Everyone remembers the house – the Parker-Nichols living room, the ramp Megan somehow always wins from, Drake’s bedroom studio. Drake & Josh is set in San Diego, but the house and everything else were filmed in Los Angeles, and yes: the real house exists, and people knock on its door to this day.
Here’s where the show was actually made.
Where was Drake & Josh filmed?
The series was shot in Los Angeles, not San Diego. Interiors – the living room, kitchen, the boys’ bedroom, The Premiere theatre – were taped in front of a studio audience at Nickelodeon On Sunset, the network’s Hollywood studio at 6455 W Sunset Boulevard. San Diego exists in the show only as establishing shots and the occasional palm-lined exterior.
The famous house exterior is real, though: a private home on Alonzo Avenue in Encino, in the San Fernando Valley, whose front yard appeared in the establishing shots for all four seasons.
The locations, explained
Nickelodeon On Sunset, Hollywood
Nearly the entire series happened inside 6455 W Sunset Boulevard – the former Earl Carroll Theatre that Nickelodeon ran as its Hollywood studio from 1997 to 2017. The same building hosted All That, The Amanda Show, iCarly and Victorious, making it the physical home of an entire generation of Nick comedy. The landmark building still stands on Sunset, though Nickelodeon has moved out.
The Parker-Nichols house – Alonzo Avenue, Encino
The house from the establishing shots is at 3878 Alonzo Avenue, Encino, in the Lake Encino neighbourhood. Only the exterior was ever used – the interior was a set on Sunset – so the real owners have spent twenty years living inside a sitcom postcard. It’s a private family home: look from the street, don’t ring the doorbell, and definitely don’t shout “MEGAN!” at the windows.
Planning a visit
Both stops fit in one Los Angeles afternoon: the old Nickelodeon building on Sunset (drive-by, it’s not open for tours) and the Encino house, about 25 minutes over the hill. Pair them with the rest of the Valley’s sitcom-house circuit and you’ve got a proper nostalgia crawl.
