Michael Jackson Birthplace — 2300 Jackson Street, Gary, Indiana

Michael Joseph Jackson was born on August 29, 1958, at 2300 Jackson Street in Gary, Indiana — a small, two-bedroom house in a working-class neighbourhood of the steel-mill city south of Chicago. He was the eighth of ten children born to Joseph and Katherine Jackson, and the house was where the Jackson 5 rehearsed obsessively under their father's demanding direction before being discovered by Bobby Taylor and signed to Motown in 1968. The address became so famous that the Jacksons titled a 1989 album after it.

Gary, Indiana in the 1960s was a booming industrial city — the US Steel Gary Works was the largest steel mill in the world — but was already beginning the economic decline that would devastate it in subsequent decades. The Jackson family's modest home on Jackson Street (a coincidence of naming) was the incubator for one of the most extraordinary musical families in history. Michael, Jermaine, Tito, Jackie, and Marlon all grew up in this house, and the cramped conditions and their father's relentless discipline forged the performing skills that would make them global stars.

The house at 2300 Jackson Street remains standing and is a popular tourist attraction, though Gary itself has suffered severe economic decline. The city has erected a Michael Jackson historical marker near the house, and visitors regularly leave flowers and tributes. The Jackson family moved to California after their Motown success, but the Gary house remains the origin point of a story that produced the best-selling album in history (Thriller, 1982).