In 1980, a film crew drove through the streets of downtown St. Louis and saw exactly what they’d been looking for: ruin.

A large portion of Escape From New York was filmed in East St. Louis after a fire had destroyed a large number of buildings. The area looked so bad the art department didn’t think they needed to add anything to simulate a ghetto area of a New York City of the future.

John Carpenter needed a city that looked like it had been abandoned. He found one that nearly had been. The movie’s dystopian Manhattan — walled off, lawless, crumbling — was largely St. Louis in disguise. St. Louis Union Station, a then-vacant railway terminus, became Grand Central Station. The New Masonic Temple on Lindell Boulevard stood in for the New York Public Library. The Chain of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi became the movie’s climactic escape route — the fictional 69th Street Bridge — in a scene that still holds up.

The Fox Theatre on Grand Avenue appeared as a crumbling venue where Snake Plissken searches for clues. Both the Fox and Union Station were in rough shape when filming happened. They’ve since been restored. The streets that doubled for apocalyptic New York are now mostly parking lots and renovated lofts.

Kurt Russell has said Snake Plissken is his favorite role. He filmed most of it here, in our city, in our ruins.

There’s something fitting about that. St. Louis has always been good at playing a version of itself that makes people uncomfortable.