With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Jimi Hendrix childhood home torn down

RENTON — The demolition crew has been working at a fast pace, and the tiny, 900-square-foot house where Jimi Hendrix lived from ages 10 to 13, and first showed his love for music, was down to its shell Monday.

Despite an eight-year, $100,000-plus effort by Pete Sikov — a Seattle real-estate investor who at first wasn't a Hendrix devotee, but became one — the historic structure is gone.

If you're a fan, vanished will be the chance to drive by and imagine how it would have been in the early 1950s for Jimi Hendrix, who died in 1970 at age 27 in London, apparently choking on his vomit after an unintentional combination of sleeping pills and alcohol.

The value of the intact home, however dilapidated, was that it allowed visitors to imagine the poverty and simple beginnings of one of rock 'n' roll's greatest musicians.
Read entire article at Seattle Times