Sloane’s House from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”

Once the pizza parlor from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off had been found, my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, starting hunting for the home belonging to Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara) – one of the last unknown locations from the 1986 comedy.  We had known for a while, thanks to a helpful crew member, that the residence was not in Chicago, where much of the movie was lensed, but Los Angeles.  In looking for it, though, we always came up empty-handed.  Then last week, fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, contacted a different crew member who informed him that the dwelling was located somewhere in Brentwood.  Owen immediately started searching aerial views of the area and, voila, found the house fairly quickly.  So I ran right out to stalk it while I was in L.A. last week.  (I actually had to stalk it twice – the first time, it started pouring rain immediately after I showed up.  That is why some of my pictures depict rainy weather, while in others the sun is shining.)

As it turns out, Sloane’s house is famous in architectural circles due to the fact that it was designed by Paul Revere Williams, the prolific architect who also gave us Johnny Weissmuller’s former home, the McGinley Residence, Perino’s Restaurant, and the Just Married mansion.  It was actually the first home that Williams ever designed in the Brentwood area.  The property is known as the Preminger House in real life, in honor of one of its early inhabitants, film producer Ingwald “Ingo” Preminger.  In later years, the American Colonial Revival-style pad was owned by another famous Hollywood producer, Harold Hecht.

In 1977, the Preminger House was purchased by Peter and Merle Mullin.  The couple still own it to this day.  Of possessing the residence for such a long period of time, Peter said in a 2012 article, “Every now and then, I think about leaving.  Then I look around . . . and I can'”‘”‘t.  I just love this place.”  At some point in time, Peter and Merle hired Gary Drake of Drake Construction to do a renovation of the U-shaped dwelling, during which the central patio was enclosed with a large glass atrium.  Drake also constructed a subterranean automobile museum to house Peter’s large collection of cars. The original garage was subsequently transformed into a guest home.  You can see photographs of the Preminger House post-remodel here, here and here.

The Preminger House, which was originally built in 1925, currently boasts five bedrooms, six baths, 5,726 square feet of living space and 0.55 acres of land.  Sadly, not much of the property is visible from the street, as you can see below.

The pad shows up twice in Ferris Bueller’s Day off.  It first appears in the scene in which Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) and Sloane attempt to snap Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck) out of his stupor by taking him swimming.  You can check out a photograph of what the Preminger House pool looks like today here.  Thankfully, little of it has been changed since the movie was filmed almost thirty years ago.

In John Hughes’ DVD commentary of the movie, he says of the pool scene, “We never identified where this was or whose house this was.  I always presumed it was just someone else’s house.  It wasn’t really Sloane’s house, it certainly wasn’t Matthew’s house, and it wasn’t Cameron’s house.  They just sort of stopped and used somebody’s Jacuzzi.”  I was surprised to learn this bit of info as I had always been under the assumption that the pool scene was supposed to have taken place at Sloane’s residence.  In hindsight, John’s explanation makes more sense, though, being that Sloane was wearing a negligee in the scene and later references having changed out of her clothes outside by the Jacuzzi.  Had she been at her own house, she would have worn a bathing suit and changed within the confines of her bedroom.

In the screen captures below, you can also see that the trio’s clothes are scattered about near the pool, further alluding to the fact that they broke into a random house to swim.  Had they been at Sloane’s place, they all would have been able to change inside.

Oddly, while Hughes did not intend for the pool scene to have taken place at Sloane’s pad, he did choose to use the Preminger House to stand in for Sloane’s residence at the end of the movie.  The back side of the dwelling showed up in the scene in which Ferris dropped Sloane off at home and kissed her goodbye.  You can see a photograph of what the rear side of the residence currently looks like here.  Though the addition of the atrium altered the property, it still looks much the same today as it did onscreen in 1986.

In this photograph, you can see that the large tree and curved brickwork surrounding it that were visible behind Sloane and Ferris in the scene are still there today.

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Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Preminger House, aka Sloane’s house from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, is located at 340 South Westgate Avenue in Brentwood.

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