Dark Knight's kind of town: Gotham City

According to the Gotham Center for New York City History, Irving first referred to New York City as Gotham in the 19th century. A history of early New York, by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, is starkly titled "Gotham." In Tim Burton's 1989 classic "Batman," newspaper reporters pore over a map that looks like Manhattan; Jack Nicholson's Joker trashes artwork at the "Fuggenheim," and the mayor is a dead ringer for Ed Koch.

Still, Levitz says Batman's Gotham has evolved through the decades as different writers and illustrators — and now filmmakers — have taken on the series.

"Each guy adds their own vision," Levitz says. "That's the fun of comics, rebuilding a city each time."

But that does little to quell the debate over which metropolis is the real Gotham City.

Life-long New Yorker Gerry Gladstone, who is an owner at Midtown Comics in Times Square, says the first writers and illustrators of the Batman comics worked in New York and used the city for inspiration.

"Their offices were in Times Square and that's where these stories came from," Gladstone says. "Gotham has always been a stand-in for the seedier side of New York City."

Standing in front of the Chicago Board of Trade (the inspiration for Wayne Manor in the latest Batman movie) wearing his yellow, trading-floor jacket, Wayne Brown, 45, of Chicago, says his city has always been the model for Gotham.

"Our buildings, in a dark setting, would make it a gloomy, gloomy downtown," Brown says. "When we read the cartoons we didn't see any Twin Towers or Empire State Building. They're always showing the Board of Trade."

It's that pressure-cooker, street-smart sense that makes Chicago a real — instead of manufactured — Gotham, says Richard Moskal, director of the Chicago Film Office.

"I think (Chicago) changed people's minds about what is Gotham in terms of the real sense ... and what it is fictionally," Moskal says.

Realism certainly is the calling card of "The Dark Knight." Unlike the previous "Batman" movies — in which Gotham's streets are ever dark, often abandoned and shrouded in mist — Nolan's cityscapes don't stray too far from a typical workday in Chicago, where office workers on lunch breaks dart in and out of cafes; businessmen roll suitcases and shake hands in front of City Hall; and long shadows crisscross the skyscraper canyon of LaSalle St. on a bright summer day.

"We make (Chicago) look a lot grittier through the camera in the story," says Gary Oldman, who plays Lt. James Gordon, "but I think initially there were artists' impressions of cities, and they take a skyscraper from here and a skyscraper from there and a monorail from somewhere.

"And (Nolan) looked at this picture and he said, 'That's Chicago — we don't need to make this up ... we can actually physically go and shoot in a city. It's Gotham.'"

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