A replica of Kanye West’s childhood home, the house his mother, Donda, raised him in, is being auctioned.
The live auction will take place in early October, and the successful bidder will have the option of having the production crew rebuild the house for an additional cost, TMZ reported.
The one-time billionaire, who is now worth an estimated $400 million, toured with the replica house twice. West, who is now known as Ye, hosted listening parties titled “Donda” and “Donda 2.” The first concert took place at Soldier Field in Chicago in 2021, and the second was held at loanDepot Park in Miami in 2022.
The highlight of both large-scale listening parties was the replica house erected on center stage. Ye originally wanted to tour with the original house by tearing it down and having it rebuilt for the stage shows, but those plans fell through.
The Real Donda House
The actual house is a 1,600-square-foot home that was built in 1905. It is located at 7815 South Shore Drive in Chicago. The house has three bedrooms and one bathroom, a basement, and an upstairs crawl space. It is situated on a 7,000-square-foot lot.
Donda West, a college educator, purchased the house in 1981 for $40,000. She made several improvements to the property, including adding insulation, replacing windows, and a new set of stairs. Kanye lived in the house with his mother for about eight years during his childhood.
As Finurah recently reported, Kanye is renovating the home.
According to Donda’s 2007 memoir, “Raising Kanye: Life Lessons from the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar,” she was a single mother and was living in a Roseland apartment in Chicago before becoming interested in the property on South Shore Drive. Ye was 3 years old at the time. She was dating Ulysses B. Blakeley, or “Bucky,” as she referred to him in her book.
Bucky told the Tribune that he and Donda bought the home during a relatively fast relationship. In her book, she said she was “taught that owning your own home is something that you simply must do.” Bucky resided at the house for only a few years. He stated that he and Donda broke up and that he handed over the house to her. Bucky signed the quit claim deed in 1985, according to Cook County Recorder of Deeds documents.
Donda sold the South Shore house in 2003 for $121,000, less than a year before Kanye published his debut studio album, “The College Dropout.”
Donda died in 2007.
In 2013, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, a rapper/activist who grew up with West and was close to his mother, Rhymefest’s then-wife, Donnie, and Ye founded Donda’s House, a nonprofit juvenile arts organization to be operated out of the rundown home. In July 2018, records show the home was in major disrepair and Donda’s House sold the house to another one of Ye’s entities, Donda Services, for $225,000 in December 2018, the Chicago Tribune reported.
