This request came in from timmmmy (my apologies if there’s not enough “m’s”). While I’ve posted most of the information before, this post gathers together some information that, until now, has been spread over a couple of posts and several comments.
I’d like to create my Springfield as true to the real Springfield as possible. I was wondering if you could do a post regarding which buildings are next to which buildings in the real Springfield, and any specific characteristics or decorations that should go with specific buildings.. Thanks in advance!!
Leaving aside the point that Springfield’s not real ( 
), someone has taken the time to put together a map of our beloved Springfield – and that must have been challenging given the way buildings seem to move around from episode to episode.
You can see the map below, which was originally created by Jeremy Lerma and Terry Hogan at CAL Poly at Pomona in California back in 2001 (according http://www.asdlabs.com/blog/2008/02/11/guide-to-springfield-usa/ – thanks Samantha for finding this link):
You can also see an interactive version of this map showing the buildings as they look in the series at this location: http://adn.blam.be/springfield/
There are a couple of things that are worth noting:
1. The map hasn’t been updated since about 2004, so many of the more recent buildings don’t appear. These include:
- El Chemistri
- Howard’s Flowers
- The Mapple Store
2. Whether or not any map of Springfield could ever be considered accurate is a moot point, particularly as the buildings seem to move around a bit. In fact, Homer even points this out very early on in the game when you’re moving the Kwik-E-Mart. As I recall, he says that it really doesn’t matter where the buildings go – after all, at one point, Springfield Penitentiary was next door to the Simpson’s house just so they could say they lived next to a prison. But in the very next scene it was gone.
3. Some of the buildings only appear in the Treehouse of Horror episodes and may or may not be “real”. These include:
- The Springfield Subatomic Supercollider
- The Bad Dream House
- The House of Evil
4. At least one building isn’t even in Springfield (in fact it’s in Ireland):
- Tom O’Flanagan’s Pub
One really helpful source for Springfield addresses and locations is the Simpsons wikia. If you can’t find the location of a building there, you probably won’t find it anywhere. And Sarah also suggests the following site:
With the warning that TVTropes is the kind of site that can waste hours of your time (though John Lennon apparently said that time you enjoy wasting isn’t wasted, so YMMV!), there’s an entertaining page there about the geography of Springfield, just in case anyone is as nerdy as I am – http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/SeparateSimpsonsGeographyThing?from=Main.SeparateSimpsonsGeographyThing
Like I say, enter at your peril – TVTropes is a black hole that can make your day disappear, but it is interesting and amusing, too
This is my favourite quirk of Springfield geography:
“The “Five Corners”, the only place in the United States where five states share a border, one of them being Springfield’s. When police from all five states show up there, they include stock parodies of Minnesotans, New Jerseyans, and Hawaiians.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
