Moonrise Kingdom | 2012
Rhode Island – mainly around Conanicut Island west of Newport – provides the location for the fictitious ‘New Penzance’, as runaways Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward) disrupt the life of a New England town in the mid-Sixties, while an ominous storm brews.
‘Summer’s End’, the lighthouse home of Suzy’s parents, the Bishops (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand), is Conanicut Light, Bay View Drive North in Jamestown, on Conanicut Island, the second largest island in Narragansett Bay. And remember that this is a private home, so please don’t disturb residents.
The interior was built in the old Linen ‘N’ Things store, 1315 West Main Road, in the Middletown Square Shopping Center, Middletown, just to the north of Newport.
‘Camp Ivanhoe’, run by Scout Master Randy Ward (Edward Norton) and from which Sam makes his escape, was constructed on Bayfield Farm, Camp Fuller Road, in South Kingstown, on the mainland to the southwest.
Nearly 20 miles to the northwest near the Connecticut border, the bigger camp, ‘Fort Lebanon’, domain of the domineering Commander Pierce (Harvey Keitel), is Camp Yawgoogmore, 61 Camp Yawgoog Road, in Hopkinton.
Way further north in West Greenwich, Sam hides his canoe at Stepstone Falls, a former quarry, on the Falls River in Arcadia Management Area.
Back at Jamestown, Sam meets up with Suzy at Watson Farm, 455 North Road, a cultural history museum owned by Historic New England.
The ‘Island Police’ HQ of Police Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) was built just for the movie on the dock jutting out into the Sakonnet River behind the Glen Manor House, 3 Frank Coelho Drive, a French-style chateau in Portsmouth, northeast of Newport
In Newport itself, you’ll find ‘St Jack’s’, in which the townsfolk take shelter and site of the tumultuous climax, which is Trinity Church, 141 Spring Street. And it still has a spire.
And finally, the ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ cove itself is the bay beneath Fort Wetherill, a former Coast Artillery fort overlooking the entrance to Narragansett Bay, in Fort Wetherill State Park down on the most southeasterly tip of Conanicut Island.
