broken Heart": | "Swan Song": | |
Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | |
"Souls of the Departed": | "Labor of Love": | "Devil's Due": | "The Brothers Jones": | "Our Decay": | "Her Handsome Hero": | "Ruby Slippers": | "Sisters": | "Firebird": | "Last Rites": | "Only You": | "An Untold Story": |
Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent | Appears | Appears |
Once Upon a Time: Specials | ||||||||||
"Magic is Coming": |
"The Price of Magic": | "Journey to Neverland": | "Wicked is Coming": | "Storybrooke Has Frozen Over": | ||||||
Absent | Archive | Archive | Archive | Absent | ||||||
"Secrets of Storybrooke": | "Dark Swan Rises": | "Evil Reigns Once More": | "The Final Battle Begins": | |||||||
Archive | Archive | Archive | Archive |
Note: "Archive" denotes archive footage.