Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
A city of music.
An introduction to Memphis and its southern suburb of Whitehaven, where Graceland stands on a rise above Elvis Presley Boulevard.
On this page
Read the city from the boulevard
Graceland stands at 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard, part of US Route 51, in the Whitehaven area about nine miles south of central Memphis and a few miles north of the Mississippi state line.
A city guide can give context without turning a neighbourhood into a backdrop. Notice how a house sits back from the road behind its wall and trees, and how a street was renamed for the man who lived there. Respect homes, working businesses and places of worship.
Columns, stone and a music gate
Graceland’s architects, Furbringer and Ehrman, gave the 1939 house a columned portico and a façade of stone in the Colonial Revival style. Elvis Presley added a wall of pink Alabama fieldstone and a gate decorated with musical notes.
Begin with a detail and ask how it was made, changed and maintained. A photograph alone cannot tell you who carved a column or built a wall, or the conditions in which they worked.
A Graceland chapter
Graceland shows a different side of Memphis: a 1930s country house on the edge of the city, transformed by a young star and later opened to the world.
Look at the meeting of the two: a formal Southern house and the very personal rooms of the man who made it his home.
Make room for context
Pair this city reading with the mansion’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places, commissions their restoration or represents their makers.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
