Where Was Home Alone Filmed? The Real McCallister House

Home Alone was filmed in and around Chicago, mostly in the North Shore suburb of Winnetka. The McCallister house is a real home at 671 Lincoln Avenue, but most of what you see inside it was a set built in a high school gym nearby.

Every scene was shot in Illinois in early 1990, with the main shoot running from February to May. That includes Paris: the “Paris” airport was really O’Hare.

This guide counts down the 10 Home Alone filming locations, from a Chicago library to the most famous house in Christmas movies. Then it covers where Home Alone 2 was filmed, and how much of its New York was really Chicago.

#	Real place	Scene	Town	Can you visit?
10	A library in Lincoln Park	Angels with Filthy Souls	Chicago	No. The building isn’t named
9	Meigs Field (now Northerly Island)	John Candy’s scenes	Chicago	Yes. It’s a park now
8	Hubbard Woods station	Kevin crosses the footbridge	Winnetka	Yes
7	Hubbard Woods Pharmacy and park	The toothbrush and the ice rink	Winnetka	The outside only
6	Grand Food Center	Kevin’s grocery run	Winnetka	Yes. Still open
5	O’Hare International Airport	The airport rush, and Paris	Chicago	Yes
4	Trinity United Methodist Church	Kevin hides in the nativity scene	Wilmette	The outside
3	Grace Episcopal Church	Kevin meets Old Man Marley	Oak Park	At services
2	New Trier West’s gym and pool	The house interiors	Northfield	No. It’s a school
1	671 Lincoln Avenue	The McCallister house	Winnetka	From the sidewalk

The 10 Home Alone Filming Locations

The countdown starts with a gangster movie that never existed and ends at the McCallisters’ front door.

10) A Lincoln Park Library: Angels with Filthy Souls

The black-and-white gangster film Kevin watches is a fake, and the crew shot it in a Chicago library.

Angels with Filthy Souls looks like a 1930s crime picture, and plenty of viewers went looking for it. It doesn’t exist. The Home Alone crew made it, as a send-up of the 1938 James Cagney film Angels with Dirty Faces.

They shot it in a single day, the last day before the main shoot, in a small, unheated library in Lincoln Park. Julio Macat used slow black-and-white stock and fog filters to make it look like a late-1930s film. Ralph Foody played Johnny, the gangster with the Tommy gun, and Michael Guido played Snakes.

9) Meigs Field: John Candy and the Kenosha Kickers

The scene where Kate meets a polka band and talks her way into their van was filmed at a lakefront airstrip that no longer exists.

John Candy had one day free, so the crew filmed all of his scenes in one long session at Meigs Field. Candy played Gus Polinski, “the Polka King of the Midwest,” and made up much of his monologue about leaving a child at a funeral parlor on the spot.

Meigs Field doesn’t exist anymore. In March 2003, the city bulldozed its runway overnight, and the site became Northerly Island Park, with trails, a beach and a concert venue on the lake.

8) Hubbard Woods Station: The Footbridge

Kevin crosses the tracks in Winnetka on a footbridge that’s still there, for now.

Hubbard Woods is the shopping district at the north end of Winnetka, and the crew filmed several scenes there. In one, Kevin runs over the footbridge above the railway tracks as a commuter train rolls underneath.

The station still runs trains to and from downtown Chicago. Metra plans to replace the footbridge as part of a station upgrade, so see it while you can. That makes it the easy way to visit Winnetka without a car. Get off at Hubbard Woods and you’re a short walk from the pharmacy and the park in the next entry.

7) Hubbard Woods Pharmacy and Park: The Toothbrush and the Ice Rink

Kevin’s accidental shoplifting started at a real Winnetka pharmacy and ended on a rink the crew built in the park.

In the film, Kevin asks the pharmacist whether the toothbrush is approved by the American Dental Association. Then he sees Marley, panics and runs out without paying. The scene was filmed at Hubbard Woods Pharmacy, which closed in 1994.

Kevin’s escape takes him across Hubbard Woods Park, where he slides over the ice while a police officer gives chase. The rink was built for the film. The park is public and free to walk through.

6) Grand Food Center: Kevin’s Grocery Run

The store where Kevin buys milk, orange juice and microwave dinners is still open in Winnetka.

Kevin’s shopping trip is one of the film’s sweetest scenes. He picks out milk, orange juice, laundry detergent, dryer sheets, microwave dinners and a bag of toy soldiers, then dodges the cashier’s questions about being on his own. The store is Grand Food Center, a local grocery on Green Bay Road.

It’s still in business. Sunset Foods bought it in 2021 and kept the Grand name, and the inside has been updated since 1990. It’s about a six-minute walk from the McCallister house, which is exactly how Kevin got there.

5) O’Hare International Airport: The Airport Rush, and Paris

The McCallisters’ sprint to the gate and every “Paris” airport scene were filmed at O’Hare.

The McCallisters’ frantic run through the terminal was filmed at O’Hare. The same terminals then played Orly Airport in Paris, where Kate begs for a flight home.

None of Home Alone was shot in France. The family’s Paris apartment was filmed in Illinois too, and the plane cabin was built in the same gym as the house. If you fly through O’Hare, you’re walking through “Paris.”

4) Trinity United Methodist Church: The Nativity Scene

The church Kevin hides outside on Christmas Eve is in Wilmette, a short drive south of Winnetka.

When the Wet Bandits spot Kevin, he ducks into a nativity scene on the church lawn and hides among the figures. That’s Trinity United Methodist in Wilmette. Kevin also walks up to the same church on Christmas Eve before he goes inside.

The church still puts up a nativity scene on its front lawn every December, and fans come year round to take photos. It’s a working church, so visit outside service times.

3) Grace Episcopal Church: Kevin Meets Old Man Marley

The film’s most touching scene, Kevin and Marley talking in the pew, was filmed inside a different church in Oak Park.

Kevin finds Marley in the church while the choir rehearses, and learns the old man isn’t scary at all. He’s just lonely. The scene was shot in Grace Episcopal Church in Oak Park, a Gothic Revival church just west of Chicago, about a 40-minute drive from Winnetka.

So on screen, Kevin walks up to a church in Wilmette and sits down inside a church in Oak Park. Grace Episcopal is an active parish, and at its holiday screenings a cardboard Kevin sits where he sat in the film.

2) New Trier West’s Gym and Pool: The House Interiors

Most of the McCallister house you see inside was built in an empty high school gym in Northfield.

New Trier West had closed as a school in the mid-1980s, and its empty gym gave the crew a giant soundstage close to the house. They built the McCallister rooms there in two stories, with staircases that led nowhere. Furniture was bought in pairs and threes for the stunts.

The school’s empty swimming pool became the flooded basement in the house the Wet Bandits rob. Today the building is New Trier’s Northfield campus, home to its first-year students. The Home Alone production wasn’t the first to use it: John Hughes also filmed scenes for Uncle Buck there.

1) 671 Lincoln Avenue: The McCallister House

The real McCallister house is a 1921 brick home on a quiet street in Winnetka, and it’s one of the most famous houses in America.

The family who owned the house in 1990 lived in part of it during the shoot while the crew took over the rest for five months. Every outside shot is the real house, from the van scramble on the driveway to the Wet Bandits casing the street. Some shots inside, usually said to be the staircase and the landing, were also filmed there.

The house sold for $1.585 million in 2012 and $5.5 million in January 2025. The new owners haven’t been named, and since 2025 they’ve been restoring the inside to look more like it did in the film, with no finish date announced. The tree house was built for the film and taken down after. Hundreds of fans come to see the house each day at Christmas, so the police patrol the street. Stay on the sidewalk, because people live here.

Was Home Alone Filmed Inside the House?

Mostly no. The house you see from the outside is real, but most of the rooms inside were sets.

• The front of the house and the driveway are the real 671 Lincoln Avenue.
• The staircase and the landing appear in a few shots filmed in the real house, plus the set.
• Most of the rooms were sets in the New Trier West gym. Which shots, if any, came from the real kitchen is disputed.
• The flooded basement was built in the school’s empty pool.
• The plane cabin was built in the gym too.
• The tree house was built in the yard for the film, then torn down.
• Mitch Murphy’s house, where the Wet Bandits park their van, is the real house across the street at 656 Lincoln Avenue.

Even the people who made it don’t agree on how much was shot inside. The set decorator, Eve Cauley, has said the whole interior was built. So if you’ve ever wondered why Kevin’s house looks bigger inside than out, it is.

How Home Alone Was Filmed

A family comedy with an $18 million budget became the biggest hit of 1990 in North America.

• The studio: Warner Bros. was going to make it, then halted production when the budget grew. John Hughes took it to 20th Century Fox.
• The shoot: It started on 14 February 1990 and finished in May, all in Illinois.
• The snow: Real snow fell, but the crew used potato flakes, shaved ice and foam to keep it the same from shot to shot.
• The box office: It made $476.7 million worldwide and stayed at number one in North America for 12 weekends in a row. For years it was the highest-grossing live-action comedy.
• The awards: John Williams’ score and the song “Somewhere in My Memory” were nominated for Oscars. Neither won.

Where Was Home Alone 2 Filmed?

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was set in Manhattan, but a lot of its New York was filmed in Chicago.

The sequel opens at the same Winnetka house and sends Kevin through O’Hare onto the wrong plane. In New York, the real Plaza Hotel played itself for the outside and the lobby, where Kevin asks Donald Trump, then the owner, for directions. Chris Columbus says Trump made a cameo a condition of filming there. Trump says he was asked.

Scene	Where it was filmed	City
The Plaza outside and the lobby	The Plaza Hotel, Fifth Avenue	New York
Kevin’s swim at the Plaza	The Four Seasons Hotel	Chicago
Duncan’s Toy Chest, outside	The Rookery Building, LaSalle Street	Chicago
Duncan’s Toy Chest, inside	A set in the Uptown Theatre lobby	Chicago
The concert below the attic at Carnegie Hall	Symphony Center	Chicago
The Pigeon Lady	Central Park, by Gapstow Bridge	New York
The Christmas tree	Rockefeller Center	New York
Uncle Rob’s townhouse	The Universal Studios backlot	Los Angeles

Duncan’s Toy Chest, the store Kevin saves from the Wet Bandits, never existed. Its front is the Rookery, an 1888 office building in Chicago’s Loop, and the inside was built in the lobby of the Uptown Theatre. Uncle Rob’s half-renovated townhouse, where the booby traps go off, was built on a backlot in Los Angeles.

How to Visit the Home Alone Locations

Most of the Home Alone locations are within walking distance of each other in Winnetka. Plan a half day there, then add the city spots.

Winnetka on foot (2 to 3 hours).

1. Take the Metra Union Pacific North line from downtown Chicago to Hubbard Woods. Cross the footbridge Kevin ran over.
2. Walk past the old Hubbard Woods Pharmacy and through the park.
3. Head south on Green Bay Road to the Grand Food Center, then walk to 671 Lincoln Avenue.
4. Look from the sidewalk. Don’t block driveways, and expect crowds and police in December.

Wilmette and Northfield. Trinity United Methodist is a short drive south in Wilmette. New Trier’s Northfield campus is a working school, so drive past only.

Oak Park and Chicago. Grace Episcopal is on Lake Street in Oak Park, near the Frank Lloyd Wright sites. Northerly Island Park, the old Meigs Field, is by the Adler Planetarium. For Home Alone 2, the Rookery, Duncan’s Toy Chest’s front, is in the Loop, and its lobby is open on tours.

More Home Alone Filming Locations

Place	Scene	Film
Chestnut Court Park, Winnetka	Kevin visits Santa	Home Alone
656 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka	Mitch Murphy’s house, where the Wet Bandits park their van and Marley saves Kevin	Home Alone
Haven Middle School, Evanston	The outside of Kevin’s school, before the pageant	Home Alone 2
Hilton Chicago	The Plaza suite on Christmas morning	Home Alone 2
The World Trade Center	Kevin at the observation deck	Home Alone 2

FAQs About Where Home Alone Was Filmed

The Final Cut on Where Home Alone Was Filmed

So where was Home Alone filmed? Around Chicago, with the real McCallister house at 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, the inside built in a school gym in Northfield, a pharmacy, a grocery store and a church nearby, and a second church in Oak Park.

You can’t go inside, but you can stand where the Wet Bandits stood. Go in December, and stay on the sidewalk.

Which Home Alone location would you visit first?

For more, see our iconic movies filmed in Chicago, meet the Christmas movie characters we love, pick from our Christmas movies to watch, or browse all our film locations.