Graceland, the mansion that Elvis Presley called home for 20 years, has gained a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.
The National Park Service now honors the place Elvis lived from 1957 to 1977, when he died."It's very, very rare that a site is placed on the register when it's the home of a famous person whose achievements are less than 50 years old," said George Berklacey, chief spokesman for the National Park Service.
But the keeper of the national register, Jerry Rogers, felt Graceland and Presley were "an exceptional significance," Berklacey said.
Graceland, a 52-year-old mansion where the singer died on Aug. 16, 1977, joins 1,100 sites on the register identified with significant people, such as George Washington's Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. The register includes 57,000 places, including homes, sites, bridges and ships.
Graceland is the first site on the national register to honor anyone in rock and roll, Berklacey said.
In honoring the "king of rock and roll," the park service did what the Postal Service has refused to do. Postal officials so far have blocked the issuance of an Elvis commemorative stamp.
"I think that's kind of a validation of everything we've tried to do with Graceland," Jack Soden, executive director of Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc., said of the designation. "We've said from the beginning we wanted the presentation of Graceland to be one of historical significance. That a guy who changed the world lived here."
Soden said he had been gun-shy about pursuing the designation because of the embarrassment generated by the Postal Service's refusal. He said he also feared people would accuse the estate of trying to exploit a national honor for commercial reasons.
But a college student motivated only by the pursuit of a good grade and gaining experience in historic preservation made the difference, Soden said.
Memphian Jennifer Tucker, 22, was surprised to find no national historic register plaque at Graceland when she was touring it with an out-of-town friend in April 1990.
She needed a senior project for her bachelor's degree in historic preservation at Roger Williams College in Bristol, R.I., and asked Soden if she could submit a nomination for Graceland. He gave her the go-ahead with the understanding that Graceland could pull out if any problems arose.
When Tucker, now doing postgraduate work at Eastern Michigan University, heard that Graceland made the register, she "was wonderfully ecstatic."
She hopes to find a job in a museum or a historic home.
Graceland is Memphis's biggest tourism draw. It attracted 670,000 visitors in the year ending June 30.
Presley bought the two-story, neoclassical revival-style home and 13.8 acres for $100,000 in 1957. The home was built in 1939 for a Memphis physician, Dr. Thomas Moore, who named it after an aunt.