Gangster-Era Safe House
Complete With Basement Vault

What: 10-bedroom, nine-bathroom house in 7,200 square feet on 1.23 acres

Where: Lake Geneva, Wis., about 45 miles southwest of Milwaukee

Amenities: 400 feet of lake frontage, beach, two piers, four-car garage, covered veranda

Asking Price: $2.25 million

Opening Bid*: $2 million

Listing Agents: Marjorie Krantz and Diane Cocroft, Keefe Real Estate, 262-949-6294

Due Diligence: Slot-machine magnate and Lake Geneva hotelier Hobart Hermansen used to host Chicago gangsters, including George "Bugs" Moran, in this house in the 1920s. (Mr. Hermansen later married Moran's first wife, Lucille.) Several of Mr. Hermansen's Prohibition-era features remain, including a basement vault, a hidden underground garage and a counting room with 15-inch concrete walls and barred windows that was accessed through a secret passageway. Owners Dominic and Marge Trumfio run the house as a bed and breakfast, with the counting room decorated in 1920s style and billed as the "Bugs Moran suite." (The Trumfios left the bars on the windows.) The oldest part of the house was built in 1895 as an ice house (ice cut from the lake was shipped to Chicago by train); a farmhouse was later moved to the site and attached to the original building. "It's one big maze," Ms. Trumfio says. "People get lost." The house has eight suites with a total of 10 bedrooms and several decks overlooking Lake Como, just north of the larger Lake Geneva. (Listing agent Ms. Krantz says the house could be used as a family vacation home with minimal renovation.) The Trumfios say they bought the house in 2001 for about $650,000 and spent an additional $500,000 renovating it.

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