"Home Alone" house up for sale for second time since movie was filmed
WINNETKA, Ill. (CBS) -- The iconic north suburban home that served as a backdrop for the 1990 holiday hit movie "Home Alone" is up for sale.
Last time the "McAllister house" at 671 Lincoln Ave. in Winnetka was on the market back in 2012, it sold for $1.585 million – down from an asking price of $2.4 million. The people who bought it at that point are now asking $5.25 million.
According to Vanity Fair, the red brick Georgian dates back to 1920. It first gained notoriety beyond the North Shore in 1974 – 16 years before it became the "Home Alone" house – when its newly-redone kitchen made the September issue of "Better Homes & Gardens" magazine, Vanity Fair reported.
Vanity Fair reported then-owners Carolyn and Kully Rohlen had reconfigured the kitchen so they could host regular soup parties – and can homegrown tomatoes on a center island.
The Rohlens did not own the house anymore by the time it became the "Home Alone" house. John and Cynthia Abendshien moved into the house in 1988, and were living there when "Home Alone" was filmed.
"Home Alone" was released just after Thanksgiving 1990.
Most of the interior scenes were shot on a sound stage set up in the gym of New Trier West High School in Northfield, but scenes centered on the main staircase and several interior rooms were actually shot inside the house, the website MovieFone reported back in 2012.
The décor of the house seen in the movie was not chosen by the then-owners. The filmmakers papered over the walls to provide a more holiday-oriented feel, MovieFone reported. They also built a tree house that was torn down after the filming.
Vanity Fair reported the Abendshiens holed up in the primary bedroom suite on the second floor of the house while filming was under way elsewhere.
Their daughter, Lauren, talked to the magazine about taking coffee cups full of candy from the craft food services cart for the filming, and meeting the stars. The family also watched scenes being shot right at their house – including one in which Macaulay Culkin's Kevin character toboggans down the stairs in the house and out through the front door, Vanity Fair reported. The magazine pointed out this actually involved a ramp on the banister, and a stunt double rather than Culkin himself.
The Abendshiens also talked about their experience with the filming in a 2011 Coldwell Banker sales video.
"We, for example, learned that if snow doesn't bounce off your shoulders or your head, it's potato flakes that they're blowing in your hair," Cynthia Abendshie said in the video.
Writer and producer John Hughes – who died in 2009 at the age of 59, was born in Lansing, Michigan, and grew up in suburban Detroit – but moved to Northbrook with his family at the age of 12. He was famous for filming in the Chicago area and in particular the North Shore suburbs.
Besides the "Home Alone" house, Samantha's house in "Sixteen Candles" is located at 3022 Payne St. in Evanston, Ferris Bueller's high school is actually Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, and the high school in "the Breakfast Club" was actually Maine North High School in Des Plaines – which was already closed when that movie was filmed and is now used as a district headquarters for Illinois State Police and offices for other state agencies.
"John Hughes had a real interest in filming in community settings. He, I understand, grew up in the North Shore, and really wanted his sets and backgrounds to have a real world; a true neighborhood and a true-home-type ambience," John Abendshien said in the 2011 Coldwell Banker video.
It was the Abendshiens who in 2012 sold the house to the current owners, who are now in turn selling the house themselves.
In 2021, Airbnb also rented out the house for one night in December.