Opportunities to stay in a home where legends lived don’t come often, but on a leafy alley in the Hillcrest neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida. is the house where Ronnie, Donnie and Johnny Van Zant grew up. And it’s on AirBnB.
The home, which sleeps up to six people, was purchased by local investor Todd Smith in 2015, and three years later the Florida Department of State declared it a historic landmark. A sign has been erected outside confirming that the property was the former home of Lynyrd Skynyrd founder Ronnie Van Zant, current Skynyrd singer Johnny and .38 Special founder Donnie and the house was listed on AirBnB last year.
“This house was our life, this neighborhood was our neighborhood,” Johnny Van Zant said. Jacksonville.com in 2018. “We all learned to play the drums in that house, we all learned to swing on the swing there – that’s where we learned to sing. We didn’t have 700 channels like today We only had four channels. We weren’t super rich.
Current amenities in the house include WiFi, board games and a BBQ, while a framed photo of Lynyrd Skynyrd looks out from the living room wall and a gold record from Skynyrd’s 1977 album street survivor hangs in one of the bedrooms. It is priced at $274 per night.
After Lynyrd Skynyrd rose to fame, the brothers’ parents remained in the house and both died there: mother Marion in 2000 and father Lacy in 2004. Local resident Gene Odom – who grew up with the Van Zants and later worked for the band, surviving the plane crash that killed Ronnie – still gives tours of the property.
Last week, owner Todd Smith launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $15,000 to “beautify the front of the house with a driveway, sprinkler system and new landscaping”.
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