Steven Smith, World Designer for The Godfather discusses bringing New Jersey to life in the game.

What makes New Jersey unique in the world of The Godfather?

New Jersey is the only neighborhood in the Godfather world which has a different environmental feel to it. It’s patterned after a traditional small American town, particularly of the type found in the outer regions of Manhattan. Though most of the buildings are made of brick they are lower in height, typically two or three floors. Many of the city blocks are not populated with tenement buildings but instead they are occupied with detached houses usually with corner businesses at the end of such blocks. The most noted feature of New Jersey is the town square park located in the middle of the neighborhood, complete with a band shell structure and community type venues located around it such as a bank and a church.

New Jersey is considered by many to be the ‘armpit of the Northeast’. Does that show at all in The Godfather version of Jersey?

In the Godfather world New Jersey is a neighborhood that conveys an industrial ambiance. Through no fault of its own that’s the nature of such communities circa 1945 that were located along water way transit points. It’s an outlying residential community located along the waterfront of the Hudson River, and so it’s going to have warehouses, power plants and rail yards.

What type of research went into re-creating 1945-1955 New Jersey?

The starting point for research was to look at aerial photographs of New Jersey along the Hudson River region. Much of the area appears grid like and uniform, so little things such as city parks, angled streets relative to the grid layout, and rail yards in urban areas tend to stand out and identify an area that can represent a symbolic New Jersey town for the Godfather world. These elements along with the locations of the Lincoln and Holland Tunnel toll plazas to the north and south respectively really identified the general location for the New Jersey neighborhood. Other research pertains to looking at the types of buildings which are representative of many of the outlying neighborhoods of Manhattan such as the two story brick storefront and detached housing typologies.

 

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