Aretha Franklin's Birthplace (former)

Aretha Franklin was born in this 1930 South Memphis shotgun cottage on March 25, 1942, and lived here until about age 2. Fans sang and left notes on its boarded windows after her 2018 death.

Fire gutted roughly half the house years before Memphis called it a nuisance in 2012. Judge Larry Potter ordered it demolished in 2016, then stayed the order after LeMoyne-Owen College CDC proposed saving it.

On July 12, 2024, the house sold at a foreclosure sale on the Shelby County Courthouse steps to preservationist Anasa Troutman of Historic Clayborn Temple. She said she would preserve it where it stands.

The county assessor's sales history records that day's $36,416 trustee's deed, and its March 2025 reappraisal still lists 1 building on the parcel: a 1930 frame house appraised at $17,400.

The Commercial Appeal's June 13, 2016 story, “Aretha Franklin birth home may be demolished,” is the earliest coverage on record. That was 2 years before Franklin died and 8 before the courthouse sale.

A vacant, fenced lot on a residential street. The city's 2017 birthplace marker and the house are visible from Lucy Avenue; there is no interior access and no public restoration as of July 2024.