10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Practical Magic House

If you’re gearing up for Practical Magic 2 this September and wondering whether the Practical Magic house with its wraparound porch, that kitchen, that greenhouse full of spell ingredients is a real place you could visit, here’s the short answer: no.

The Owens house was never a real home. It was a set, built over six months on a bluff on San Juan Island, Washington, designed by Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch (the pair behind design firm Roman and Williams) to look like generations of witches had lived there since Maria Owens survived her own execution 300 years before.

It worked. Standefer wanted a house where you’d half expect Stevie Nicks to show up for midnight margaritas. She’d have earned the invite, two songs on the soundtrack are hers and the aunts’ wardrobe is inspired by her own.

You might know Barbra Streisand wanted to buy it and that it was torn down a day after filming. But there’s a lot more you might not know. So here’s the tea from it being perhaps set on a burial ground to where you can find the original blueprints. And, if you want to learn how to get started with witchcraft, we’ve got that too.

1. The Owens House Wasn’t a Real Home

I hate to burst your bubble, but we should start here. The Victorian mansion every witch wants to live in was what production teams call an architectural shell. It only existed during filming and pre-production.

While the charming romantic house with the wraparound porch, greenhouse conservatory, and enviable kitchen feels like a real home from the outside, there isn’t actually anything inside. All of the interior scenes were filmed on a sound stage in Los Angeles.

For $80,000, the production team rented the land within the 12-acre San Juan County park on the West side of San Juan Island overlooking the Haro Strait. They spent six months building the exterior standing set and landscaping the gardens and grounds. The goal was to create a structure that looked as though it had weathered decades of New England winters.

2. The Production Designers Now Run One of the Best Design Firms in the World

Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, who later went on to launch the A-list design firm Roman and Williams, were responsible for creating house’s look and its memorable interiors based on the scant descriptions in Hoffman’s novel. They found inspiration for the Victorian house in late-19th-century scrollwork and lighthouses on the East Coast.

And, originally, the East Coast shingle style house had a lighthouse on top. Because, as Standefer told Victoria magazine, “Women were traditionally lightkeepers and this was a house of women.”

The film’s director, Griffin Dunne, connected with production designer Standefer because the two had worked together on Search and Destroy and Addicted to Love. He told Architectural Digest, “Her production design was so tasteful that I looted some lighting fixtures and arm chairs from the set that are in my apartment today. I didn’t consider anyone but Robin and Stephen to bring their magic to the iconic look of the movie.”

Dunne told Vanity Fair that he loved the “house that we tore down the day after we wrapped, it was lush. Robin Standefer was approached. I know Ben Stiller was one person who saw the movie, and said, “I want you to do my house.” I can’t confirm that happened, but Standefer did do the production design for Stiller’s film Zoolander.

3. Alice Hoffman’s Book Didn’t Offer Many Clues

Alice Hoffman’s 1995 book that the movie is based on didn’t offer that much for Standefer to go off of to create the house’s actual look. She told Victoria magazine back in 1998 that for the Practical Magic house she “analyzed the descriptions of the stairways and tangle of vines growing up over the back door, and decided it had to be Victorian.”

But, the tricky part was that while the witches Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances (played by Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing) lived there, it wasn’t supposed to be spooky. Standefer said, “It couldn’t look haunted. It had to be clean and white, not fading and cobwebbed. The aunts never really age. Their magic keeps them young. What if they lived in a house that never really aged?”

4. The House Never Touched the Ground

Though the house looks like it’s been there for ages, it was built entirely on a platform to preserve the sacred Indigenous American land it was on. (San Juan Island’s Indigenous history belongs to Coast Salish peoples of the Northern Straits language group, principally the Lummi and Samish.)

The county parks and recreation commission would not allow any digging into the soil because artifacts has previously been found and it was treated as a likely burial site.

The studio also had promised to take down the house as soon as shooting was complete. Demolition began the day after filming was done. Standefer told Victoria magazine she made a celebratory salad from garden greens just before the set was leveled.

5. You Can Camp on the House’s Former Location

The house doesn’t exist anymore, but you can camp where it was within the San Juan County park. Looking at photos from the movie, it appears that campsites 15 and 16 in Friday Harbor are where the house stood and they each come with a fire ring. Or, your coven can rent out the whole campground for your next Full Moon gathering. Reserve your campsite here.

6. Barbra Streisand Tried to Buy The House

After seeing the finished film, Streisand called the production wanting to purchase the Owens house. (Relatable.) She couldn’t, because by the time she called, it had already been demolished.

7. The Practical Magic House Was Built in Washington

Though the story takes place in Massachusetts, the actual house was built on San Juan Island in Washington, far from New England. And, the town scenes mostly take place in Coupeville on Whidbey Island, primarily on Front and Main Street.

Coupeville is a 19th-century maritime village inside the Ebey’s Landing National Historic Reserve and has a preserved main street of clapboard storefronts.

The Catch and Fry in the movie is a restaurant known as Toby’s Tavern. Sally’s shop, Verbena Botanicals, is currently the Molka Xete Mexican Kitchen. Kingfisher Books is Lesher’s Hardware in the film and Coupeville Liquor was The Speckled Hen Grocery. All of them are all open to the public and available for you to visit. You can follow the self-guided walking tour here to see all of the locations.

8. The Interior Was Just As Magical

As we all know, it’s not just the outside of the Practical Magic house that’s holds its charm. The inside, especially the kitchen, is too. As Hollywood production designer Jon Hutman points out in his walkthrough of the home in the video below, it’s light, feminine, and inviting. Standefer has said that one of her biggest challenges was to “dispel the whole witch stereotype.”

Standefer told Architectural Digest that “In many ways we’re Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances. We created their world, their home, their spirit through their objects. It is a home that truly is a cabinet of curiosities in the most incredible way. Like any generational, family home, it accrues memory through its objects. It is all about collecting. We made every little thing in the film, down to the tincture jars and pressed flowers.”

Standefer and Alesch scoured antique stores all around Puget Sound to find the right objects but also looked in New York and LA. Some of the botanical pressings in the parlor came from Tin Man antiques in New York and the leather chairs came from Venice Beach’s Bountiful. Standefer says she found a lot of items at both, but both shops have since closed. However, the fabrics and curtains for this room and the dining came from Osborne & Little, which is still in business.

Standefer also decided that the conservatory would be where they’d mix and measure. And had hand-blown bottles, funnels, and a glass scale modeled after at 15th century Italian design created for the movie by artist Allison Berger.

Finally, since the aunts are always making things, Standefer thought the dining room should double as a craft room.

9. There’s Lots of Details to That Kitchen You Might Not Have Noticed

Who doesn’t love the Practical Magic kitchen? As Standefer told Victoria magazine, the kitchen is light, utopian, jovial. It’s the most used room on the set, the heart of the house.” She told AD that her and Alesch “always had an obsession with those massive, remarkable English kitchens and were so inspired to create one of those. To this day, that is my favorite kitchen we’ve created. Hard stop.”

Standefer wanted the kitchen to feature a variety of cream colors, from the wall tiles by Ann Sacks to the front of the Aga stove, and have be a contrast to the dark floors and the 17th-century style trussed high ceiling reminiscent of English cottages. On one side, is the Aga stove, that feels like it could belong to any period. And then, of course, the greenhouse (perfect for gathering herbs for potions or recipes) is adjacent to the kitchen.

On the big center island, something is always happening. That might be dough rising, it might be a ritual where you try and bring someone back from the dead. Or, it might be making a batch of Midnight margaritas. Dunne told AD, “Nicole brought the tequila, but I helped drink it and joined them in Lime in the Coconut on the last take.”

Also, it’s worth noting that the herbs hanging in the kitchen align with popular herbs used for spells. For instance, in old English folk magic, rosemary was hung indoors specifically to attract good health and repel evil, and sage carried the same protective, cleansing association.

10. The House Blueprints Are Available

The Practical Magic house was demolished a few days after filming was complete. But, the actual blueprint plans for the house exist online. It’s unclear their origin, but you can find them on Owens House Designs (which used to be called Amas Veritas).

Using those plans, scenes from the film, and the known relationship between the kitchen, conservatory, central passage, and living room, we created this fan-made illustrated reconstruction of the ground floor.