matthew
d. wittmer
contact me
sustainingtraces "at"
gmail.com
The
Amityville house
by matthew wittmer
I've made amityville houses ever since I was in the third grade, when the first AMITYVILLE HORROR started being shown on cable and on television. My interest had always been in the actual house, which I visited a few times on Long Island. The photos included here are of some models I created while a graduate student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where my fine art thesis focused on the study of the normalicy of everyday things associated to abnormal events, behavior or people.
Recently, someone saw this page of my site and didn't know the history behind the Amityville house. For those who are in that boat, the house first gained notoriety in 1974 when an entire family was found shot to death in the beds in which they slept. Ronald DeFeo, the eldest son of the family was tried and convicted for committing the murders. After the murders and trial, a family moved into the house, and left shortly thereafter to consult horror fiction writer Jay Anson who captured their account in which they claim experiencing paranormal activity during their stay, which is why they claim they left so soon (28 "terrifying" days). The book became a best seller and a movie with James Brolin soon followed that became a classic in American horror cinema, largely due to how it composed shots of the ominous house with creepy music. The actual house was not used in the film, but the one used for the movie is still in existence in New Jersey, though that one has had its roof altered and has been moved a couple blocks from its original location to detract onlookers. The actual house has had the famous pumpkin windows redone a few times and the house has been painted differently but many aspects of that house remain the same, structurally, to this day. The address number has been changed though. You can see this in some of my photos below.
A
photo of the house on Ocean Avenue taken in 1990.
This is a model I made from paper and cardboard in 1996.
You could take the floors out.
Here
is that house with part of the roof on.
This
is the inside, as all floors come out and gives you
a sense of what it was like, space wise, within the house.
Photo taken in the winter of 2000.
by matthew wittmer
I've made amityville houses ever since I was in the third grade, when the first AMITYVILLE HORROR started being shown on cable and on television. My interest had always been in the actual house, which I visited a few times on Long Island. The photos included here are of some models I created while a graduate student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where my fine art thesis focused on the study of the normalicy of everyday things associated to abnormal events, behavior or people.
Recently, someone saw this page of my site and didn't know the history behind the Amityville house. For those who are in that boat, the house first gained notoriety in 1974 when an entire family was found shot to death in the beds in which they slept. Ronald DeFeo, the eldest son of the family was tried and convicted for committing the murders. After the murders and trial, a family moved into the house, and left shortly thereafter to consult horror fiction writer Jay Anson who captured their account in which they claim experiencing paranormal activity during their stay, which is why they claim they left so soon (28 "terrifying" days). The book became a best seller and a movie with James Brolin soon followed that became a classic in American horror cinema, largely due to how it composed shots of the ominous house with creepy music. The actual house was not used in the film, but the one used for the movie is still in existence in New Jersey, though that one has had its roof altered and has been moved a couple blocks from its original location to detract onlookers. The actual house has had the famous pumpkin windows redone a few times and the house has been painted differently but many aspects of that house remain the same, structurally, to this day. The address number has been changed though. You can see this in some of my photos below.
This is a model I made from paper and cardboard in 1996.
You could take the floors out.
a sense of what it was like, space wise, within the house.
Photo taken in the winter of 2000.
Visiting
the house in the summer of 2000.
This model
is about the size of a footlocker and is how the
house looked in 2000.
Before the blue shutters were
removed.
I made another model that was fully equiped with interior
architecture, as the house appeared from black and white
photos in 1974, the time of the murders.
In this version I included approximate
body outlines
where family members were found.
I made another loor layout version that shows the flor plans
in the house instead of building the walls.
© All images on this site copyright by Matthew D. Wittmer