{"id":399007,"date":"2026-01-09T20:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T20:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/399007\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T20:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T20:22:07","slug":"david-bowies-childhood-home-set-to-open-to-the-public-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/399007\/","title":{"rendered":"David Bowie\u2019s childhood home set to open to the public next year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

David Bowie performs during The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium in London on April 20, 1992.Dylan Martinez\/Reuters<\/p>\n

David Bowie<\/a>\u2019s bedroom could soon be London\u2019s newest tourist attraction.<\/p>\n

The house where the musician grew from suburban schoolboy to rock \u2018n\u2019 roll starman has been bought by a charity that plans to open it to the public.<\/p>\n

The Heritage of London Trust said Thursday that the 19th-century railway worker\u2019s cottage in the south London suburb of Bromley will be restored to its 1960s decor and open to the public next year.<\/p>\n

Almost 10 years after his death, David Bowie’s childhood home has been acquired with plans to open it to the public in future. <\/p>\n

The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Visitors will be able to visit the 9-foot by 10-foot (2.7-meter by 3-meter) bedroom, \u201cwhere a spark became a flame,\u201d the charity said.<\/p>\n

Bowie, born David Jones, lived in the house with his parents from 1955, when he was 8, until 1967, when he was a 20-year-old working musician hungry for fame.<\/p>\n

Geoffrey Marsh, co-curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum\u2019s hit 2013 exhibition \u201cDavid Bowie Is,\u201d said the house is where \u201cBowie evolved from an ordinary suburban schoolboy to the beginnings of an extraordinary international stardom.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs he said, \u2018I spent so much time in my bedroom, it really was my entire world. I had books up there, my music up there, my record player.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

From Bromley, Bowie went on a creative journey that took him to Philadelphia, Berlin and New York, through eye-popping style changes and musical genres from folk-rock to glam, soul, electronica and new wave. His songbook includes classics such as Space Oddity, Changes, Life on Mars, Starman, Young Americans and Heroes.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A view of Bowie’s childhood home in an undated photo provided by the Heritage of London Trust.Heritage of London Trust\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

The heritage trust scrambled to buy the house when it went on the market last year. It hasn\u2019t said how much it paid, Other houses on the street have recently sold for upwards of \u00a3500,000 ($932,000) \u2013 modest by London standards.<\/p>\n

The house project, backed by Bowie\u2019s estate, has received a \u00a3500,000 charity grant and is seeking to raise another \u00a31.2-million in donations. The heritage trust aims to open the house in late 2027 for public visits and creative workshops for children.<\/p>\n

Heritage of London Trust director Nicola Stacey said the house will offer visitors insight into Bowie\u2019s creative origins, and into domestic life in the 1950s and 1960s, a period of huge social change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m keen that it doesn\u2019t feel static, it doesn\u2019t, feel sterile, there\u2019s a sense of the family living there,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd a sense of that you\u2019ve really walked into David Bowie\u2019s life in the 1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n

The announcement came as fans mark a decade since Bowie\u2019s death at age 69 on Jan. 10, 2016, two days after the release of his final album, Blackstar.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A plaque outside the home.Heritage of London Trust\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

A decade on, Bowie\u2019s cultural legacy in music, style and design continues to inspire. His 90,000-item archive opened to the public last year at the V&A Museum\u2019s David Bowie Centre in east London.<\/p>\n

She said \u201cthe idea of reinvention\u201d that Bowie embodied remains inspiring today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re used to people having all sorts of different personas and we celebrate it in a way that it wasn\u2019t celebrated back in the 1960s,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd he helped pave the change.\u201d<\/p>\n

George Underwood, a childhood friend, said that the house was where \u201cwe spent so much time together, listening to and playing music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard a lot of people say David\u2019s music saved them or changed their life,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing that he could do that and even more amazing that it all started here, from such small beginnings, in this house. We were dreamers, and look what he became.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: David Bowie performs during The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,75,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,341,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-399007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-entertainment","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-music","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}