The Bates House and Bates Motel made famous in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho look like they can be found on the side of the road in any American small town but in reality they are just facades on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot.
For studio sets both buildings have quite the back story. They’ve been moved, updated, torn down, modified, rebuilt, and moved again. And now they are one of the most popular stops on the Universal Studios Tour.
This time of year the house is also incorporated into Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. Psycho fans can have their photos taken in front of the house as Norman tries to stab them.
If you want a more authentic view of the Bates home you’ll have to take a drive down Route 9W in Haverstraw, NY. Here you will find the house that Edward Hopper used as a model for his painting House by the Railroad in 1930. It is said that this painting (and therefore the Haverstraw home it is based on) served as the inspiration for Norman Bate’s family homestead.
Unfortunately, the new A & E series Bates Motel, which is a prequel to Psycho, isn’t filmed at Universal, it is being shot in Vancouver instead, but the show’s star Freddie Highmore recently toured the Universal set for the show’s Comic-Con panel and you can check that out here.
If you’d like to see the Psycho House too, you can pick up Universal Tour Tickets at universalstudioshollywood.com.
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