In Tyron, North Carolina stands a dilapidated three-bedroom clapboard residence with an extraordinary history. Once the childhood home of Eunice Kathleen Waymon – aka Nina Simone, the legendary blues singer – the historic house looks close to collapse, but it has just been saved... with a little help from artist Adam Pendleton and tennis superstar Venus Williams. The philanthropic pair have raised just shy of $5.9 million (£4.8m), more than enough to repair and preserve the home, which incredibly still holds evidence of its former famous resident...
Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist – starting to play piano at just three years old in that very house in North Carolina, according to the singer's autobiography. She enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, before performing at a nightclub in Atlantic City under the stage name Nina Simone. The mega talent would go on to record over 40 albums between 1958 and 1974 showcasing her unique vocals and genius lyrics.
While Simone's childhood home remained empty for many years, the historic property faced demolition before American conceptual artist, Adam Pendleton stepped in and bought the house for $95,000 (£77k) in 2017 with the help of artists Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson and Julie Mehretul. Pictured here in 2018, a Singer sewing machine sits with lace fabric still in its grasp while a crucifix hangs on the wall above.
Another view shows a single bed in the room, with painted steel frame and patchwork sheets still lining the bed frame. An embroidered rug covers the painted floorboards, and a brown telephone hangs on the wall as though about to ring. The North Carolina property is a stunning snapshot in time. The National Trust is now working alongside the Nina Simone Project, World Monuments Fund and North Carolina African American Heritage Commissioning to "preserve and rehabilitate the structure for future generations". It is said to be the "largest-ever preservation effort dedicated to an African American historic site".
Remarkably, Simone’s piano still sits within her childhood home, perfectly preserved. The activist herself did not stay in her homeland however, becoming disillusioned with American politics after using her voice and platform to fight in the civil rights movement. Moving to Barbados in the 1970s in protest, Simone ended her days living in the South of France, near friend James Baldwin. She died in 2003.
In May 2023, Pendleton and Venus Williams curated an art exhibition at Pace Gallery’s New York space, with works auctioned off and their proceeds going to preserve the landmark home as an African American historical site. Among the 11 works up for grabs, Julie Mehretu's ink-and-acrylic 'New Dawn, Sing (for Nina)' fetched a whopping $1.6 million (£1.3m). A New York charity gala added to the grand total raised, far surpassing the $2 million (£1.6m) organisers had hoped for. "With this investment, we are well on our way to opening the doors to visitors in 2024," said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. We can't wait to visit.
Read on for more perfectly preserved homes of icons
Have you ever wanted to know where your favourite celebrities once lived? Well, now you can. These dwellings were once home to some of the world’s most recognisable people. From Frank Sinatra to Elvis, Judy Garland and Frida Kahlo, these former stars' houses have been carefully restored and preserved, to give us a fascinating insight into their lives. Let's step back in time and explore these time capsules of notoriety...
The northwest English city of Liverpool is famous for two major exports: football and The Beatles. Widely regarded as the most influential band of all time, all four members were born and bred in the city and their legacy continues to attract legions of fans year-upon-year. Across the city, many landmarks have been erected or preserved in honour of the group, including the childhood home of the legendary John Lennon.
The first five years of Lennon's life were tumultuous; with absent parents, custody battles, infidelity and an attempted emigration to New Zealand. He moved into 251 Menlove Avenue in Woolton – a well-to-do Liverpudlian suburb – to live with his uncle and aunt, George and Mimi Smith.
It was here he spent the remainder of his childhood and adolescence, living in the property until mid-1963 when he was 22-years-old. This was after The Beatles’ debut album had been released, featuring hits such as Love Me Do and Twist and Shout. The home was a place of great significance for Lennon: not only had he grown up here, but songs like Please Please Me and I’ll Get You were composed on the premises.
Unfortunately the Liverpool semi-detached residence is also a site of great tragedy: approximately 30 metres from 251 Menlove Avenue, Lennon’s mother Julia was hit by a car and killed after a visit in 1958. Her death traumatised the young musician and influenced future music such as the track Julia.
251 Menlove Avenue received a coveted English Heritage blue plaque on 7th December 2000 - the day before the 20th anniversary of Lennon’s death. Two years later, his widow, Yoko Ono, purchased the home to protect it from developers. She donated it to the National Trust who restored the interiors authentically to the style of the era. It opened to the public in 2003 where it remains a huge tourist attraction in Liverpool. In February 2012, both Lennon and bandmate Paul McCartney’s respective childhood homes became Grade II listed buildings.
Frida Kahlo remains one of the most iconic artists of the 20th century, so it's no real surprise that her lifelong home was just as colourful and unique as she was. The Mexican painter was not only born at the Blue House in 1907 but she also grew up there, lived there with her husband Diego Rivera for many years and passed away in a room on the top floor of the house in the July of 1954.
Kahlo contracted polio at just six years old, and was bedridden for nine months. It is said that her father encouraged her to recuperate by playing lots of sports that even included wrestling, which was unusual at that time for a girl. In 1922, Kahlo attended the National Preparatory School in Mexico City where she would meet Mexican muralist Diego Rivera who she claimed to want to marry someday. That same year Frida would go travelling with Gomez Arias and suffer her fateful car accident, fracturing her pelvis and spine.
Also known as La Casa Azul, the property can be found in one of oldest neighbourhoods in Mexico City, Coyoacán. In 1958, the house and its contents were turned into a museum and many of the artist's possessions can still be seen today, left exactly where she placed them many decades before. Personal effects include Kahlo's paints, brushes and easels, as well as pre-Hispanic necklaces, folk dresses and her now iconic wheelchair.
Although Kahlo lived in various homes across Mexico during her lifetime, she always came back to La Casa Azul. Left much as it was in the 1950s, the unusual house reveals her enigmatic personality, with vibrant colours and unusual trinkets dotted in every room. It offers 8,611 square feet of inside space and boasts some of the painter’s most important works, including Long Live Life and Portrait of My Father Wilhelm Kahlo.
Yet the garden at La Casa Azul is probably its most important feature. This is where Kahlo spent much of her time and it is the place that fed her imagination, resulting in various spectacular paintings that were inspired by the garden's colours, plants and wildlife. Left perfectly untouched, the Blue House preserves the memory of one of Latin America’s most celebrated female artists, offering a glimpse into her arduous and fascinating life.
Who isn't intrigued by celebrity childhood homes from before they were famous? This modest clapboard house is where country music legend, Johnny Cash, grew up. It is situated in the Dyess Colony of Arkansas, USA, which was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as part of the New Deal to help the country recover after the Great Depression. More than 500 impoverished farm families were resettled here, and Cash’s was one of them.
Along with his six siblings, Cash lived here from the age of three until he graduated from high school in 1950. His experiences in Dyess inspired him to write various songs, including the likes of Pickin’ Time and Five Feet High and Rising.
You can now visit his home, which has been furnished as it would have been when he lived there. Like all the rooms in this humble house, there's not a lot of space for the large Cash family, but the interior is cosy and has all the essentials. There's even the original wood burning stove, which caused the burn marks in the linoleum that you can still see today.
Other perfectly preserved artefacts include this piano that belonged to Johnny’s mother, his father’s shaving mug and the original flooring his childhood bedroom and living room. Period details found throughout the 1930s time capsule have been donated according to CNN, such as a pedestal sewing machine and a battery-operated radio that Johnny is said to have played at night.
Although small, the one-storey house has windows on all sides letting in plenty of light, as you can see in the dining room. Period items throughout are based on photos and recollections of two of Johny’s siblings—Tommy Cash and Joanne Cash Yates—even down to the kitchen ice box and corner cabinet which have been painted apple-green to match the Cash siblings' memories. The house was bought by Arkansas State University and restored in honour of the 'Man in Black', earning it a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
Straight out of a fairytale comes Claude Monet’s oasis in Normandy, northern France. The French impressionist first noticed the idyllic village of Giverny when passing by on a train and, in 1883, rented a sprawling country estate and the land surrounding it. Monet's dream was to purchase the mansion, and create the now infamous gardens.
By 1890, the renowned impressionist painter had made enough money from the sale and exhibition of his paintings throughout Europe to purchase this house he had grown to love whilst renting. Having left Paris in 1878, Monet made his Giverny abode the beating heart of his life and work until his death in 1926.
Monet directed the since-restored renovation of the home that art lovers can visit today – its dreamy pink facade and many of the kaleidoscopic interiors (such as the greens, yellows and blues found throughout the home) were colours picked from his own painting palette. Fortunately, Monet was not just able to buy the structural home but also the surrounding land.
Now he was the landowner, he could create the enchanting gardens he had long envisioned. Throughout the years, he painted many of his most famous works here. Though the paintings themselves are mainly on display at Musée Marmottan Monet and Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, at Giverny you can find the sources of inspiration: the Japanese bridge, the water lilies on the pond and the many archways of lush twisting vinery.
The home is spread across two floors and visitors can take a peek into where Monet read, lounged, ate and worked. Many of the private apartments of the family are also open to the public, as is the separate studio where he immortalised the botanical sights of the garden.
Judy Garland's iconic depiction of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz made her a global star and her much-quoted line, "there's no place like home", couldn't be more perfect for the place where she spent her early years. The pretty white clapboard house in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, was built in 1892 but was bought by Garland’s parents in 1919.
The youngest of the family, Judy Garland was born into showbiz with vaudevillian parents who ran a movie theatre. Performing from the age of just two years old for one of her father’s Christmas shows, the child star went on to take the lead in musicals, TV shows and films – becoming the huge Hollywood name we know today. The Grand Rapids house was their first family home, where Garland lived from her birth in 1922 until 1926.
Stepping inside is like going back in time. The house had been remodelled by the previous owner in 1915, four years before Garland’s family moved in. It now forms part of the Judy Garland Museum and it was restored between 1995 and 1996, to look like it would have in the mid-1920s. The museum used old photographs to truly capture the heart of Garland's former home.
Framed family portraits, vintage clothing and cherished childhood items are placed in situ for visitors to admire. This bedroom, decorated in pretty purples and greens, could have been where Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm) slept as a baby with her parents. She had two older sisters who she performed with from an early age.
Once a notable celebrity home, The Judy Garland Museum has been open since 1975 and was one of the first celebrity museums of its kind in the USA. Other exhibits include a test dress from The Wizard of Oz, which forms part of the largest collection of Judy Garland memorabilia in the world.
Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ernest Hemingway bought this house in 1931 and lived there with the second of his four wives, Pauline Pfeiffer. The couple lived there with their two sons until 1939. It was built in 1851 and still contains the very same furniture that Hemingway used when he occupied the home all those years ago.
Hemingway and his wife planned and built a 60-foot long swimming pool in the grounds, where they’re pictured in this photo. It was an extravagant luxury for a 1930s home and took the place of his boxing ring, which was moved to a site just a few blocks away.
This was Hemingway’s writing studio. It’s airy and uncluttered, featuring a red-tiled floor, hunting trophies, a table where his typewriter sits and a significant collection of books. It’s on the second level, looking out over the lush gardens and is decorated with art, which Hemmingway loved to collect. It also has one of Pauline's chandeliers that she brought over from Paris. Could it have inspired some of the world's best books?
Though Hemingway is known for his bold writings on masculinity, heroic fatalism and the cold cruelties of life, he was as soft as a kitten when it came to his cats. It is said that the writer admired a six-toed polydactyl cat name Snowball that belonged to a local mariner. The captain then gifted Hemingway his cat, which his sons renamed after the fairytale character, Snow White. Many of the 40–50 cats who now live on the museum grounds are descendants of Snow White.
The spacious master bedroom has beautifully carved dark wood furniture and a centrepiece chandelier. Hemingway left Key West for Cuba in 1940, leaving Pauline to live in the house with her two sons, Patrick and Gregory, until her death in 1951. The estate was bought by jewellery store owner Bernice Dixon from Hemingway’s sons in 1961. She opened the house as a museum in 1964.
The house on the Mount Vernon estate was built by George Washington’s father in 1734 but the USA’s first president (from 1789 to 1797) began running the estate in 1754. Over the following 45 years, he expanded the home to create the 21-room mansion that still stands proudly today.
According to the Mount Vernon visitor’s website, the Founding Father hosted as many as 677 guests at the Mansion in 1798—welcoming a steady array of visitors to the President’s home, from close friends to neighbours to strangers. After Washington’s death in 1799, his wife Martha continued to host many guests but is said to have moved her bedroom to the third floor for a little more privacy.
Unlike the great homes of the Gettys and the Vanderbilts, George and Martha Washington’s bedchamber is decorated in a simple style. It was where Washington died from a throat infection in 1799 and the large bed is six feet, six inches long to accommodate the six-foot-two man.
This double-height room was called the New Room by Washington as it was the last one he added to the house. It was designed to showcase the fine craftsmanship of the nation and was used for receiving visitors and occasional dining. Due to its large size, it was also the perfect place for displaying their various pictures and paintings.
This house in Bloomsbury, which is now a museum, is where the English novelist Charles Dickens lived during the early years of his fame. He wrote Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby there and raised his three oldest children with his wife Catherine.
Dickens wrote with his quill pen in his book-lined study at the centre of the house. Always blessed with a prolific output, he composed newspaper articles, essays, short stories and novels here and was often inspired by the people he encountered day to day, including guests and servants.
The drawing room is decorated in an opulent style with long red drapes, fine carved furniture and works of art on the walls, as well as a piano and desk. Visitors to the house can also see the family’s bedchambers and servants’ quarters.
Here we see Mary Hogarth room, Dickens’ sister in law who he was very fond of. Hogarth first met Charles at age 14, and after he married her sister Catherine, Mary lived with the newlyweds for a year. According to the Dickens Museum Collection, inside the bedroom you’ll find a portrait of Mary by Frederick Kitton and a plaster copy of a bust of Dickens by Thomas Woolner, c.1875.
This house was once the residence of a bonafide rock and roll star. Jimi Hendrix lived on the upper floors of 23 Brook Street with his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham in 1968 and 1969. He said it was his ‘first real home’ and spent time decorating the flat with curtains and cushions from John Lewis and items from Portobello Road market.
Born Johnny Allen Hendrix in Seattle, Washington in 1942, this highly influential guitarist began playing at age 15. Playing backup for the likes of Little Richard and The Isley Brothers, it wasn’t until Hendrix moved to England in late 1966 that he achieved real fame. Within months of the Animals bassist, Chas Chandler becoming his manager, Hendrix had gained three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
The flat is next door to the house lived in by the German and British composer George Frideric Handel for 36 years. In 2000, after being used as an office, Hendrix’s flat was taken over by the Handel House Trust and from 2014 it was restored to how it was when he lived there. It’s been open to visitors since 2016.
Handel was the first occupant of 25 Brook Street and moved into it in 1723. The townhouse was close to St James’s Palace, where he performed royal duties. The largest room in the house would have contained Handel’s harpsichord or organ and some of his fine art collection.
This beautiful bedchamber has blue panelled walls paired with red curtains at the windows, and on the four-poster bed. Handel composed and rehearsed at Brook Street and eventually died there in 1759.
In 1943 Louis Armstrong was already famous, but he chose to live in this modest house in the working-class neighbourhood of Corona, Queens, in New York City. He lived there with his wife Lucille and the house is still much as it was back then. Now open as a museum, the property celebrates Armstrong's musical legacy and connection to the area.
Louis is known as one of the most influential figures in jazz, with a career spanning five decades and receiving multiple accolades. Born in New Orleans in 1901, the raspy-voiced trumpeter and vocalist was raised by his grandmother until the age of five when he was returned to his mother. Once Armstrong moved to New York in 1929, his reputation as a trumpeter and show-stealing vocalist was solidified on the jazz scene.
The home is very modest for a world-renowned musician, but is full of mementos from his life in jazz, such as this little figurine that stands on the piano in the living room (right). A painting of Lucille Armstrong also hangs on the living room wall. Louis and Lucille both lived at the property until they died – in 1971 and 1983 respectively.
With its shiny blue cupboards and white Formica worktops, this retro kitchen gives us a view into the homes of the 1960s. It has built-in dispensers for waxed paper and foil on the wall and the stove was commissioned from Crown by Lucille.
In his elegant study hangs a painting of him by singer Tony Bennett. Repairs were carried out in 2002 before the museum opened in 2003 but very little has been changed since the Armstrongs lived there. Louis was proud of his roots. "We don’t need to move out in the suburbs to some big mansion with lots of servants and yardmen and things," he once said.
Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson was a prolific writer but kept herself to herself—said to live much of her life in isolation, ignoring guests and staying in her bedroom to write. The Dickinson’s family home was described by Emily’s brother, Austin as the "mansion" where the brother and sister are said to have acted as "lord and lady" while their parents weren’t there.
Emily Dickinson’s corner bedroom on the second level was where she spent most of her time and wrote nearly 1,800 poems, most of which were unpublished during her lifetime. Yet luckily, the works have found devoted fans in every generation since. You can rent the room for up to two hours, in order to find inspiration of your own.
The homestead has been part of the Emily Dickinson Museum since it opened in 2003, together with the Evergreens – the house next door where her brother Austin and his family lived. This is one of its rooms, decorated in soothing greens with beautiful big windows and elegant hardwood floors.
Fourteen acres of land surround the Homestead. Emily Dickinson loved nature and tended the large garden with her sister Lavinia. Many of her poems were inspired by the natural world and you can now take an audio tour of the grounds.
Mark Twain (the pen name of Sam Clemens) and his wife Livy, started to build this striking red-brick house in 1873 and it was ready to move in to the following year. They lived there until 1891, when Twain grappled with financial problems and had to move his family to Europe.
Mark Twain lived in the house with his three daughters. His son, who was born before the family moved to Hartford, died from diphtheria at the age of two. The house was restored in 1963 and opened to the public as a museum in 1974, on its 100th anniversary.
This opulent dining room has carved dark wood furniture, floor-length drapes and a luxurious rug, a display of his early wealth and success. Works of art adorn the walls. Mark Twain spent his most productive years in this house and wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn here.
The library is even more lavish. With a beautifully carved fireplace, it's the perfect spot for curling up with a book on cold evenings. It features deep blue wallpaper and a bold carpet. Every winter, the house is decorated as it would have been during the family Christmases that Mark Twain spent there.
According to the Mark Twain Home and Museum, the large pier glass mirror seen in the drawing room was a wedding gift that the Clemens’ brought to Hartford from their first home in Buffalo, New York. What’s more, the tufted furniture and chandelier also belonged to the family while they lived here. Associated Artists are said to have stencilled the walls and ceiling of this room in silver East Indian motifs over salmon pink.
The neurologist Sigmund Freud was the founder of the school of psychoanalysis and is one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th-century. He lived and worked for the majority of his life in Vienna, Austria but fled in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution. He settled in this gorgeous North West London mansion for what turned out to be the final year of his life.
The influential godfather of psychoanalysis was born in Freiberg, Austria in 1856. Freud lived and worked in Vienna after qualifying as a doctor of medicine in 1881. Throughout his practice he would develop now infamous theories on the subconscious, including dream analysis and the Oedipus complex. But his final year was spent in London, having fled the German annexation of Austria in March 1938.
The idyllic home is situated at 20 Maresfield Gardens in the affluent Hampstead area. Although he died here at home in 1939, it remained in the family: his daughter Anna Freud – an influential figure in psychology in her own right – lived here until her death in 1982. It was her wish that, after her death, the Freud home be converted into a museum to celebrate her father and his life’s work. Four years later, it opened to the public.
Today, the home is a popular attraction. Although he only lived here for a short time, Freud read and wrote prolifically here. He completed his final – and incredibly controversial – book Moses and Monotheism here in his library, which has retained all of his antique leatherbound books for public display.
Freud also continued to practice psychoanalysis here and maintained a practice, which was well sought-after by the London wartime elite. The museum’s centrepiece is his infamous couch, brought all the way from his beloved Vienna home, that he lived in for 47 years before finding refuge in London. On this sofa, patients practised Freud’s signature free association technique, where they were asked to access their subconscious and say whatever came to mind.
The King of Rock 'N' Roll bought Graceland, in his hometown of Memphis, in 1957 for $102,500 (£82k). Elvis lived there until he died in 1977. Built in 1939, the estate was named Graceland after the original landowner, Grace Toof. It had previously been a cattle farm and came with nearly 14 acres of land. Elvis' parents found the property and put a $1,000 (£808) deposit down for it, while the singer finished filming on Jailhouse Rock.
The mansion spreads out over 17,000 square feet and attracts over 600,000 visitors a year, with people keen to see the place that this unrivalled musical icon called home. The living room, where Elvis is playing bass guitar in this photo, was where he would receive guests. Lisa Marie Presley inherited the estate from her father after he died in 1977 when she was nine. Following her death, in January 2023 the estate was passed to her daughters.
Elvis made many additions to the house, which was originally 10,000 square feet, including adding the famous musical gates in 1957. But the décor in Graceland reflects the height of fashion in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Beautiful stained glass panels depicting peacocks stand out behind the luxurious cream sofa and armchairs. The vintage living room also features one of the three fireplaces in the mansion.
Downstairs in the basement you’ll find Elvis’ extravagant pool room, based on a picture of an 18th century billiards room that Elvis saw gracing the pages of a magazine. Sitting adjacent to the room where the King would famously watch three TV screens at once, Graceland’s pool room boasts approximately 400 yards of patterned fabric which it is said to have taken three men 10 days to cut and hang across the walls and ceiling. Bearing a 'Do Not Touch' sign, Elvis’s pool table has remained in place since 1960 and was reportedly one of the first purchases he made after serving in the army, according to The Express.
Other rooms you can see on the tour include the jungle room: an amazing tiki-themed man cave which Elvis referred to simply as 'the den'. This cosy hangout was added to the back of the house in 1965 and was where he made his last recordings in 1976. With faux timber panelling, a green shag carpet and animal print everywhere, it's a fitting sanctuary for the man who made rhinestone flared jumpsuits his signature look.
Positioned in the glitzy city of Palm Springs, California, lies Frank Sinatra's iconic desert modern home. A spectacular mid-century abode, Ol’ Blue Eyes lived here between 1947 and 1954 and sold the property in 1957. In fact, the iconic crooner commissioned the house to be built, paying architect E. Stewart Williams just $150,000 (£121k) to design and build the estate.
Known as Twin Palms, Sinatra's house played host to various celebrity parties, movie sets and ferocious rows between Sinatra and his wives, Nancy Barbato and Ava Gardner. It was thanks to Sinatra that Palm Springs fast became the ultimate destination for the Hollywood elite.
Wanting a unique home, Sinatra hired Williams to design a Georgian-style mansion but the architect managed to persuade the singer to go with a design that was more appropriate for its desert setting. The Rat Pack member apparently demanded that the house be ready for Christmas, so he could host a lavish party for all of his friends. This left Williams with just a few months to design and construct the property.
Building work took place at an alarming rate (and cost), and was ready in time for New Year's Eve. The mid-century abode soon set the standard for Hollywood artists and embodied the casual, indoor/outdoor lifestyle that California was known for. Guests are seen testing the water here at one of Sinatra's many pool parties, in 1951.
Now a museum and holiday rental, Twin Palms has been beautifully restored, while retaining many of its original design details and furnishings. Sinatra was renowned for his talents as well as his temper and one of the original bathroom sinks still features a crack, caused when Sinatra threw a champagne bottle at Gardner. The singer's bedroom, in which you can now sleep, and his iconic piano also remain untouched, revealing the life of one of the world's most celebrated artists.
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