Vintage 1950s
Mystery
The Murder House
While doing in-depth research into
1950s Hollywood, we came across news that shocked and amazed us. Really. You
can't make this stuff up! The Rosenheim mansion was one of them. We ended up
using the layout of the house as the Brovor Mansion in Game Town.
Mystery
Alfred Rosenheim was a German-American
architect who built the mansion that was used in American Horror Story,
and is now known as the "Murder House." It was also used in American
Horror Story: Hotel, when Lady Gaga's Countess character used it to book an
appointment with the deranged doctor who was practicing out of the basement.
Rosenheim moved to Los Angeles from St. Louis in 1902 and built
his stately manor on a hill in the Country Club Park neighborhood that became
known as Billionaire Row. His neighbors included some of the most influential
names in California including the Kinneys and the Dohenys.
The Rosenheim family lived in the house for eleven years and
sold it to a "colorful mining magnate" named A.J. McQuatters. Then,
in the early 1930s actor Edward Everett Horton lived in the mansion. After him, the Catholic Order of Nuns, a Sisters of Social Service used the house as a
convent and added a chapel to the grounds. (The chapel was used as the
"Attic" in American Horror Story).
The house has been
a popular filming location, beginning with Charlie Chaplin’s silent movies followed
by the talkies. The home was used in
a series of films and television shows, such as Spiderman, Seabiscuit,
The X-Files, The Twilight Zone, Six Feet Under, Bones, Dexter, and Buffy
the Vampire Slayer (it was the frat house in the episode "Fear,
Itself", where Buffy and the gang got locked in on Halloween).
It has been featured in
numerous TV productions, including Alfred
Hitchcock Presents, Buffy
the Vampire Slayer, Bones,
and Law & Order:
SVU. In 2011 the house was chosen as the location for the first
season of American
Horror Story: Murder House. To better facilitate filming in the
mansion, a large addition was built in the back of the house as a staging area.
In 1994 an earthquake damaged the
house and the nuns put it on the market for $3 million. The house was declared
a Historic and Cultural Landmark in 1999.
Added Note
The haunted house that inspired the first
season of American Horror Story is reported to be based on the
Bailey House in Hartford, Connecticut. Location scouts got their inspiration
from the Bailey Mansion and chose the Rosenheim Mansion as a filming
substitute. However, if you are looking for the
"Bailey Mansion" in Hartford, Conn. it doesn't exist. But someone
found a dilapidated Mansion in McKeesport, PA that could be the inspiration for
the Rosenheim Mansion.
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