Graceland

Story

Elvis Presley bought Graceland on March 19, 1957, for $102,500 — slightly over the $100,000 budget his parents had been given to find a farmhouse with room to breathe. He was 22 years old. The Colonial Revival mansion had been built in 1939 by Thomas and Ruth Moore, who commissioned Memphis architects Furbringer and Ehrman to design it on land named after Ruth's aunt, Grace Toof. None of that history survived Elvis's residency in any meaningful aesthetic sense. What he made of the place — the Jungle Room's fake-fur upholstery, the fabric-swathed ceilings, the racquetball court converted into a trophy room — is so thoroughly his own that the original house barely registers anymore.

What stops visitors cold, if they slow down enough to notice, is the Meditation Garden. Elvis is buried here, alongside his parents Gladys and Vernon, his paternal grandmother Minnie Mae, his daughter Lisa Marie, and his grandson Benjamin Keough. A memorial marker also stands for Jesse Garon Presley, Elvis's stillborn twin brother, who never lived a day. That detail — the twin who didn't survive, commemorated in stone next to the twin who became one of the most famous people who ever lived — is the kind of thing that changes the register of a visit entirely. The garden is accessible before paid mansion tours begin, free of charge, which means you can stand there at dawn with almost no one else around.

Elvis died here on August 16, 1977, aged 42. More than 3,500 mourners filed past the copper-lined coffin placed in the foyer. Graceland opened to the public on June 7, 1982, and on November 7, 1991, became the first site in the National Register of Historic Places recognized for its significance to rock music. It draws roughly 500,000 visitors a year. Most of them are looking at the right things. A few are looking at the right things for the right reasons.