TV and Movie Homes: Where Are They Now?

No double-decker bus needed for this tour: Hop on for a virtual drive past some of the best-known homes in pop culture (and find out what's behind those famous facades these days).

By: Lauren Oster

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The Brady House (The Brady Bunch)

Producers chose the split-level home at 11222 Dilling Street in North Hollywood for Mike Brady and his family because it looked like the sort of place an architect and family man would call home. The house’s longtime owner (who moved in while The Brady Bunch was on the air in the early 70s) built an iron fence around her lot to prevent fans from crowding in to peep through her windows for a look at the Bradys’ home — which would be tough to do under any circumstances, since the interiors were shot in a studio. The home in that famous exterior scene is a split-level building, not a two-story one, and the window on the left side of its face was a fake. If the now-elderly owner does decide to move, she stands to make quite a profit on her $61,000 purchase: 11222 Dilling Street is now valued at around $1.7 million.

The Desmond Mansion (Sunset Boulevard)

The magnificent Los Angeles mansion Billy Wilder’s filmmaking team rented for Gloria Swanson’s faded silent-film star character already had a pedigree: It had been built in the 20s by "mysterious buccaneer-businessman" W.O. Jenkins and belonged to industrialist J. Paul Getty. Alas, the swimming pool Paramount built on the property for the movie’s iconic opening sequence wasn’t long for this world. Seven years after Sunset Boulevard wrapped in 1950 — and just two years after the residence took another star turn in Rebel Without a Cause — the home at 641 South Irving Boulevard was demolished and replaced with unremarkable office buildings.

Lorelai and Rory's House (Gilmore Girls)

Stars Hollow, the Connecticut town Amy Sherman-Palladino dreamed up for her fast-talking mother-daughter duo and their community after an inspirational New England vacation, is both real and imaginary: The Gilmore Girls pilot was shot on location in Unionville, Ontario, and when the series was greenlit, "Stars Hollow" was recreated on a Warner Brothers lot. The bad news? Even the most rabid fan can’t save up to live like a Gilmore girl — in fact, much of the town sets was repurposed for ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars in 2010. The good news? Since their home itself is part of the Warner Brothers studio tour, you can walk on through the Gilmores’ front door without having to sweet-talk your way past a publicity-weary owner.

Ralphie's House (A Christmas Story)

Fans of 1983’s A Christmas Story can don rabbit pajamas and relive Ralphie’s tribulations in the Cleveland home made famous in the movie, thanks to fellow enthusiast and entrepreneur Brian Jones. Jones purchased the property with profits from Red Rider Leg Lamp Company (which manufactures replicas of the leg lamp Ralphie’s dad received as a "major award" in the movie), then studied the film frame by frame and reconfigured the building as a near-replica of the set. By day it’s available for tours, and by night the private third floor is available for overnight stays beginning at $295 — though December 2018 is already nearly sold out.

Kevin's House (Home Alone, Home Alone 2)

Built in Winnetka, Illinois, nearly a century ago, the stately McCallister home’s Georgian colonial exterior now looks much as it did when it debuted on film back in 1990. (One would more properly call it the McCallister mansion, really: It boasts 4,250 square feet of living space and sold for $1.585 million in 2012.) The interior, on the other hand, has undergone significant changes: It’s now a far cry from the cozy, red and green "Christmas house" in the film (and all of those gloriously dated wallpapers have gone the way of the giant sloth). Of course, many of the "interior shots" in the film were actually taken in a replica built in a gymnasium: Since Macauley Culkin and his costars wreaked havoc on the home’s interior, it was in everyone’s interest to make room elsewhere for the serious stunts.

The Banks House (Father of the Bride, Father of the Bride II)

The ultimate 90s backyard-wedding setting was built in 1925 on a half-acre of property at 500 North Almansor Street in Alhambra, California. It last hit the southern California real-estate market in the summer of 2016 — and was snapped up for the asking price of $1.998 million two months later. It was also built in 1913 nearby Pasadena at 843 South El Molino Avenue (pictured here) and last sold in 1999 for $950,000. Stay with us, here: Shots from the side of the house and the actual nuptials in the yard were filmed in Alhambra, and the front-yard and heartwarming father-daughter basketball scenes were filmed in Pasadena. (Note to those of you inspired to planning weddings at home in So Cal: Do not attempt to perform scenes at locations in two different cities. The traffic is murder out there.)

Carrie's Apartment Building (Sex and the City)

Fictional Carrie Bradshaw may be the most famous resident of 64 Perry Street in New York City’s West Village (reimagined on the show at an Upper East Side address), but hers wasn’t the only story to unfold there: Project Runway’s Tim Gunn lived on the top floor for 16 years, and Woody Allen filmed scenes from Alice there in 1990. After the first three seasons of Sex and the City, exterior filming shifted next door to 66 Perry Street, due to its superior stoop (seriously). Local residents and the block association are not fond of attention from SATC fans, and have used chains and NO TRESPASSING signs to dissuade stoop-sitters asked tour buses to refrain from stopping on Perry Street and even convinced Google Street View to blur out their buildings in satellite images.

The Halliwell Sisters' House (Charmed)

While the gifted Halliwell siblings worked their magic from their HQ in San Francisco, Charmed trivia buffs know that their classic Victorian home is actually an historical location in southern California: The Innes House was built for its namesake, a local city councilman and real-estate developer, on Angelino Heights’s Carroll Avenue in the 1880s. Unlike their neighbors to the north, many of L.A.’s Victorians fell victim to neglect and disrepair in the middle of the century, and the meticulously-preserved Carroll Avenue houses represent one of the largest concentrations of 19th-century homes in the city. We guarantee the home will continue to look just as it did on the show: As part of a Natural Historic Register District, part of a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone and one of three easements held by the local Conservancy on Carroll Avenue, Innes House’s exterior facade and intact interior features are protected from alteration, supernatural or otherwise.

Buffy's House (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Buffy Summers made her televisual home at the non-Buffyverse address of 1313 Cota Drive, a 1914 home in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance. The property’s even more atmospheric than it was when the Scooby Gang and their allies were saving the world there, thanks to extremely healthy local flora (one would be forgiven for thinking the drooping evergreens in the front yard were bewitched). Gene Hassan, the home’s owner, opened her home to Joss Whedon fans for the first time in 2006 as part of the Torrance Historical Society’s Original Fall Tour of Historic Homes. Smart move, that: What’s a handful (or even a horde) of TV fans compared to the zombie cat in her yard, a vampire that crashed through her front window and salesman who dissolved into a pile of worms in her dining room?

Walter White's House (Breaking Bad)

Breaking Bad enthusiasts have fond memories of the moment in a 2010 episode when Bryan Cranston (as Walter White) flung a pizza on the roof of his own home, a shot he apparently nailed in one take. The owners of that Albuquerque, New Mexico house, on the other hand, have suffered the effects of non-fictional roof pizza for seven years and counting — and last fall, they installed a six-foot wrought iron fence to keep fans from flinging pies (and stealing rocks in their front yard for souvenirs). In a 2015 episode of the "Better Call Saul Insider Podcast," creator Vince Gilligan urged the tossers to cease and desist, with backup from Breaking Bad tough guy Jonathan Banks: "[I]f I catch you doing it, I will hunt you down," he warned. Duly noted.