This special place is close to everything, making it easy to plan your visit. A 135-year-old house in Detroit has a costarring role in a new vampire movie, featuring a very intriguing romantic couple played by Avengers star Tom Hiddleston and Oscar winner Tilda Swinton of Michael Clayton. The historic home symbolizes the decaying grandeur of a post-industrial city in Only Lovers Left Alive, which has been drawing good reviews In real life, the Victorian house at 82 Alfred St. in Brush Park has been undergoing a restoration that started not long after the film crew left. In the movie, the brick house with the striking turret is the moody abode of Adam (Hiddleston), a centuries-old rock musician-vampire who prefers to dine via blood banks and lives surrounded by old sound equipment, vinyl albums, rare guitars and photos of artists ranging from Franz Kafka to Iggy Pop. Jeff Cowin, who has renovated five homes in the area, bought the 6,200-square-foot property in December 2012. That was only months after it was filmed. When Cowin took ownership, the roof leaked through the attic and three floors to the front foyer. The plumbing and wiring needed to be replaced. Much of the plaster on the walls was damaged or missing. He spent a few weeks filling dumpsters with the hoard of items left by the previous owners. The story of 82 Alfred reflects the ups and downs of Detroit through time. It was built in the late 1870s, then expanded and remodeled to its Queen Anne style by David C. Whitney, son of lumber baron David Whitney Jr., according to Eric Becker, who has researched the historic homes of the Brush Park neighborhood. Whitney used architect Gordon W. Lloyd. As Detroit changed, so did the house. By the 1920s, the wealthy enclave of Brush Park was becoming a crowded neighborhood for auto industry workers. The home was turned into a rooming house. By the time Jarmusch's film crew arrived, decades of the city's economic struggles were visible on Alfred Street, where only a few inhabited homes, the remnants of the Gilded Age, still exist. A fan of the Motor City, Jarmusch has a documentary in the works on Iggy Pop & the Stooges and has collaborated with Jack White and the White Stripes. According to the Detroit location manager for Only Lovers Left Alive, Chris-Teena Constas, she scouted for quite a while before Jarmusch chose 82 Alfred. "One of the the main and most important locations was Adam's house," said Constas. "They really wanted to stay true and authentic to Detroit and the architecture."