Elliott Smith's final home — Lemoyne Street

Elliott Smith died on October 21, 2003, at the Echo Park bungalow he shared with his girlfriend Jennifer Chiba at 1857½ Lemoyne Street in Los Angeles. He was 34. The Los Angeles County Coroner's report found the cause of death to be two stab wounds to the chest but listed the manner of death as undetermined rather than suicide, noting irregularities in the physical evidence that made a definitive ruling impossible. The circumstances — the absence of typical hesitation wounds, a note that may or may not have been written under duress — have never been resolved to the satisfaction of Smith's family or many of his fans, and the question of what happened that afternoon remains open.

Smith had been recording in Los Angeles for several years by 2003, working on what would become the posthumous album From a Basement on the Hill. He had moved to the city from Portland in the late 1990s following the success of 'Miss Misery', his Academy Award-nominated song from the Good Will Hunting soundtrack. The mainstream attention sat badly with him, and his years in Los Angeles were marked by severe drug addiction alongside some of the most searching music of his career. From a Basement on the Hill, released in 2004, contains recordings that show no diminishment of his gifts even in the most difficult period of his life.

The house at 1857½ Lemoyne Street is a private residence on a quiet Echo Park street. It draws visitors making a pilgrimage through the Los Angeles geography of Smith's last years — the Figure 8 wall on Sunset Boulevard, the recording studios, the neighbourhood where he lived and worked. Echo Park and Silver Lake in the early 2000s formed an indie rock geography that Smith was central to, and the address on Lemoyne remains part of that landscape for the people for whom his music matters most.