What a difference a year makes!! Last year I surprised my wife and daughter by driving by the site of the house where they filmed some scenes from that Christmas Classic “A Christmas Story” What a surprise to find out that we were invited in, and they were planning on renovating the house to it’s big screen glory and opening it up to the public!
Fast-forward almost exactly a year later, and today we attended the official grand opening of the “A Christmas Story House and Museum”.
The entire area of West 11th was a mass of people waiting in giant lines for the museum and house tours. Luckily, the weather was unseasonably warm. The lines inched along, and soon we found ourselves in the museum where you can view memorabilia, props from the movie, on-the-set photographs taken by the cast and crew, and buy t-shirts, lifebuoy soap and leg lamps.
During checkout, we bought our $5 tickets to tour the house. After a brief stop at the Rowley Inn across the street, we headed to the end of a very long line to get into the Christmas Story House.
FREE pictures with Leg Lamp!
Restroom – $.50
During our wait, a few enterprising residents of the area capitalized on the captive audience by selling bottled water, soda, pictures and even bathroom breaks!
Slowly but surely, we made our way to the house itself.
Word on the street was the people running the whole affair are still not completely finished with the renovations. The exterior of the house looks almost exactly like it did in the movie. A few anachronisms like all the security cameras aside, the house was dead near perfect from the outside. But murmurs through the line outside mentioned that they did not even have a Christmas tree in the living room. The rumors were true. While they took great pains to stock the house with 50s era furniture and decor, the house was still pretty bare. Furnishings aside, the House itself is best known for the Leg Lamp (which was, thankfully, present) and Christmas Tree (with crooked star) in the front room window.
Volunteers throughout the house answered questions and informed everyone that inside renovations were indeed still underway, and explained that very little of the interior of the house was used in the movie. For this reason, while the interior was wonderfully put together and promises to be even better in the future, ultimately it will never truly match the house in the film.
Last year I said that we may make a trek to the Christmas Story House a new annual tradition, and I think that still holds true. 24-hour marathons every year make this film a holiday favorite, and the fact that so much of it was filmed here in Cleveland make it ever more special.