The Abandoned Movie Set of Patriot's Day

In 2013, terrorist brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonated homemade bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds more. In 2016, the movie Patriot's Day starring Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Bacon was released, recounting this disgusting attack. Much of the filming took place at a former naval base in South Weymouth Massachusetts, where the neighborhood and downtown sets that were created for this movie remain standing today.

The South Weymouth Naval Air Station opened in 1942, and during WWII it served as home base to blimps that would patrol the coast of New England for German submarines. Following the war it was downgraded to a parking lot for decommissioned aircraft, but in the 1950s the base was retrofitted with three runways and given new life as a training center for reservists. Blimps went away, jets came in, and operations continued until 1996 when, after a farewell airshow to 100,000 spectators, the base was closed. Much of it has been razed since then, but two of the towers still stand out in the woods.

The set is visible from the road that borders the base, aptly named Patriot Pkwy. From there it's just a five minute walk to the fake neighborhood. This area is open to the public, so you're liable to come across plenty of joggers, dog-walkers, and otherwise friendly people out enjoying their day. Fencing was put up to keep the movie set off-limits, but both times I've been there the gates have been wide open, allowing us to stroll right in.

Depending on which angle the house was filmed at, it was built either to be just a facade or to have some sides and depth. This one - which some local artist mistook for a canvas - would have been used for only a straight shot.

While a house like this was built for a corner shot, and does a pretty good job convincing you someone could actually live there.

Come around the backside and you'll see it's just a front and one side, however.

Almost every house has at least two floors, accessible by either ladder or stairs, so that someone could appear in an upstairs window. Such as my daughter and I.

Front

Back

From a distance things look pretty well built, but upon closer inspection the tricks of keeping within budget are evident. What looks like a brick stairway is just wooden construction with a fake brick layering.

Details large and small went into making this a believable set. Power lines run the length of the street, then abruptly end once out of camera shot.

The second part of the set stands about a thousand feet away, and consists of several business fronts for the downtown scenes. As with the neighborhood, both vandals and Mother Nature have not been kind, although one of the two doesn't know any better.

Green screens at the top of each building allowed them to be given different business names and used for more than one scene.

There's a part in the movie where Mark Wahlberg walks into a bar amidst all the chaos, and before leaving grabs a bottle of liquor and takes a swig. My wife was hoping to re-enact that scene, but unfortunately she forgot the whiskey.

Another thing about this bar, they proudly accept both Vista and BankMaster credit cards.

It was less than six months between the first and second time I explored here, and in that period the condition of the set has drastically deteriorated. There's a reason they put fences around places like this, but those chain walls have failed to keep out the handful of troublemakers who've wreaked havoc here. At this rate, a time will come when this becomes more of an eyesore and less of a novelty, and when that happens the town will be forced to take it down. I worry that day will happen soon - so visit the abandoned movie set now, while you still have the chance.