for all you nerds out there

So on the drive from Weinstein Co. back to my cousin's place downtown I pass a very familiar looking highschool on the left. It just seemed so out of place in the middle of the dirty ghetto where I'm staying for there to be a legit, acclaimed private high school.

Yesterday it finally registered that it was where they shot a bunch of Donnie Darko.

Also, as I couldn't resist looking it up, I found that they shot an episode of The West Wing there to double as Georgetown University.

That still doesn't answer the question of why it's located in a less than ideal section of the downtown area.