John Hughes’ widow shopping Lake Forest mansion after picking up $12M home

The widow of filmmaker John Hughes is shopping a Lake Forest mansion after buying another big estate in the North Shore town for $12 million.

Nancy Hughes broke the record for most expensive residential sale in Lake Forest when she bought the 12,500-square-foot Cape Cod last year, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Now, she’s asking $4.5 million for the Lake Forest home, a six-bedroom, 7,000-square-foot English country-style mansion that she bought for $5.2 million shortly after her husband’s death in 2009. It features a theater room with a poster on its wall for “The Breakfast Club,” according to the Tribune.

Northbrook native John Hughes’ films include that classic teen film, along with “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Sixteen Candles,” “Home Alone” and others that were all set and filmed around the north suburbs.

He and his wife owned a seven-bedroom, 11,000-square-foot mansion in Lake Forest that Nancy Hughes in 2014 donated to Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital for a fundraiser. The hospital sold the mansion for $4 million, according to the Tribune.

The Chicago area set a record for luxury home sales in 2018 even as the greater residential market had its struggles. [Chicago Tribune] — John O’Brien