Elvis Presley House | |
 | |
| Location | 1034 Audubon Dr. Memphis TN |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 35°6′12.0378″N 89°55′11.2116″W / 35.103343833°N 89.919781000°W |
| Built | ca. 1954 |
| Architect | Howard Handwerker[1] |
| Architectural style | Ranch |
| NRHP reference No. | 05001217 |
| Added to NRHP | 2006 |
Elvis Presley House is a one-story ranch style house in a residential neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee. Singer Elvis Presley lived here with his parents between March 1956 and March 1957,[2] before moving to Graceland.
The house is a one-story ranch-style house with concrete foundation and two-car attached garage.[1] It is located in a quiet residential neighborhood. It has four bedrooms and two bathrooms.[3] A brick and metal fence was installed by the Presley family.[4] In the backyard is a motorcycle garage.[4] Elvis installed a pool in the backyard in 1956,[1] which was reported to be the largest residential pool in the city at the time.[5] The pool was removed in 2006.[6]
Originally the house was painted green,[1] then white, then green again.[6]
Elvis purchased the house on March 12, 1956, for $29,500 from the Welsh Plywood Corporation [6][7] and placed a down-payment of $500 on the house.[2] He was only 21 years old.[2] The new home was not far from his previous residence at 1414 Getwell Road, in what is now a coin operated laundromat.[6]
Shortly after moving there, his song Heartbreak Hotel became the most popular song in the nation (before topping the Billboard charts at #1 in April), and fans mobbed the house, [8] which quickly became a focal visiting point for fans, celebrities and the media.[4][6] Photos of the house were published in national magazines such as Look, Seventeen, and Parade.[6] Police frequently were called to deal with the mobs of fans who would line the street.[8][6]
The crush of fans and photographers became too much, and after 13 months[6] Elvis moved to Graceland[6] and sold the Audubon Drive property as part of the mansion and estate’s purchase.[6] Elvis and Graceland owner Ruth Moore swapped residences; she moved into the Audubon home as he moved into the mansion-estate.[6] The property has been sold about eight times since.[6]
The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in March 2006,[1] shortly before its public auction on eBay two months later.[5][4] Initially, it was reported that 'spoon-bender' Uri Geller won the auction with a bid of $905,100.[3][5][9] Instead, the house was sold to record company executive Mike Curb[5] at a reported sale price of $1 million.[10][6] Curb turned oversight of the property over to the Mike Curb Institute at Rhodes College.[6]
The new owners repainted the house from white to a green color similar to the one when Elvis owned it, renovated the fence, and removed the pool.[6] The house is currently not open to the public,[6] but occasionally hosts small VIP events and private music concerts.[11] In April 2017, the house was damaged by fire while undergoing renovations.[11] Amazingly, most of the contents were undamaged because they were safely secured elsewhere at the time.[11]
A plaque on the brickwork on the fence reads:
