Home Alone Filming Locations: 8 Spots You Can Visit
We were in Brookfield, Wisconsin for a week while the kids did the Milwaukee Bucks summer camp. On the way back we drove ninety minutes south to stand outside a house in a quiet Illinois suburb so two children could pretend to defend it from burglars.
Worth it. But not for the reasons I expected, and there are a few things I wish someone had told us before we went.
The McCallister house is a private home on a residential street. You cannot go inside, there is no visitor parking, and the whole stop takes about twenty minutes. What makes the detour worth building a morning around is that it is not the only location — there are eight places from the film still standing within a short drive of each other, and almost nobody visiting the house realises it.
Milwaukee Bucks summer camp review
Bucks Pro Shop at Fiserv Forum
Where was Home Alone filmed?
The short answer
Home Alone (1990) was filmed almost entirely in and around Chicago’s North Shore suburbs. The McCallister house is a real private residence at 671 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, Illinois. The interiors, however, were not shot inside it — a two-storey set was built in the gymnasium of New Trier Township High School, a few minutes away, because the house was too small for the crew. The church scenes used two different buildings in Wilmette and Oak Park, and O’Hare International Airport played both the Chicago airport and, later in the film, Paris Orly.
The eight locations: the McCallister house · New Trier Township High School · the village green at Winnetka Village Hall · Grand Food Center · the Hubbard Woods pharmacy building · Trinity United Methodist Church, Wilmette · Grace Episcopal Church, Oak Park · O’Hare International Airport
The Home Alone house: what it’s actually like to visit
671 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, Illinois 60093. Red-brick Georgian Revival, built in 1921, 9,126 square feet.
It is smaller in person than the film makes it look, and the street is narrower. That was the first surprise. The second was how ordinary it is — no plaque, no rope, no sign. Just a house, on a street of similar houses, with a slow trickle of cars pausing outside it.
We parked at the end of the street and walked up. That is the right way to do it and I would not do it any other way. The kids got their photos at the front gate, spent a few minutes inspecting the front steps, and were done inside twenty minutes.
Can you go inside the Home Alone house?
No. It is a private residence and there is no tour, no visitor access and no admission fee. You are looking at the exterior from a public street, which is all anyone has ever been able to do.
There was a one-off Airbnb stay in December 2021, but that was a single promotional night and it is not something you can book.
The house sold for $5.5 million — and it’s being changed back
This is the part most guides have not caught up with.
The house was listed on 24 May 2024 at $5.25 million, went under contract inside a week, and the sale closed on 15 January 2025 at $5.5 million — around 6% over asking. The sellers, Timothy and Trisha Johnson, had bought it in 2012 for just under $1.6 million and renovated heavily in 2018, nearly doubling the square footage and turning the interior white and modern. Fans who had seen photographs called it sterile.
The buyers have stayed private, but they commissioned work to bring the interior back toward the warm, cluttered, deeply 1990 look from the film. Which means the house you are standing outside is, slowly, becoming more like the house in the movie than it has been in years.
Where to park
There is no visitor parking. None. Lincoln Avenue is a residential street with residential parking rules.
Park several blocks away and walk in. It takes five minutes, it keeps you out of the neighbours’ driveways, and it means you are not the car idling outside somebody’s living room window.
This matters more than it sounds. A former owner of the house said it drew more than 400 cars a day during the Christmas season. That is not a trickle of respectful fans, that is a traffic problem on a suburban street where people live. Every bit of etiquette advice you read about this house exists because of that number.
Being respectful — what that actually means here
- Stay on the public sidewalk. Do not walk up the drive, and do not go through the gate.
- Keep the noise down. People are inside.
- Don’t linger. Twenty minutes is plenty, and other people are waiting for the same photo.
- Don’t block driveways or the street, even briefly.
- Photograph the house, not the residents.
The other seven Home Alone filming locations
Honest note: we only visited the house and walked the street around it. Everything below is researched rather than seen with our own eyes, and I would rather say so than pretend otherwise. When we go back — and we will — I’ll update this section with photographs of our own.
| Location | Address | What was filmed there | Still there? |
|---|---|---|---|
| McCallister house | 671 Lincoln Ave, Winnetka | All exterior house scenes | Yes — private home |
| New Trier Township High School | Winnetka | Interior sets, built in the gym | Yes — working school |
| Winnetka Village Hall green | Green Bay Rd, Winnetka | Santa’s workshop scene | Yes |
| Grand Food Center | Green Bay Rd, Winnetka | Kevin’s grocery shop | Yes |
| Hubbard Woods pharmacy | 940 Green Bay Rd, Winnetka | The toothbrush scene | Building yes, business changed |
| Trinity United Methodist Church | 1024 W Lake Ave, Wilmette | Church exterior | Yes |
| Grace Episcopal Church | 924 Lake St, Oak Park | Church interior | Yes |
| O’Hare International Airport | Chicago | Chicago airport and Paris Orly | Yes |
New Trier Township High School, Winnetka
The single best piece of trivia about this film: the inside of the McCallister house is not inside the McCallister house. The real building was too small to hold the crew, so John Hughes had a full two-storey set constructed in the gymnasium of the local high school. The staircase Kevin sledges down, the basement furnace, the kitchen — all of it was built a short drive from the house it appears to belong to.
It is a working school, so this is a drive-past rather than a visit.
The village green at Winnetka Village Hall
Santa’s workshop, on Green Bay Road. Ordinary municipal green the rest of the year, which is somehow the charm of it.
Grand Food Center, Green Bay Road
Kevin’s grocery run. Still a working supermarket — which makes it the only location on this list where you can buy something.
The Hubbard Woods pharmacy, 940 Green Bay Road
The toothbrush scene. The building stands at the corner of Green Bay Road and Gage Street in the Hubbard Woods part of Winnetka, but the pharmacy is long gone — the space became a Panera Bread, which itself closed in 2015. Check what is there now before you make the trip for it.
Trinity United Methodist Church, Wilmette — and Grace Episcopal, Oak Park
The church scenes with Old Man Marley used two buildings. The exterior is Trinity United Methodist at 1024 West Lake Avenue in Wilmette, about ten minutes from the house. The interior is Grace Episcopal at 924 Lake Street in Oak Park, which is a fair way south-west — a separate trip rather than part of the same loop.
Both are active churches. Services are not a tourist attraction; visit the outside, and if you want to go in, go as a visitor to a church rather than to a film set.
O’Hare International Airport
The airport panic scenes. O’Hare also doubled as Paris Orly, which is a small piece of movie sleight-of-hand you will now notice every time you rewatch it. If you are flying into Chicago you have already visited this one.
A half-day Home Alone route
The Winnetka locations sit close enough together to do on foot and by short drive in a morning. This is the version I would do with kids.
- Park a few blocks from 671 Lincoln Avenue and walk to the house. Photos, twenty minutes.
- Walk the surrounding streets. Several neighbouring houses appear in the film and the whole area is worth the wander regardless — big trees, old houses, very quiet.
- Drive to Green Bay Road for the Village Hall green, Grand Food Center and the Hubbard Woods corner. All within a few minutes of each other.
- Trinity United Methodist, Wilmette — ten minutes on, and the last stop that fits comfortably in a morning.
- Lake Michigan. The shoreline is right there and it resets everyone after a morning of looking at buildings.
Grace Episcopal in Oak Park is the one to leave out unless you are specifically going that way; it is on the opposite side of the metro area.
Total: about three hours including the drive, or ninety minutes if you only do the house and the Winnetka cluster.
Doing this with kids — what actually worked
Be realistic about the appeal. A house you cannot go into is a photo, not an activity, and a child who has not seen the film will be finished in about four minutes.
What made it work for ours:
- They had watched it recently. Non-negotiable. Watch it the night before and the stop becomes a scene they recognise instead of a building.
- We let them play. They spent most of the twenty minutes staging booby traps that did not exist and shouting at each other from the pavement. That was the whole visit, and it was enough.
- We kept it short and paired it with something else. Twenty minutes at the house, then the lake. On its own it is thin; as one stop in a morning it is genuinely good.
- We told them the rules first. Sidewalk only, quiet voices, no going through the gate. Easier to set that expectation in the car than to enforce it outside somebody’s front door.
Ages roughly 6 and up, and really it depends entirely on whether the film means anything to them.es a much more memorable trip than simply checking off famous landmarks.
When to go — and why Christmas is a trade-off
Best time: mid-morning or early afternoon on a weekday, outside the holiday season. Quiet street, easy parking, no queue for the photo.
Christmas is the obvious romantic choice and it is also when the street is at its worst — that 400-cars-a-day figure is a Christmas-season number. If you go in December, expect company, expect parking to be difficult, and expect to be one of many.
One honest caveat: the house’s decoration has varied by owner over the years, and it changed hands in January 2025. I would not travel in December on the assumption that it will be lit up like the film. Go for the atmosphere of the neighbourhood in the snow, and treat anything on the house itself as a bonus.
Where we stayed, and how to fit this into a Chicago trip
We were not on a Chicago city break. We were in Brookfield, Wisconsin for the Bucks camp and drove down, which is a perfectly good way to do it if you are already in the region — Brookfield to Winnetka is around ninety minutes.
Country Inn & Suites Brookfield review
If you are coming the other way and building a Chicago trip around it, the house is a half-day detour north from the city. We have written up most of what we did in Chicago itself:
Millennium Park and Cloud Gate
Shoreline architecture boat tour
So — is the Home Alone house worth visiting?
Yes, if you already like the film and you are within about an hour. No, if you are making a special trip across the country for it.
It is a twenty-minute photo stop at a house you cannot enter, on a street where people are trying to live. Judged as an attraction, that is thin. Judged as one stop in a morning that also takes in the other locations and ends at the lake, it is a genuinely lovely half-day and the kids talked about it for the rest of the trip.
The thing that surprised me was how much better it got once we knew the interiors were shot in a school gym down the road. That single fact turns a photo stop into something you can actually explore.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the Home Alone house?
The Home Alone house is at 671 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, Illinois 60093. Winnetka is a North Shore suburb roughly 20 miles north of downtown Chicago, about a 45-minute drive depending on traffic.
Can you go inside the Home Alone house?
No. It is a private residence with no tours and no visitor access. You can photograph the exterior from the public sidewalk, which is what everyone does. There is no admission fee because there is nothing to admit you to.
Where do you park to see the Home Alone house?
There is no visitor parking on Lincoln Avenue. Park several blocks away and walk in, which takes about five minutes and keeps you clear of residents’ driveways. A former owner reported the house drew more than 400 cars a day during the Christmas season, so parking considerately genuinely matters here.
Was the inside of the house used in the film?
No. The interiors were shot on a two-storey set built inside the gymnasium of New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, because the real house was too small to hold the film crew. Only the exteriors were filmed at 671 Lincoln Avenue.
Did the Home Alone house sell?
Yes. It was listed in May 2024 at 5.25 million dollars, went under contract within a week, and the sale closed on 15 January 2025 at 5.5 million dollars. The new owners, who have remained private, commissioned work to restore the interior toward the warmer look seen in the film, reversing a 2018 modern renovation.
How long do you need at the Home Alone house?
About 20 minutes for photographs and a look at the street. Allow two to three hours if you want to add the other Winnetka filming locations and the church in Wilmette, which together make a comfortable half-day.
