“Mad Men” was primarily filmed in Los Angeles, with some key work done in New York City, plus a few special-location shoots.

Main filming locations

  • Primary production base: Los Angeles Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles, where most interior office sets (like Sterling Cooper and later agencies) were built and filmed.
  • Soundstages: Additional studio work was done at Silvercup Studios in New York City, especially associated with early production and select interiors.
  • Pilot episode: The original pilot was shot in New York City before the series moved full-time to Los Angeles for regular production.

Notable Los Angeles spots

Many “New York” bars, restaurants, and public spaces on screen are actually real locations in LA that were dressed to look 1960s:

  • Historic restaurants and bars such as Canter’s Deli, Cole’s, Casey’s Irish Pub, Clifton’s, Musso & Frank, and others appear throughout the series.
  • Downtown LA theaters and cultural venues like the Los Angeles Theatre and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion doubled as various New York and European exteriors and interiors.

New York and other real-world locations

Although most filming happened in Los Angeles, a few storylines used real locations elsewhere:

  • The show’s world is set around Madison Avenue in Manhattan; exteriors of classic office buildings and Manhattan streets are associated with addresses like 405 Madison Avenue and the Time & Life Building, even when recreated or matched in LA.
  • Some scenes were filmed on location outside California, such as the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Hawaii for Don and Megan’s trip, and Big Sur in California standing in for Don’s retreat at the end of the series.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.