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Before Beatlemania, George Harrison visited his sister in Illinois. The house is now for sale
For the skinny British musician, it was an unassuming trip to visit his sister’s family in September 1963 in Benton, Illinois.
Now, the house where Harrison and his brother Peter stayed in Benton, 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of St. Louis, is for sale.
You’ll forgive Beatles fans if they’re worried about its future. In 1995, the house at 113 McCann Street had a date with the wrecking ball. Activists, including Harrison’s sister, Louise Harrison Caldwell, who had moved away in the late 1960s, stepped in to save it.
In the mid-1990s, a state agency bought the house from a subsequent owner with plans to flatten it for parking. Mega-fan Robert Bartel of Springfield, a Beatles author and documentarian, alerted the media and Fab Four loyalists.
Local investors repurchased it from the state and opened the Hard Day’s Nite Bed and Breakfast, featuring the couch Harrison traded guitar licks on and stacks of other loaned Beatles memorabilia, including a bevy from Bartel.
The bed-and-breakfast closed in 2010. Benton resident Grady Adams has since operated it as regular bed-and-bath apartments but now wants to sell, listing it for $105,000. Brian Calcaterra, Benton’s director of economic development, suggested the city draft an ordinance to protect the house from demolition by a new owner, but Benton Mayor Lee Messersmith said the city council has not discussed the matter.
Whether there’s interest — or energy — to return the McCann Street house to its Beatles glory is up for debate.
Benton business owner Robert Rea, a historian who helped save the Beatles house three decades ago, said the obsession has faded.
Harrison never returned to Benton, though, dying in 2001 at 58. Caldwell was 91 when she died in 2023.
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