The ‘Bull Durham’ house — with Southern charm, ’80s nostalgia and a bathtub — is sold
Update June 6, 2024:
The famous “Bull Durham” house in Durham has sold, or at least is under contract, receiving multiple offers in less than two weeks. Real estate agents limited the number of showings while the house was on the market so they could limit the traffic to serious potential buyers.
But on Saturday, the house was open to the public for $12 a ticket as a fundraiser for Preservation Durham and the Durham Arts Guild. The last time Preservation Durham offered tours of the home was in 2006, so it may be a while before anyone gets another chance to check out all of the updates as well as the infamous bathtub.
The house was open for four hours Saturday afternoon and saw a steady stream of traffic. No word yet on how much the home sold for.
Previously:
Thirty-six years after “Bull Durham” debuted, the baseball film’s famous residence is back on the market.
The Queen Anne-style manor at 911 N. Mangum Street is where Annie Savoy, played by Susan Sarandon, wooed a string of Bulls players, including Ebby “Nuke” LaLoosh (Tim Robbins, who was her real-life partner for years after they met on set). She also shared that steamy, candle-lit tub scene with Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) in the first-floor bathroom.
Conveniently, the house sits less than a mile from the historic Durham Athletic Park, the film’s centerpiece, where the Bulls played from 1926 until 1994.
Today, the 3,733-square-foot home is updated and newly painted with a bright-red front door. It still drips with old-world Southern charm: asymmetrical windows, offset gables, a polygonal wrap-around porch. But inside, Annie’s Laura Ashley-flower wallpaper has been stripped. The walls are now painted a dark charcoal gray and emerald green. Many of the light fixtures have also been replaced with mid-century modern globes.
This week, the four-bedroom, three-bathroom listed for $1.6 million, about $429 per square foot. That’s steep in today’s tight market where high mortgage rates and low inventory are driving up housing costs. (In Durham, the median home price stands at $340,336, while the median income is $65,534.)
But the broker’s listing agent, Adam Dickinson, is hoping a bit of 1980s film nostalgia will close the deal. “One can picture Annie relaxing on the screened porch at sunset, making a sly quip,” the listing teases.
Even the clawfoot tub — where Annie and Crash consummated their love — remains in the house, confirmed Dickinson, a Realtor with Nest Realty of the Triangle.
The current owners bought the home in 2020 for nearly $1.1 million. Since then, they’ve renovated the kitchen and master bedroom. From the 11-foot ceilings to the stained-glass transoms and original plaster-ceiling medallions, it’s a mix of old with new — “a cool intersection of historic and pop culture,” Dickinson said.
“So many people are curious, we’ve had to be selective for showings.”
The intersection of ‘historic and pop culture’
Even before “Bull Durham,” the house had attained celebrity status.
It’s actually known as the James Manning House, built in 1880 by James Manning, an attorney and judge who later served as North Carolina’s attorney general. When he was elected in 1916, he relocated to Raleigh. The house then changed hands several times before it became vacant.
In the mid-1980s, “Bull Durham” writer and director Ron Shelton started scouting locations. He’d found everything he wanted in Durham (and the house) based on excerpts from “NO BULL: The Real Story of the Rebirth of a Team and a City,” The N&O reported in 2018.
“[Shelton] liked the idea that Durham was run down with vacated tobacco warehouses and boarded up downtown storefronts,” author Ron Morris wrote. “He found a down-and-out, minor-league town that represented his story well.”
By 1996, however, the film’s stately home had fallen into disrepair, Open Durham noted. Jeff and Trudy Burdette purchased the property that year and undertook “a painstaking, multi-year renovation.” They lived in the home for over 20 years before it exchanged hands twice to its new owners.
Now, a piece of cinematic history is up for grabs once again.
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This story was originally published May 8, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
