Graceland was family land long before anyone in Memphis had heard of Elvis Presley. The name came from Grace Toof Ward, daughter of the Memphis printer Stephen C. Toof, who bought 323 acres in Whitehaven in 1894. At its widest the family holding ran to about 500 acres of rolling pasture. In 1939 Ruth Brown Moore, who inherited the property through her aunt Grace, and her husband, Dr. Thomas D. Moore, a surgeon who bred Herefords, built a two-story Classical Revival house of Tishomingo limestone on a hilltop in a grove of oaks. The house was designed around their daughter, Ruth Marie, a child prodigy on piano and harp from the age of four. Its architects, Furbringer and Ehrman, gave it front rooms that could be opened up for recitals, and Ruth Marie went on to play harp with the Memphis Symphony. The barn and smokehouse date from the same year. The Moores divorced in 1952. Mrs. Moore moved out and let a local church group gather at the house until it could build next door, and Graceland Christian Church took about five acres at the corner of the property. The YMCA offered $35,000. In March 1957 Elvis Presley, 22, outbid it, buying the house and 13.8 acres for $102,500, made up of $10,000 down, $55,000 for his house on Audubon Drive, and a $37,500 mortgage. He kept the name. Elvis Presley Enterprises later bought the church building.
Getting there
35.0459, -90.0229
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
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