Other Peoples Homes (2) Elvis, Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee
April 8th 2008 01:34 am
In the words of Paul Simon, “I’m going to Graceland, Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee” and now I’ve been but, in my case, with a travelling companion several decades more than nine years old and a devoted fan of the “King of Rock and Roll”.
Since Elvis Presley’s death in 1977, Graceland, the house purchased by Elvis in 1957 and in whose grounds he is buried, has become a shrine to the memory of Elvis and a centre of pilgrimage for thousands of fans who visit every year.
Graceland was built on a hilly, heavily wooded thirteen-and-three-quarter-acre site on the two-lane Highway 51 connecting Memphis with Jackson, Mississippi, for a Dr. and Mrs. Thomas D. Moore. Over time the name “Graceland” came to refer specifically to the house but originally it applied to the entire area which was establish as a Hereford cattle farm in 1861, by S.E. Toof, the publisher of the Memphis Commercial Appeal. It was named after his daughter, Grace Toof. Ruth Moore, who built Graceland the house, was Grace’s niece who planned the house for her daughter, Ruth Marie, who played the harp and piano. Music seeped through it’s very foundations. The rooms were designed with an eye to future musical evenings and space was essential. A Commercial Appeal headline for Sunday, October 27th 1940 heralded the “Colonial Courtliness of Georgian Style Exemplified in Stately Graceland”. The home that has come to symbolise Elvis.
The house was opened to the public in 1982. I understand about 650,000 people a year pass through the front door. Graceland has become one of the five most visited home museums in the United States and in 1991 gained the honour of being placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Joining one of the many shuttle tours that operate from downtown Memphis, I, personally was prepared to be disillusioned. Would it all be hype and tasteless, but hey, forever curious about other peoples tastes and extravagances it was a ‘must do’ visit. Surrounded by fellow travellers, devoted Elvis fans, who have all come to see not only where Elvis lived by how he lived, the tour began.
The neoclassical fa