Updated September 23, 2021 40.3K votes 7.1K voters 853.7K views
Over 7.1K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of 18 Historic Figures' Homes That You Could Actually Live In
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Vote up the historical figures' homes you think are a steal at the price.
Historical figures occupy physical space just like the rest of us, and sometimes that physical space is downright unremarkable. Before he was a world-famous writer, Ernest Hemingway was just a kid in a house in Oak Park, IL - a house that recently went on sale for a relatively modest half-million. Paul McCartney's boyhood home was asking considerably less than that - as was a brownstone where Al Capone used to live.
Historical figures' homes come up for sale all the time; sometimes they're swiftly snapped up, and sometimes they linger on the market. The price ranges are enormous - from barely over $100,000 to well into the millions. Some historical homes are grand estates, while some are drab dwellings you wouldn't give a second glance.
Read on to see some legendary personalities' onetime residences that have recently been on the market. Dying to move into the bedroom of someone who once made history? It can be easier - and cheaper - than you might think.
Beloved children's author and illustrator Theodore Geisel - better known as Dr. Seuss - lived in this house on Fairfield St. in Springfield, MA from the age of 2.
If you watched The Untouchables you may think that Al Capone (prior to his imprisonment, anyway) only ever lived in palatial digs suitable for Chicago's most notorious gangster. It turns out, though, that at least one of Capone's residences in the 1920s was considerably more modest.
This two-flat red brick home went on sale for $109,900 in February 2019, after the previous owner had been foreclosed on. Two months later, after a flurry of offers came in, the house sold for $226,000, more than double its asking price.
Famed movie star Grace Kelly may not have been born a princess, but her childhood home, in the East Falls district of Philadelphia, PA, was pretty posh all the same.
The house, built in the late '20s and early '30s by Kelly's father, went on the market in June 2016 for $1 million. That October, her son, Prince Albert of Monaco, bought the house for $775,000, perhaps using family connections or royal charm to come in so far under the asking price.
Ernest Hemingway lived at this nondescript home in Chicago's Oak Park neighborhood from early childhood until, as a teenager, he went off to join an ambulance corps in WWI. After being injured in the leg, he returned to this house to recuperate, hone his writing skills, and plan his next moves. Within a few more years he would be in Paris, part of a glamorous literary expat scene that included fellow author F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Jim Morrison lived with his girlfriend Pamela Courson in the Hollywood Hills, in a house just off Laurel Canyon Boulevard, in the 1960s. The home was the inspiration for the Doors song "Love Street."
From 1947 to the mid-1950s, Beatle-to-be Paul McCartney lived with his family in this modest home in the Liverpool neighborhood of Speke. It was here that the young McCartney lived while developing his musical skills and, by his own recollection, singing in the choir at St. Barnabas church.
The house, put up for auction in 2015, didn't stay on the market for long. It was snapped up for £150,000 ($225,000).
