Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504681
of patina, meant to look a little tattered around the edges. For me, using a club as an inspiration was an idea that took a nostalgic page from the first '70s set simply updated a decade. The found pieces were the key to giving this set a sense of authenticity and they worked beautifully. In one form or another (we eventually moved it over to become the guest music set), this room was used well into the '90s. Though the essential vision and design was mine, the approach to how the set was realized was completely in the manner of Eugene. The Grand Central Terminal set has become the most recognizably iconic in the show's 48-year history, probably because it's been up since season twenty-nine. Until then, every few years we would see a change in either the guest music set, home base or both. Before that, the Brooklyn Bridge set was created over a few seasons incorporating a Lower East Side tenement home base with a few different industrial-themed interiors for the adjacent music stage. All these had elements of the found object in them. From working industrial fans and salvaged steel casement windows to electrical boxes and copper tubing, a single material would often inspire an entire design. On a visit to Steigelbauer, the shop that builds the show in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Eugene and I chanced upon an old power station. The room was wrapped in exposed copper tubes and glazed tiles with large industrial casement windows. We liked it so much, it became the model for season eighteen's music set. Eventually, we had an expanded single set of the bridge stretching across both stages. The steel girders of the bridge horizontally tied both sets together, supporting overhead beams in an array as a unified ceiling. The music stage was the bridge itself with steel truss upstage and a fiber-optic star drop for the night A. CONAN O'BRIEN ON THE 2001 HOME BASE. MARY ELLEN MATTHEWS/ NBC. B. THE ALABAMA SHAKES PERFORMING IN 2015. DANA EDELSON/NBC. A B