Michael Jackson Childhood Home — Gary, Indiana

The house at 2300 Jackson Street in Gary, Indiana is where Michael Jackson was born on August 29, 1958, and spent his early childhood alongside his eight siblings in a two-bedroom, 672-square-foot bungalow that Joseph and Katherine Jackson had purchased in 1950 for $8,500. It is one of the most scrutinised small houses in American music history: the modest frame building in a working-class neighbourhood of a struggling industrial city where five brothers rehearsed, competed, fought over the single microphone, and developed the act that Joseph Jackson drove relentlessly until it reached Motown and changed popular music.

Gary, Indiana in the late 1950s and 1960s was a city whose industrial base was still largely intact — the steel mills of US Steel's Gary Works, which had built the city at the turn of the century, were still operating, and the community had an African American middle and working class whose institutions, churches, and social life provided the context for the Jacksons' musical ambitions. The family's Jehovah's Witness faith and the tight discipline of Joseph Jackson's management of his children's careers both shaped and constrained what emerged from that house. Michael was five years old when the Jackson 5 first began performing publicly.

The house was designated a museum and cultural landmark and is now open to the public, maintained as a memorial to the family's origins and to Gary's most famous son. The city itself has declined severely since the steel industry's collapse, and the neighbourhood around 2300 Jackson Street reflects that history. The contrast between the modesty of the house and the magnitude of what emerged from it is part of what the site communicates. Indiana Landmarks has pursued National Register of Historic Places status for the property.