By Larry Bleiberg
Of The Dallas Morning News
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 pay check 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
boarding-house 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 theatre near Beale Street and would listen to
records at Poplar Tunes record store, still in business a few blocks
away. He marvelled 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 neighbours. 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.
But this was not Skid Row.
''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 centre 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
honour, 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.
For more information click on link
www.lauderdalecourts.com/home.htm
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