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Written by Knight Ridder
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Wednesday, 24 May 2006 |
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At Graceland, Elvis’ bedroom is off-limits.
Across town, you can sleep in it.
Long before his private jets and rhinestone jumpsuits, Elvis Presley was a polite teenager living in public housing in downtown Memphis. Now, the renovated project attracts young professionals, and the restored Presley family apartment is available for rent.
Here you can truly sleep like a king.
Step through the keypad-operated door and you’re back in the Truman era.
Presley family portraits decorate the five-room apartment. In the kitchen hulks a vintage Frigidaire with a grocery list scrawled by Elvis’ mother, Gladys. In one bedroom, furniture bills addressed to Vernon Presley are stacked next to a Bible.
And in Elvis’ room, his Social Security card and paycheck stub are tucked in a mirror, competing for space with a Marlon Brando movie photo. The cumulative effect is dizzying — Elvis seems to have just left the building.
The Presleys moved into Lauderdale Courts in 1949, when the future star was 14 years old. The home was a big step up from the cramped boardinghouse room the family had shared. Here they had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room and their own bathroom.
The family lived at Lauderdale Courts during Elvis’ high-school years, moving out in 1953, when they had saved enough money to buy a house. Six months later, the young musician stepped into nearby Sun Studios and recorded a song — “My Happiness” — for his mother’s birthday. The rest is rock `n’ roll history.
But Lauderdale Courts is where Elvis grew up.
He had several girlfriends living in the project. He could walk to his job as an usher at the Loew’s theater near Beale Street and would listen to records at Poplar Tunes record store, still in business a few blocks away. He marveled at the fashions at Lansky Brothers clothing store and began to cultivate his flashy style.
This is also where he learned to be a musician. The teenager practiced guitar in the basement laundry room and used to sit on the 14-inch windowsills and play for neighbors. Guests can strike the same pose with the acoustic guitar decorating his former bedroom today.
The home is open for tours during Death Week, the Elvis-crazed August activities that mark the star’s death in 1977, and the week of his Jan. 8 birthday.
Other times of year, it can be rented out for up to four guests.
It’s $250 a night, with a two-night minimum. When the Presleys lived here, rent was $35 a month. A family was eligible for an apartment only if it earned less than $3,000 a year.
“It was a very desirable place to live,” said Amelia Carkuff, the interior designer who meticulously re-created Elvis’ world in the apartment. “Public housing did not have a bad stigma. It was how people became upwardly mobile.”
The 347-apartment complex was nearly demolished in the 1990s. But preservation groups, Elvis fans and developers worked to save and refurbish the property, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After a $36 million investment, the former housing project was renamed Uptown Square and its apartments marketed to young professionals. It now has wireless Internet access, secure parking, a business center and workout rooms.
But inside apartment 328, it’s still 1950.
In the tiny kitchen, sheer drapes with embroidered floral designs frame a window, set off by a working Frigidaire and a decorative gas stove. (A microwave is hidden in a cabinet). A sink with a built-in dish drainer sits next to a small table. A cereal bowl and plate are left out, perhaps in homage to the time Elvis did the same. A housing-department inspector noted the transgression, and the future heartthrob was written up.
Decorations and details are almost museum-quality. Even after a day, I was finding new touches, such as the snapshot of Elvis and his parents sitting at a table, taped to the inside of a cabinet door.
“We wanted people to experience what it was like to live in that time,” said Carkuff, who scoured salvage shops, antiques stores and eBay to find appropriate furnishings. The documents placed in the apartment are scans of the originals, provided by Elvis Presley Enterprises.
Period furniture sits on parquet floors. The coffee table holds neat piles of appropriately dated Life and National Geographic magazines. America’s newest celebrity, swimmer Esther Williams, graces one cover. A few years later, a certain Memphis boy would get that honor, too.
There’s a Victrola radio and phonograph to the side, and a flat screen TV discreetly hidden in a cabinet. DVDs of Elvis movie trailers and “I Love Lucy” episodes are provided.
Down the hall, two guests can stay in Gladys and Vernon’s room. Another pair can stay in Elvis’ bedroom, which is larger _ evidence of how Gladys coddled her only son.
This room, for some, is the shrine.
A copy of the yearbook from Humes High School, where Elvis attended, sits on the dresser, along with a can of pomade. Comic books and plastic soldiers decorate a trunk, and a pennant from Memphis’ Overton Zoo is tacked above the bed. Elvis was a comic-book fan, so guests will find several in his room. Biographers have suggested that his stage costumes were based on the superheroes he loved.
In the closet hangs a blue work shirt with an Elvis name patch. It’s from the Crown Electric Co., where the future musician worked after high school.
Only one touch mars the mid-century scene.
The memories are too much for some love-struck fans, who began showing their devotion shortly after the apartment opened. One wall is now decorated with their red lip-prints.
IF YOU GO:
RATE, CONTACT: The Elvis apartment at Lauderdale Courts rents for $250 a night, two-night minimum; holiday rates higher. Contact: 901-521-8219; www.lauderdalecourts.com.
OTHER ELVIS SITES: The Arcade Restaurant, 540 S. Main St., is a classic diner on the southern edge of downtown. Ask for the Elvis booth in the back. Contact: 901-526-5757.
See Sun Studio, where Elvis and countless others got their starts. Tours daily from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission: $9.50 per person; children younger than 12 are free. Contact: 901-521-0664; sunstudio.com.
No Elvis fan can consider visiting Memphis without seeing Graceland, his former home. Tours start at $22 for adults and $9 for children. More expensive tours include Elvis’ airplanes and museums. Contact: 1-800-238-2000; www.elvis.com/graceland.
LODGING: If the Lauderdale Courts apartment is booked, consider the Heartbreak Hotel. It doesn’t have the same Elvis history, but it’s next door to Graceland. Rates from $119, with themed Elvis suites starting at $520. Contact: www.elvis.com/epheartbreakhotel. | Only registered users can write comments.
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