While the reproduction of the Amityville House's famous exterior was constructed in Silver Lake, Wisconsin, many of the interiors were built on a temporary sound stage in an empty building located in a corporate park in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. The production company took out building permits in the village of Silver Lake, Wisconsin (in Kenosha County) and spent about $60,000 to adapt the historic Rustman House summer estate on the south shore of Silver Lake at Kenosha County Highways F and SA for its cinematic debut. (The Rustman fortune was earned in the Jefferson Ice company of Chicago in the harvesting and storage of ice from the wintertime lakes of Kenosha County and elsewhere, and shipping it to hotels for summertime usage and cooling before the advent of refrigeration.) The Rustman Estate consists of the "big" house. a smaller guest cottage, several farm buildings, two workers' cottages, a boathouse, a one-lane bowling alley, and wide pastures, garden plots and wooded areas. The porch on the house itself faces west and winds three-quarters of the way around the first floor. Inside there is a smallish kitchen but a dining room that seats 18-20 guests, a large living room, billiard room, butler's pantry, billiard room, and separate two-room maid's quarters. On the grand staircase was a stained-glass window (now removed) featuring an Eve-like maiden offering the viewer and apple. Upstairs, a vast master suite has been created from some of the original five upstairs bedrooms, each with its own marble sink. The third floor is the attic with a turret room high above Silver Lake where Mrs. Rustman would sit and watch the ice-cutters. The Rustman House awaits its next occupants as it has been unoccupied for several years and remains protected by a chain-link fence and hidden security devices.
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