LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The pink house where Muhammad Ali grew up dreaming of boxing stardom and where hundreds of fans gathered to say an emotional farewell as a funeral procession passed decades later is up for sale.
A two-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Louisville was transformed into a museum that offered a glimpse into the formative years of the boxing champion and humanitarian known around the world as The Greatest. The house went up for sale Tuesday along with two neighboring homes – one was converted into a welcome center/gift shop and the other was slated to become a short-term rental.
The owners are asking $1.5 million for the three properties. Finding a buyer willing to keep Ali’s childhood home as a museum would be “the best possible outcome,” said co-owner George Bochetto.
“It’s part of Americana,” said Bochetto, a Philadelphia lawyer and former Pennsylvania boxing commissioner. “It’s part of our history. And it should be treated and respected as such.”
The museum opened to the public shortly before Ali’s death in 2016. Bochetto and his then-business partner restored the frame house as it looked when Ali – then known as Cassius Clay – lived there with his parents and younger brother.
“You walk into this house … you go back to 1955 and you’re inside the Clay family home,” Bochetto told The Associated Press in a 2016 interview.
Using vintage photos, developers recreated furniture, appliances, works of art and even the pink facade of the house from when Ali lived there. The museum showed films focusing on the story of Ali’s upbringing, rather than his extensive boxing career.
“For me, it’s a bigger and more essential story,” Bochetto said last week in an interview.
Ali began his boxing career after stealing a bicycle. Wanting to report a crime, 12-year-old Ali was introduced to Joe Martin, a police officer who also served as a boxing trainer at a local gym. Ali told Martin that he wanted to flog the perpetrator. The thief was never found, nor was the bicycle, but Ali became a regular at Martin’s gym.
Ali lived in this house when he went to the 1960 Olympics. He returned as a gold medal winner, embarking on a career that made him one of the most recognizable figures in the world as a three-time heavyweight boxing champion and globe-trotting humanitarian.
The house became a focal point around the world on the day of Ali’s burial, when hundreds of people lined the street in front of the house as his hearse and funeral procession slowly passed by.
Despite its high-profile debut, the museum ran into financial problems and closed less than two years after opening. The museum is located in Louisville’s West Side, a few miles from downtown, where the Muhammad Ali Center preserves his humanitarian and boxing legacy.
As efforts to reopen the childhood museum have waned, offers to move the 1,200-square-foot house to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and even Saudi Arabia have been rejected, Bochetto said.
“I wouldn’t do that because it’s an essential piece of Louisville history, Kentucky history, and I think it should stay where it is,” he said.
Las Vegas real estate investor Jared Weiss bought Ali’s childhood home – then neglected and empty – in 2012 for $70,000 with a plan to renovate it. Three years later, Weiss established cooperation with Bochetto, which acquired half of the shares in the project. The two were die-hard Ali fans and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the renovation project. They also bought two neighboring houses, financed a documentary film, subsidized museum operations and incurred expenses on all three properties. Weiss has died and his wife is co-owner of the project, Bochetto said.
Bochetto now said he hopes to find a buyer with the “marketing and operational expertise” to make the museum a success.
“I want to make sure it continues this way and never returns to the place where it was abandoned or destroyed,” he said. – This should never have happened.
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