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The location: Lettie Mae's House. |
 Q. What is it supposed to be on the show? A.
An old Victorian home. Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show? A.
In Bon Temps, Louisiana. Q. When did we see it on the show? A.
Lettie Mae is Tara's mother, a mean-spirited
alcoholic (and religious fanatic) We see their home (an old, wood frame Victorian house) for the first time in Episode 2, "The First Taste", when Tara returns to find her mama in a drunken state. We see it again later in the same episode, after dark, when Tara is at a party in the back yard. A guy hits on her, but she gets rid of him with a made-up story about a jealous, violent boyfriend.
Later, Tara left her mama's house and moved into crazy Maryann's house, but that didn't work out well. Later still, Tara finally had enough of her mama, and she moved out of the house and into a cheap motel.
Q. What is it actually, in real life? A.
A home - but not in Louisiana. Q. Where can I find it in real life? A. The house is actually located at 237 S. Avenue 19, in Los Angeles, CA. It's on the west/SW side of the street, just south of N. Broadway, about a half mile south of the intersection of the Pasadena (110) Freeway and the Golden State (5) Freeway. That's
just north of downtown L.A., less than a mile east of Dodger Stadium. Here
is an aerial
photo of the house. And here is a map
link. Below
is a Google StreetView panorama. Right-click & hold on the image to
move around. Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was? A. This was difficult. I only had one clue to work with: the house number (237 1/2 was visible above one of the doors). But that's a low number, and there are a zillion 237's in greater Los Angeles. In fact, at first I couldn't be sure that it was even in Los Angeles. It might have really been somewhere in Louisiana. But one night time shot showed the homes across the street, and even though I couldn't see much of them, it was enough to tell me that it was most likely an L.A. neighborhood. My own knowledge of L.A. told me that old, Victorian-style homes are most often found near downtown. So I started the long, tedious process of looking at every 237 near downtown, using Bing aerial photos and Google StreetViews. I started with the homes immediately south of downtown, which greatly resembled the house I was looking for, and headed south. To complicate matters, there were two different sets of 237's there. 237 East and 237 West. I spent hours looking at all of them, without success. Then I looked again, to make sure I hadn't somehow missed it. But it just wasn't there. So the next day, I moved my search to the west side, starting near downtown and heading west. Again, I found a fair share of homes that fit the style, but not Lettie Mae's. Finally, I moved to the homes north of downtown. There aren't as many homes up there to search, and I lucked out. The very first street I looked at, Avenue 19, was the right one.
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who has made life miserable for her
daughter. Lettie Mae eventually kicks her booze problem (after a fake
exorcism by 
And
the interior of the house is seen often throughout the first season.