Decades later, ‘Home Alone’ fans still casing the iconic house
Every year before Christmas we see this film, and it was like a dream to see this house. — Yurii Tkachuk, fan
ON a chilly Saturday afternoon in the affluent, tree-lined Chicago suburb of Winnetka, two men stand and stare at the red-brick Georgian at 671 Lincoln Avenue.
The house appears welcoming to families – and maybe fictional burglars.
However, the men aren’t casing the joint to rob, and they aren’t alone. They will be joined by dozens of visitors throughout the day to gaze at the house that hosted a holiday classic: ‘Home Alone’.
“It’s part of iconic Chicago, it’s part of the history,” said one of the men, Louis Prettitore, who was visiting from New York City with his husband, Connor Heaney.
“We’re hiding from family for the holidays,” Heaney said.
“We ran away for Thanksgiving.”
It’s been 31 years since Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister defended his house from two robbers (the Wet Bandits) with elaborate traps, dancing mannequins and a clever use of the VCR, yet the setting for his Christmas high jinks continues to draw fans from around the world.
This year also marks a reboot for the 1990 film, though the 2021 version, ‘Home Sweet Home Alone’, was filmed in Montreal.
The Chicago-area home located about 30 minutes north of the city has become a staple for tourists, especially around the holidays.
“It’s very great, it was like a child(hood) dream,” said Yurii Tkachuk, who grew up watching the movie in Ukraine and now lives in New York.
Tkachuk obsessed over the sequel’s locations, too, and visited the Plaza Hotel and Central Park upon his first visit to New York.
“Every year before Christmas we see this film, and it was like a dream to see this house.”
The stately, symmetrical house is one of the most iconic movie residences in American pop culture.
Despite its fictional provenance, many of the tourists who peer over the short, wrought-iron gate earnestly gush about the house’s historical significance.
“It’s like Wrigley Field, because it’s so historic,” said Reyes Santos, who was visiting his son in Chicago from Cidra, Puerto Rico.
A real family lives there today, and there’s a small fence that keeps out brazen fans.
The circular driveway is gone now – a landscaping detail nearly every visitor is quick to point out – depriving fans of a look at the place where Kevin was left out of a family head count before the airport.
The treehouse, a prop, was taken down after the movie.
While the home was used for outside shots, the interior scenes were filmed on a set in a gym at an abandoned high school.
A couple named John and Cynthia Abendshien owned the home when filming began in 1990, but they sold in 2011 for a reported US$1.585 million.
Late filmmaker John Hughes wrote ‘Home Alone’.
Like much of his work, the movie explores the chaos and dysfunction of an American family that hides under a Rockwellian veil, in this case a suburban estate.
The McCallister home, like the bubble gum pink dresses of ‘Sixteen Candles’ and the Griswold family station wagon that drives the ‘Vacation’ series, echoed the tidy ideals of the 1950s while its inhabitants were bursting with late-20th-century anxiety.
“When we were little we all dreamed of these really pretty suburban American houses, and I think a lot of that came from films like this one,” said visitor Marie Schulte-Bockum, who grew up in Europe.
As a regional attraction, the McCallister house is a unique treasure that stirs regional pride for Chicagoans. Like ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, which spotlighted Chicago’s Wrigley Field, Lake Shore Drive and the Mercantile Exchange trading pits, ‘Home Alone’ is deeply rooted in its sense of place.
The film’s cops, cashiers and Santas deliver their dialogue with Midwestern accents.
The McCallisters race through O’Hare’s vaulted terminals.
A cardboard cutout of Michael Jordan totters on a train set through the living room.
That’s why for visitors like Palos Heights, Ill., resident Jackie Andersen, seeing the famous house feels like reliving the movie.
“It just became alive and it brings people into the movie,” she said.
“It just makes you feel part of it even though it’s a private residence.”
“The house became a character in the movie, and that’s why 31 years later people are showing up every day.”
Andersen has relived the movie in more ways than one.
She bought Kevin’s hat for her son and had him push a grocery cart at the Grand Food Center in Winnetka where Kevin buys the milk, eggs and fabric softener (a list she rattles off by heart).
She has watched the film more times than she can count.
“It’s my lifelong dream if I ever win the lottery,” she said, trailing off while admiring the building.
“The house became a character in the movie, and that’s why 31 years later people are showing up every day.”
Andersen could realise her dream for one night; in one of its regular stunts, Airbnb has listed the ‘Home Alone’ house for a brief rental.
Living next door may also be a fan’s dream. But for 11-year-old Noah Irizarry, who lives in Old Man Marley’s house, it’s more than that.
“It’s good business,” he said while perched behind the hot cocoa stand he and his friend, 11-year-old Emmett Hourihane, manned on his front lawn.
Irizarry has seen the movie at least three times.
Like many children who visit the house, his favourite scenes involve Kevin torturing hapless criminals Harry and Marv.
“I like the part where . . . this might not be appropriate,” Noah said, pausing before glancing at his mother.
“But when Kevin gets his BB gun and shoots one of the robbers in the (groin).”
Noah’s father built the white lemonade stand with a small metal awning. His mother, Cassandra Bayna, said Noah thought of the business himself, including the idea to perch signs for ‘Kevin’s Hot Cocoa’ on the sidewalk. Around 40 to 50 customers will come by on a typical Saturday or Sunday.
Bayna said last year 1,000 to 1,500 people came to see the house on the weekends.
“It can be frustrating sometimes because of the parking,” she said.
“People live here. I think that’s something people forget.”
Last year was ‘the worst’, Bayna said.
“Because of the pandemic, people couldn’t go anywhere, so they said, ‘Let’s drive up to the Home Alone house!’ The police had to come and make this a oneway, and they barricaded part of the entrance, which I’m willing to bet they’re going to do again.”
Her neighbours inside the famous house didn’t like people peering into their windows, she said, which is why they built a fence.
According to Bayna, most visitors start streaming in by late morning or early afternoon, though several will come late at night and yell ‘Kevin!’
She has watched hundreds of people slap their cheeks in a mock scream to mimic Culkin’s famous pose in the movie poster.
Others do dance routines, and there’s been at least one saxophone player.
“Nothing is a shocker so we’d be hard-pressed to find original ideas because we’ve seen everything,” she said.
“It’s a charming aspect of the neighbourhood.”
For the tourists who come from all over the world to see the house, the visit is a chance to re-enact the movie and make memories of their own.
Aline Tomaz, 10, came with her family from Minneapolis after her father, Alexandre Tomaz, showed them the movie.
Her mother, Andressa Tomaz, herded them in front of the fence for a family Christmas card photo as if the house was Macy’s Santaland.
“My favourite part is when he said ‘I made my family disappear’,” Aline said.
When asked whether that was something she thought about sometimes, she gave her parents a mischievous smile.
“Please don’t say that!” her father said with a laugh. ‘Home Alone 3!’ — The Washington Post