"A Christmas Story" House in Cleveland!

Anyone else love the film, “A Christmas Story” as much as I do? “A Christmas Story,” taught me so many things as a child, including;

1. Never to touch a BB Gun

2. Never to lick a frozen poll

3. What soap tastes like. Yeah, I may have licked a bar of soap out of curiosity…. never again!

We watch this film every holiday season so imagine our excitement when we found out the actual Christmas Story House is located in Cleveland, Ohio! Since, our darling friends Ross & Rebecca were getting married in Cleveland we knew we had to check it out. Today’s post is going to share all the details you need to know to visit the house of a cult-classic!

The Christmas Story House is located on 3159 W. 11th St., Cleveland, OH 44109 in the Tremont neighborhood. The house is only 5-minutes from Downtown Cleveland so it is very easy to visit. There is free parking available on the street in front of the museum and on the streets adjacent to the house. Some neighbors charge you to park on their property but know that these paid parking lots are not affiliated with the house.  The Christmas Story House and its Museum are open year round, 7 days a week from 10am – 5pm but closed on major holidays like Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day.

The Christmas Story house is exactly what it sounds like, the house where they filmed the famous movie, “A Christmas Story.” Back in the 1980’s, the film’s Director, Bob Clark, started looking for the perfect home and vintage department store for his film. So, he sent out 100’s of letters to department stores in the Midwest. Only Higbee’s in Downtown Cleveland responded, but luckily for Bob, their store was perfect for the film! Bob also loved the way the Tremont neighborhood looked in the film “The Deer Hunter” so he decided Cleveland was the perfect place to film his movie. The film was released in 1983 and while only marginally successful at first, it has become one of the most popular holiday films of all time.

21 years after the film was released, Brian Jones, an entrepreneur in San Diego bought the home for $150,000 on EBay. Since only the exterior of the home was used in the actual movie and the interiors were shot on sound stages, Brian watched the film frame by frame and ended up putting $240,000 into the house to make every inch of it match the movie. This house is now identical to the movie and has replicas of all of its props, such as, the decoder ring, Ovaltine in the kitchen and of course pink bunny suits that you can take photos in! The house, and its museum across the street, opened in 2006 and quickly became a major tourist attraction in Cleveland.

It cost $11 for an adult admission ticket and $7 for children 3-12. Children under 2 are free and the museum offers discounts for Senior Citizens and guests with valid military IDs. Your ticket includes a guided tour of the house and entrance into the Christmas Story Museum. There is also a gift shop to the left of the museum. It’s the grey and white building. Guided Tours begin at 10:15am and are held every 30 minutes until 1 hour before closing. You are also permitted to do self-guided tours up until 30 minutes before closing.

The tour is fun and you get to explore the entire house! While on the tour you will visit the living room with the famous leg lamp. Make sure to walk over to the Christmas Tree in the room and hold the official Red Ryder, carbine action, two hundred shot range model air rifle! They let you touch everything on the tour and take tons of photos! Not like a typical museum…While on the tour you also can hang out in the kitchen and hide under the sink like Randy did in the film. Upstairs you can tour Ralphie’s bedroom and checkout the bathroom where he had his mouth washed out with soap. There is actually a bar of soap you can put in your mouth for a photo op if you want. We passed on that…. Gross! Especially, when you can see teeth marks in the soap.

Ok, so you should probably go for all of the reasons I wrote about above but also, go for the bunny suits. Hello, perfect Instagram moment.

The Christmas Story house is a fun stop if you happen to be in Cleveland. Just go, we double dog dare you too!