‘The Woman in the Window’ Haunts a Brooklyn Brownstone

You see a woman’s face appear in the window of a brownstone. She looks anxious, drawn. You look closer. It’s Amy Adams. But you’re not at home watching The Woman in the Window on Netflix. You’re walking down a residential street in Brooklyn.

This scenario has been on repeat for about a week now. The first floor windows of a Park Slope brownstone have been overtaken by large screens advertising the new Netflix thriller.

They were spotted by Jake Dobkin, publisher of Gothamist, on an evening walk in his Park Slope neighborhood. Dobkin tweeted out his sighting, expressing concern for nearby residents who would be subjected to its lights at night. In an interview, he said that the lights are “pretty bright, like an LCD television on its brightest setting, pressed against the window.”

The building is in Brooklyn Community District 6 and appears to be residential. Video signs are legal in the NYC, but there are restrictions. According to Section 32-68: “Where non-residential uses are permitted to occupy two floors of the building, all signs accessory to non-residential uses located on the second floor shall be non-illuminated signs, and shall be located below the level of the finished floor of the third story.”

Netflix did not immediately respond to questions about the advertisement.

Dobkin said the screens aren’t playing a full trailer but rather seem to be more like an animated set of slides. He noted a range of responses to the installation. On seeing it, his wife said, “What the hell is that?” And shortly after, he received an email from a neighbor who declared it “ridiculous.” But Dobkin said of his kids: “[They] spend 15 hours a day on screens, didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. This bodes ill for their generation, I think.”

Things haven’t boded well for the film in question, either. The Woman in the Window came out on Netflix on Friday, but it was a rocky road to the streaming screen, from pandemic-related delays that sunk a theatrical debut to reshoots after test audiences lost the plot. Not to mention the literary-world scandal surrounding the author who wrote the book this movie is based on.

In the movie, Adams drinks glass after glass of wine and rambles through an excessively large Harlem brownstone (the interior was filmed on a soundstage at Marcy Amory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn). How she affords it is one of those cinematic mysteries. The residents of Park Slope, who pay plenty to live in their pricey neighborhood, probably wish this lady in the window would return to Manhattan.

Editors’ Note: Editors’ Note: This story was updated with comment from the Department of Buildings.