Aretha Franklin’s former home to get a facelift
Environmental court judge: ‘I want that building rehabbed’
Plans are in the works to stabilize the roof and shore up the sides of Aretha Franklin’s Memphis childhood home at 406 Lucy, according to a representative working to preserve the house.
“We feel pretty good about stabilizing it,” said Jeffrey Higgs, president and chief executive officer of the LeMoyne-Owen College Community Development Corp. “We need to do that, and we need to do that pretty quickly regardless of what happens.”
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s special counsel, Alan Crone, said the mayor is personally interested in the future of the home, and the city is putting together a working group to address it. He said “serious people” have expressed interest.
“This is a historic property and it’s part of our heritage as Memphians that all kinds of music was literally born here,” Crone said. “(The mayor) wants to save it and he wants to facilitate that conversation, but it’s going to ultimately be up to the community and music community of Memphis and the nation to decide whether this is something that they want to save and put their money where their mouth is. We’re going to do everything we can to try to get us to that point.”
The deteriorating 1920s clapboard cottage house in the Soulsville neighborhood, where the Queen of Soul was born March 25, 1942, was declared a public nuisance in 2012 due to rotting floors and its collapsing roof.
Crone said hard work is being done to find a longterm solution for the house with potential use by a music foundation, research institution, university or museum system. Officials said last month that the DIY Network, which broadcasts programs about do-it-yourself projects, is also interested.
“I want that building rehabbed,” said Environmental Court Judge Larry Potter.
Potter added that people are working diligently to address blight in Memphis.
“You have no idea how happy that makes me,” he said.