What Happened to the High School From ‘The Breakfast Club’?
40 years after John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club was released in theaters, we still regard it as one of the greatest high school movies ever. Sure, the writing is amazing and the performances are iconic, but what else sets it apart from the rest?
Maybe it’s because The Breakfast Club is one of the only movies ever to take place almost entirely inside an actual high school.
On March 28th, 1984, John Hughes and his crew began principal filming at Maine North High School in Des Plaines, Illinois – a real-life school that had been previously shuttered in 1981 after eleven years of operation due to low attendance. Filming took place on location between March and May of that year, transforming it into the fictional Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois.
While several school hallways and parking lots were used in their pre-existing state for the movie, the library itself was actually deemed too small for filming. Instead, Hughes and his team transformed the school’s gymnasium into the now-legendary library set that we all know and love (no wonder it was so big!)
What happened to Shermer High School?
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Plenty of fans would surely like to make pilgrimages to the spot where we all discovered what made for a banner year at the old Bender family. But today, Maine North High School is no more. In fact, the building is now an Illinois Lottery Payment facility, run by the Illinois State Police.
While the building has a new purpose these days, remnants of The Breakfast Club can easily be found if you are looking for them. The exterior of the facility hasn’t changed much at all, making it simple for visitors to spot where Bender almost gets run over by Allison’s car, where Claire gives Bender her earring, or where John Hughes cameos as Brian’s dad to pick his “son” up after detention.
Other memories from the movie may take a bit more legwork to find, including a particular stairwell that leads down to a window that reveals the unchanged lower levels of the old school. A small, simple shrine to The Breakfast Club sits near that window, featuring a framed movie poster and a sign that says “The film The Breakfast Club was filmed in our building.”
What about the makeshift library area where the bulk of the movie was shot? It’s now a warehouse, primarily used to store lost and confiscated items, presumably so they could eventually figure out where they belong – much like brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal did for each other in this bonafide classic.
While Maine North High School may have shut down over 40 years ago, the movie that was filmed within it’s walls continues to teach and inspire us, four decades later.
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