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Bates House, overlooking the old motel, is breathtaking. Filled with antiques, wood flooring and plenty of secrets, this house cannot be missed. While strange things happen all over White Pine Bay, Bates House may be the strangest place yet!

Collector's Card: "Bates House"

The Bates family house is a two and a half story Second Empire style home in White Pine Bay, Oregon, which serves as the residence of the Bates family (including Dylan Massett). In front of the house is the Bates Motel. According to Norma on the phone with the police, the home's address is 4019 Highway 88 in White Pine Bay.

History[]

The house was built in 1912 by Keith Summers' great-great-grandfather, and supposedly holds dirty secrets. The Summers family lost the house to the bank, along with the motel, which were both later bought by Norma Bates in 2013 using the insurance money from her former husband Sam's death. After a series of incidents on the property Norma attempted to sell the home, but later found out the property was not worth what she had bought it for, making it an "underwater" investment. Her plans for the home were to put in "light, linen drapes, and fresh peonies" - in addition to her making some handmade curtains for above the kitchen sink. Norma and Norman started a garden to the left of the house prior to where the story picks up in Season Two. In Season Four, Norma also had plans to add some fruit trees to the property with the assistance of Alex Romero while Norman was at Pine View. After Norman's death in the series finale, the property appears to having been sold to a young family after the price had been reduced in one of the ending scenes.

Description[]

The house is a two-story Second Empire style home that sits on a hill behind the Bates Motel with three steep sets of cement steps leading up to it. There are four bedrooms, a full kitchen, a large living room, dining room, mud/laundry room, one full bathroom, a walk-up attic and a full basement with a walk-in freezer (where Norman would later hide Norma's mummified body in Season Five). The house contains a lot of its original Victorian interior, but with some modifications such as Art Deco era and Mid-Century Modern lighting. The house predominately has 15-foot ceilings in most of the rooms. The house also contains a butler's pantry leading from the kitchen into the dining room, as well as another located in the hallway in between the kitchen and the entrance hallway. The house contains at least two stained glass windows (one located in the hallway on the far wall leading to the kitchen and one in the dining room), as well as a lot of similarly acid-etched windows depicting "The Victorian Flower Garden" pattern. The home also has eight gas lighting fixtures that have been electrified (being the living room chandelier and its combination wall sconces, and the newel post light) that have their gas keys on the respective arms visible. The kitchen at the rear of the home has a large screened in porch off of it that has many pieces of vintage patio furniture and decorations. The home itself is decorated with many pieces of antique and vintage furnishings, more notably from the late Victorian to early Art Deco era, including some from the early Mid-Century Modern period showing the home has gone through progression but notably stopping mostly at the 1960's.

The living room, main hallway on both floors, and in Norma's bedroom all feature full arched entrances either plastered supported by wooden corbels or trimmed out, adding to the architectural magnificence of the home. The home has flat-paneled five panel arranged doors with decorative moldings on all the doors that don't have etched glass panels in them. One door in Norma's bedroom to the left of her bed is a 1920's two panel door that is presumably a closet that is never shown as being opened.

The kitchen maintains its beautiful porcelain tiled countertops, wooden cabinets (with leaded glass inserts in the upper cabinets), rounded corner displays flanking the ends of the upper cabinets, yellow and jadeite linoleum floors, paired wooden windows and wooden doors with a swinging door into the dining room with a built-in breezeway china display to the left of it above a built-in radiator.

Dylan's bedroom is above the kitchen, with a half-rounded arched sash window facing west and the room matching the pitch with a half-mansard roofline like Norman's room, even though Norman's room sits lower than Dylan's. This room also is the second with visible wallpaper on it, the first being the dining room.


Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • The house itself is outdated being supposedly built in 1912, which would make it Edwardian in period built. The Second Empire style predominately ended in the 1890's, during the Victorian era, which ended in 1901.
  • In the first season the Mansard style roof was edited on due to budget constraints building the set. From the second season onwards the Mansard roof was built on top of the facade.
  • In some episodes with a full view of the front of the home, it can be seen that the righthand cornice is not continuous and stops just passed the side of the home, much like Hitchcock's original set from Psycho.
  • According to both Norma and Norman throughout the series, the property is located about a "mile or two" from town and it is a lovely walk there.
  • When it comes to modern amenities in the home, lighting and some furniture notably stop at 1960, an homage to the original film Psycho.
  • The home predominately has lighting from the 1920's installed in it, a majority of fixtures being early Art Deco era pan lights on the ceiling, some schoolhouse style milk glass light fixtures, and Art Nouveau inspired wall sconces on the second floor. The first floor has both Victorian era combination gas/electric wall sconces and Mission style wall sconces in the entryway and basement.
  • The home is heated using a gas furnace (a major plot point of Season Four), but also has built-in radiators underneath windows covered by paneled screens.
  • In the Season 4 episode "Refraction", Chick Hogan comments that the house is a Queen Anne, however the house architecturally is a Second Empire.
  • The tall stained glass window was broken in a fit of rage by Rebecca Hamilton in the episode "Lights of Winter".
  • The newel post lamp with four glass globes on the main staircase was sourced new from Vintage Lighting and Hardware as one of their fixtures already available for purchase.
  • At the end of Season 4, another entrance is added to the Bates home towards the back from the main hall to the left of the tall stained glass window. It was not present on the interior or exterior for the first three seasons. The only thing that had been there previously was an etched glass double-arched window pocket door, always having been closed previously, and paired rectangular windows on the exterior. 
  • Throughout the series, the home gains features like the vintage Minneapolis thermostat and wall vents not previously seen that assist with the storyline.
  • In one scene in the Season Two episode "Meltdown", at time mark 35:49 Norma accidentally takes off the newel post cap with her hand, which is fixed in the next shot.
  • In one scene in the Season Four episode "A Danger to Himself and Others", at time mark 35:50 when Norman breaks open the door from Mother's bedroom into his, the door slammed open so hard the wall sconce in Norman's bedrooms falls off the wall and the glass shade shatters. In future scenes it has been repaired.
  • A majority of the light switch plates and light fixtures were reproductions sourced from retailers like Vintage Lighting and House of Antique Hardware.
  • The rooms are much larger in size compared to looking at the home on the exterior, in which the windows don't look any taller than six feet. When on the interior, the windows are almost twelve feet tall, making the scale of the home quite disproportionate.
  • There is a chimney and fireplace in the living room parlor, and placed above it on the second story would be in the wall between Norman and Norma's bedrooms. From looking at the doorframe between shots, the wall is much too thin to house a chimney, meaning it has disappeared.
  • In Season Two, the entry to the basement stairs was just a landing, with the arched door visible starting in Season Three.
  • In the Season Three episode "The Pit", the iron roof cresting atop the mansard roof is missing from the home. This was because a strong storm had pulled some of it off before filming so it was removed, repaired and subsequently re-installed as seen in future episodes.
  • The Bates home's bathroom changes from its appearance in Season One during Norman's dream where he drowns Bradley Martin to when it appears in set form in Season Three. This could be, however, explained away by it being Norman's dream sequence.
  • The only rooms in the house with painted woodwork are the mud room, the full bathroom, and the basement.
  • In various scenes throughout the series, canopies (the bell shaped piece that meets the ceiling to hide the connection)on light fixtures have fallen down and are put back up, exposing modern electrical boxes. This is seen in Season One and Season Five mostly.
  • In some exterior scenes, the front door goes back and forth between being opened and closed depending on the shot.
  • In Season Four when Sheriff Romero lays Norman and Norma in the hallway after the attempted murder-suicide to get fresh air into the house, the window sheer curtains are missing from the three windows.
  • There is an over-grown dirt and grass driveway that leads up to the house around the side of the motel. It is never shown being used on screen, however in a Season One deleted scene Norma's car is parked outside the porch in front of the home while they unpack their belongings.
  • According to an article from Entertainment Weekly, the reason the Bates home doesn't look exactly like the rigid gothic Victorian on the interior from what we see in the original 1960 film Psycho is because the show runners wanted to show a softer side of Norma and have the viewers feel sympathy for her and not see her as "shrew"-ish. This was done through timeless decor of many decades and a well-rounded vintage appearance.
  • In Season Three the stained glass window in the dining room was clear and etched glass, while in Season Five the window turns to stained glass.
  • In early February 2017, the Bates house and motel below were demolished shortly after filming of the fifth and final season wrapped.
  • According to an article from SyFy Wire about the set of the Netflix hit "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina", on the way up to Ambrose's attic bedroom the walls are clad in reclaimed wooden siding salvaged from the Bates home near Langley while it was being dismantled, while "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" was filmed close-by in Vancouver.
Locations
Abraham's Gas for LessArtful ArtifactsBates Family HouseBates MotelBend Correctional FacilityDylan's FarmFalls LakeGilmer BeachLadyfaceLee Berman Memorial BypassMartin Family HouseNick Ford's CompoundPinecrest InstitutePineview InstitutePortland All Saints HospitalR.A. Bloch RealtyShed in the WoodsShepard's View CemeterySt. Sebastian HospitalSunset BeachSwimming HoleThe Arcanum ClubThe DocksThe King's MotelThe Landing StripThe White Horse BarTrout Lake Community CollegeVillage HardwareWhite Pine BayWhite Pine Bay City HallWhite Pine Bay Community TheaterWhite Pine Bay FederatedWhite Pine Bay High SchoolWhite Pine Bay Sheriff's Department
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