The Kentucky home where Muhammad Ali grew up is now for sale.
Converted into a museum, the two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Louisville, Kentucky, provided a window into “The Greatest’s” childhood when he was still known as Cassius Clay.
It and two other houses—one was converted into a welcome center and gift store, while the other was supposed to be a short-term rental—went up for sale on Tuesday.
Regarding the three properties, the owners are requesting $1.5 million (£1.1 million). “The best possible result” would be to find a buyer who would keep Ali’s childhood home as a museum, according to co-owner George Bochetto.
Philadelphia lawyer and former Pennsylvania state boxing commissioner Bochetto stated, “This is a piece of Americana.”
“This is part of our history. And it needs to be treated and respected as such.”
The museum opened shortly before the boxer died in 2016.
Bochetto and his business partner at the time renovated the frame house to how it looked when Ali lived there with his parents and younger brother.
“You walk into this house … you’re going back to 1955, and you’re going to be in the middle of the Clay family home,” Bochetto said in a 2016 interview.
Using old photos, the developers replicated the furnishings, appliances, artwork, and even its pink exterior from Ali’s days living there.
The museum featured videos focused on the story of Ali’s upbringing, not his storied boxing career. “To me, that’s the bigger story and the more important story,” Bochetto said in an interview last week.
Ali lived in the home when he left for the 1960 Olympics in Rome, from which he returned as a gold medal winner, launching a career that made him one of the world’s most recognizable faces and becoming a three-time heavyweight boxing champion.
Despite its high-profile debut, the museum ran into financial troubles and closed less than two years after opening.
Muhammad Ali’s childhood home goes on sale for £1m
The museum is situated in a western Louisville neighborhood several miles from downtown, where the Muhammad Ali Center preserves his humanitarian and boxing legacies.
As efforts to reopen the childhood museum languished, offers to move the 1,200-square-foot house to Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and even Saudi Arabia were turned down, Bochetto said.
“I wouldn’t do that because it’s an important piece of Louisville history, Kentucky history, and I think it needs to stay right where it is,” he said.
