Before Michael Jackson lived in mansions or performed before enormous crowds, home was a tiny bungalow at 2300 Jackson Street in Gary, Indiana. The house measured only about 672 square feet and had two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom. Joe and Katherine Jackson raised their large family there, somehow fitting nine surviving children into a space smaller than many modern apartments.
Sleeping arrangements were just as crowded. Joe and Katherine used one bedroom while the boys shared bunk beds in the other. The girls slept in the living room. But that same living room also became the center of the family’s musical life. Michael later remembered them pushing the furniture aside so everyone could dance and perform together.
The Jacksons Remember Their Childhood Home in “2300 Jackson Street”
Music apparently followed the children through ordinary chores too. Michael recalled the family holding songwriting competitions while washing dishes and singing while they cleaned. “We were a family that sang all the time,” he later remembered. To Michael, music was not something that suddenly appeared when the Jackson 5 became famous. It had filled their home from the beginning.
Katherine played an important role behind the scenes. She encouraged her children’s musical ability and later recalled making the group’s earliest stage outfits herself because the family could not simply hire professional designers. She even remembered sewing six matching costumes when another young performer was appearing with the boys.
Joe turned the cramped living room into a serious rehearsal space. Katherine later testified that they would push the furniture against the walls, set up the drums and practice there. Money the family managed to save often went toward instruments and amplifiers instead of expanding the house Katherine desperately wanted more rooms for.
That tiny address eventually became important enough for the Jacksons to name a 1989 song and album after it. Michael, Janet, Rebbie and several of their brothers appeared on “2300 Jackson Street,” turning the address of their childhood home into a tribute to where everything began.
Michael Jackson would eventually make Thriller, perfect the Moonwalk and become one of the most famous entertainers in history. The Jackson 5 would score major hits of their own. Yet before Motown, stadiums and worldwide fame, much of that talent was being shaped in one crowded Gary living room where furniture had to be moved just to make enough space to dance.