Chicago -- City and John Hughes/Home Alone Tour

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**STANDARD CITY PHOTOS TO FOLLOW**

Ok we're going to start off my photos from Chicago with something that maybe no one here will care about, but I'm gonna give a shot...

The older I get the more I appreciate John Hughes and his stable of movies, and the more I look into them the more I realize they were all shot in a fairly concentrated section of Chicago, from the downtown "Loop" up into the tony suburbs of the North Shore, which is where he grew up. So when plans for a vacation to Chicago materialized earlier in the year I made it clear to my wife and the other people in our group that I wanted to do a John Hughes filming location tour one of the days with a focus on the suburban spots as seen in Home Alone, Ferris Buller's Day Off, Uncle Buck, and Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

We're going to get the most obvious location out of the way first and start with the Home Alone house

^^ The garage (which Kevin's dad left the doors open to... whoops!) is no longer there

Also this was a proper tourist location with ~15 people milling about at any given moment

Old man Marley next door... we never see more of his house than in this shot

Turns out he has a really freaking nice house, now covered in cedar shingles

Time to race off to the airport! (We'll never make it)

No more driveway loop

Surely no one ever noticed the subtle American Airlines brand placement in either Home Alone 1 or 2, but believe it or not but the family uses American Airlines and the American Airlines terminal at O'Hare for these scenes. And as it turns out we flew American Airlines to get out there AND of course deplaned at the American Airlines terminal! How amazing is that?!

This is officially known as the Hall of Flags and they filmed there for both movies. Below is from Home Alone 2. Also I want that tan cashmere trench coat

Further down the concourse

Now it's off to the village of Hubbard Woods in the town of Winnetka, where the drugstore scene (where Kevin accidentally steals a toothbrush) and park ice pond scene were filmed.

That park building more or less sits in the middle of where the ice pond was

Kevin then runs towards a small Metra station and continues across the pedestrian bridge to everlasting safety

 

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(I hate the 20 photos per post limit)

Fast forward to the scene where he goes to Santa's home, shot in downtown Winnetka

Last from Home Alone, we can't forget about that beautiful and imposing church

Next up is Planes, Trains & Automobiles, a personal favorite but for filming locations in Chicago it's strictly limited to shots of the El downtown and then Neal Page's house up in Wilmette

I always loved how the house was lined up at the end of the road allowing for shots like these

The view in real life was just as lovely

 

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Next up is Uncle Buck and the Russell family house

Next we go back to downtown Winnetka. As a reminder, the Home Alone Santa scene was filmed there, and it also was used for an Uncle Buck scene where he's trying to retrieve his niece Tia

As well as one shot from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, for his mother's real estate office

The stores and parking arrangement has changed, but the buildings are all the same

And uh I guess this is the end of this tour

Hope all two of you out there that made it this far enjoyed it!

 

[commuter guy]

Loved this post!

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

 

[kz1000ps]

Loved this post!

Found one of the two people interested in this!!!

 

[stick n move]

That was awesome! As a 90’s kid home alone and ferris buehlers day off bring back the feels. So cool seeing how the places havent changed much.

 

[shawn]

Absolutely fantastic work, from another big John Hughes fan! The Breakfast Club is my favorite (I love Home Alone 1 and 2, but consider them separate from Hughes' Brat Pack movies), followed by Weird Science. The Breakfast Club plays just as well today as it did four decades ago, but Weird Science unfortunately hasn't aged as finely.

 

[kz1000ps]

Absolutely fantastic work, from another big John Hughes fan! The Breakfast Club is my favorite (I love Home Alone 1 and 2, but consider them separate from Hughes' Brat Pack movies), followed by Weird Science. The Breakfast Club plays just as well today as it did four decades ago, but Weird Science unfortunately hasn't aged as finely.

Weird Science might be in my top five "movies that have aged the worst," sad to say. For so many reasons I won't belabor here it just doesn't hold up to modern viewing.

Also I wanted to go to the schools they used to shoot The Breakfast Club/Ferris Bueller/Uncle Buck/Home Alone but they're all generic 1970s brownitecture and I had a wife and other people with me, so I ditched that idea pretty quickly.

 

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Time for the "standard city photos"

 

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And just to add to the ambience, basically every day had a "feels like" temperature hovering somewhere around 110 degrees...... 95-ish air temp with loads of good ol' Midwest humidity

Felt like 114 at this point

All it took was 30 minutes to go from sun to this... as seen from the CTA Blue Line

We had JUST been at the John Hancock an hour earlier and suddenly it looked like the sky was disintegrating onto it -- V V V V V

 

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Last day, let's start off with one of my favorite pieces of postmodernism, Helmut Jahn's 500 West Madison

It's weird but I think it falls into the "good weird" category

Then we made our way to Oak Park and its Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District

And finally we're back at O'Hare in the American Airlines terminal, same as it ever was

And a look at Helmut Jahn's award winning United Airlines terminal from 1987