A popular trend among some hardcore film fans these days is the pilgrimages to the real-life locations used for their favorite movies. If you’re in Lutz, Florida, you’re able to visit the house fromEdward Scissorhands. Horror junkies can spend days in California, visiting West Hollywood to see the house fromA Nightmare on Elm Street, or Pasadena to see the Michael Myers home and all the places where The Shape carved out his destruction inHalloween. If you love the originalScream, go to Northern California, where Stu Macher’s (Matthew Lillard)mansion-like residence is now an Airbnb.
If heart-warming, family Christmas films are more your thing, a stop in Cleveland will show you the home fromA Christmas Story. One of the most famous and instantly recognizable holiday homes is the McCallister residence inHome Alone, the Christmas favorite written byJohn Hughesand directed byChris Columbus. Take a trip to 671 Lincoln Ave. in Winnetka, Illinois and you can see the massive place in all its beautiful glory. To stand there, you can imagineMacaulay Culkin,Joe Pesci, andDaniel Sternrunning through the rooms. Now, here’s the part where we break your heart. Outside of the exteriors,Home Alonewasn’t filmed in that house.Where it actually took place is something even stranger than fiction.
Almost All of ‘Home Alone’ Takes Place Inside the McCallister House
Macaulay Culkin might be the human starofHome Alone, but just as important as his charisma, or the veteran acting chops of Pesci and Stern, is the setting.Home Alonedoesn’t work if it takes place inside of an apartment or a small ranch home. For all the shenanigans that were about to go down,Home Aloneneeded a large playground. You can’t get much larger than the McCallister home,a place so big that for decades many have wondered just what the heck Peter McCallister (John Heard) did for a living to afford such a place.
The McCallister house also had to be big enough to hold the massive number of family members who gather together in the opening act. Despite its size, the house looks cozy and inviting rather than intimidating. It feels like its own character, with its large rooms, tall staircase, and creepy basement. That size, with all of its emptiness,encompasses Kevin’s eventual loneliness and fear. It gives him ample room in which to play and run away as well.
Every John Hughes Holiday Movie Ranked, Ya Filthy Animals
The man behind the brat pack also gave us some of our favorite holiday comfort movies.
Outside of a few places Kevin travels to, he spends the entire movie in his house. The iconic moments of Kevin running up the stairs screaming into the camera, creating a fake yet elaborate party, hiding under his parents' bed, and setting up traps in every room and doorway all happen in this home. There’s just one problem:they didn’t really happen in the actual house that so many fans flock to see.
The ‘Home Alone’ House Was a Set Built Inside a School
The Illinois home, located just outside of Chicago, is not a complete lie.Home Alonescenes with Kevin, Harry, and Marv running outside, including both men falling down the steps, are filmed here. That poor pizza guy running for his life was shot here, but everything inside was actually filmed elsewhere. Why was this? Well, according to an episode of the Netflix seriesThe Movies That Made Us, as big as the home was,it wasn’t large enough when it came to fitting a crew, cameras, and lights inside. “It was far too small to get the crew in the door,” said director Chris Columbus. The interior of the home was perfect, though, so what to do?
“We just didn’t have great sound stages in Chicago,” Columbus added. “We couldn’t really shoot in their house,” production designerJohn Mutosaid. “It was obvious we needed a proper set.” Executive producerScott Ronsenfeltsaid they decided to look at a local high school, where their production offices already were. “We walked into this gym, and we were like, it’s got a grid in the ceiling, and it’s big enough, and we could build a house in here. The next thing we knew, we built all the sets in the school.“While that idea might sound out there, the exact same high school was used to build sets for twoother John Hughes classics,Uncle BuckandFerris Bueller’s Day Off. Sorry to ruin two more of your childhood memories with those reveals.
ForHome Alone, an exact replica of the actual house was built, following the floor plan exactly, but widening everything just a bit so that the crew could fit inside. A few years ago,the real house was used as Airbnb during the Christmas season, with it made to look like theHome Alonedays. Look at pictures of the real home, and if you didn’t know any better, you would think this was the actual house used for filming. It’s impressive that a film crew could build an entire two-storied home, and decorate it as well, all inside of a high school gym.
Another House From ‘Home Alone’ Was Filmed Inside a Swimming Pool
The child ruining doesn’t end there, sadly. There is another house inHome Alonethat isn’t what you think it is either. In the climax of the film, Kevin has wounded Harry and Marv with his traps, but they’re still coming for him, so he flees across the street to another home, daring his tormenters to follow him. We see Kevin outside of a real house going in through the cellar door,but Harry and Marv won’t follow, knowing he has more in store for them. When Kevin gets down into the basement he discovers that it’s flooded, with water pouring down the steps. Harry and Marv (more Marv, really) call themselves the Wet Bandits, due to Marv’s proclivity to turn on all the taps inside of a house after they rob it. It’s Marv’s idea of a calling card, and having robbed this home earlier,it’s now a watery trap for Kevin.
This house was filmed inside a set in the same high school, but how do you have thousands of gallons of water running through it without flooding the entire gym? That’s easy: you simply build the house in the pool.The Movies That Made Usrevealedthat the basement and the small portion of the upstairs we see when Kevin gets to the top and is saved by Old Man Marley (Roberts Blossom) wasbuilt inside the shallow end of the school’s empty swimming pool. For thirty-three years now, generations have turned toHome Aloneevery Christmas season. With its laughs and adventure, it’s seen as a magical movie that brings the family together. What you now know is just how much actual movie magic went into creating that experience.
The ‘Home Alone’ House Isn’t in ‘Planes, Trains, and Automobiles’
Okay, theHome Alonehouse isn’t as real as I thought. It hurt to find that out, but that’s how movies work. They trick us and get us to believe everything we see. At least the outside scenes were actually filmed at the real house. It also helped that I believed, like many, that I could still see the realHome Alonehouse inPlanes, Trains, and Automobiles. There, it can be seen in several scenes, not just from the outside, but the exterior too, as the home where Neal Page (Steve Martin) lives with his family and takes Del Griffith (John Candy) for Thanksgiving dinnerin that heartwarming finalethat makes me cry every single time I see it. Then I learned this belief was wrong too.
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned thatthePlanes, Trains, and Automobileshouse isn’t the same one fromHome Alone. It made sense why I thought it was:Both homes look strikingly similar, with their brown brick facade, white door frames, and windows sticking out of the roof. Both houses are also around Chicago, and both are in movies with John Hughes involved, but they’re quite different places. While they have the same type of design, the one inHome Aloneis much larger. It makes sense, as the home needed to bebig enough to hold so many McCallister family members, while Neal Page’s family is much smaller. The houses aren’t even in the same city either. TheHome Alonehouse is located at 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, Illinois, andif you have a cool $5.25 million in the bank, it can be yours!
Meanwhile, thePlanes, Trains, and Automobileshome is at 230 Oxford Road in Kenilworth, Illinois. It was up for sale this year as well andat half the amount for theHome Alonehouse for $2.6 million! It was disappointing to learn that the two iconic John Hughes comedies don’t have the connection that I believed was true for so many years, but I can find solace in the fact that we have the movies.Their magic is much more important than where they were filmed.
