Calling all boy band fans! The property where perennial pop group New Kids on the Block was formed has just come up for sale! Now a revamped multi-family dwelling, back in the ‘80s the handsome brick structure served as the home and recording/dance studio of Maurice Starr, the music business multi-hyphenate who launched the careers of a then-teenaged Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood and brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight, thereby turning the entire industry on its head. Though he’s been called a hitmaker, a manufacturer and even a Svengali, regardless of what Maurice is labeled, there’s no denying he has the Midas touch!
Born Larry Curtis Johnson Starr in Deland, Fla. in 1953, Maurice moved to Boston, Mass. at the tender age of 17 hoping to break into the biz. Though he did land a couple of contracts, first with RCA and then Arista, Starr was never able to grab that golden ring, so to speak, and, while attempting to make ends meet, landed a gig hosting a talent show at a local club. It proved a fortuitous turn, one that changed the course of his career. As he told Scripps Howard News, “I started looking around, looking at this talent. And these kids were dressed up. One was called the something Gentlemen and they had these old suits on like in the Eliot Ness days. These boys were dancing and mimicking to the grown people’s music, and sometimes they would mimic to the Jackson 5 music. And I thought, this is great! And my head just got crazy. I said, ‘Man, if I could take one of these groups and put them out there, they would be big!’”
And that’s exactly what he did! His first coup came in 1982 when, while producing a talent show of his own, he met a group of four local boys with musical potential. He started workshopping with them out of his home, writing music and recording songs, teaching them choreography and orchestrating their overall look and sound. He eventually added a fifth member and New Edition was born. The quintet quickly landed a recording contract and in 1983 their debut album, “Candy Girl,” was released, ultimately resulting in three hit singles. The group became an instant sensation – and almost as quickly severed ties with Starr, moving onto greener pastures.
But Maurice wasn’t to be deterred. He promptly set his sights on forming a new act, this time “aimed at white teen-age girls – a larger group, thus a more profitable market,” as noted in the Scripps Howard News. New Kids on the Block (originally called Nynuk) was launched just a year later. Once again, he was instrumental in their sound, look and marketing, serving as the group’s de facto producer, manager, songwriter, background musician, publicist and choregrapher. And Maurice obviously had, ahem, “the right stuff” because New Kids soon landed a contract with Columbia Records and though their first album barely made a blip on the radar, their second, “Hangin’ Tough,” became a worldwide phenomenon! Surpassing even Maurice’s lofty expectations, the group went on to become one of the best-selling boy bands of all time and is still going strong today!
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Image Credit: Compass Incredibly, it all began at the unassuming three-story structure located at 27 Dudley St. in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. (Please remember this is a private home. Do not trespass or bother the residents or the property in any way.) Starr dubbed the place, which was originally built in 1900, the “House of Hits” and it’s a fitting moniker. It is there that the New Kids, as well as New Edition before them, laid down tracks, learned dance moves, rehearsed and were guided by Maurice in the early days of their career.
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Image Credit: Compass As noted in their 2012 authorized biography “New Kids on the Block: Five Brothers and a Million Sisters,” it is also from the house that Jordan, Jonathan, Joey, Donnie and Danny departed for their first national tour on the evening of July 19, 1988. Marlene Putnam, Jon and Jordan’s mom, remembers, “The boys went on the tour bus with care packages from the parents. We were there to say goodbye, and the bus rode off. Off they went to become famous. They were going off, as far as we were concerned, to be an opening act for Tiffany. Wasn’t this great? But that was really their first big bus ride off into stardom.” Ride to stardom, indeed – by the end of the tour, the boys had become so popular that Tiffany was opening for them.
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Image Credit: Compass The building has gone through several different configurations over the years, but as described by Jim Duffy of the Rods and Cones, who did some recording there in the early ‘80s, during Starr’s tenure, “The House of Hits was a narrow walk-up apartment building with an eight-track studio on the ground floor and funky musicians living upstairs.” At the time, it was zoned a commercial/residential building and along with the ground floor studio space, had one large residential unit upstairs that Starr apparently rented out to various “funky musicians.” Maurice didn’t stay on the premises long after NKOTB hit the big time, though. By 1990, he had relocated to a more upscale home in the Brookline area, as noted by reporter Bill Sternoff in an episode of “Personalities.”
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Image Credit: 20th Television -
Image Credit: Google When the property was last offered for sale in June 2017, it was listed as a “massive two-family house” with “an unbelievable amount of living space.” It sold just a couple of months later for $1,325,000 – $25,000 over asking – and the new owner (a musician himself!) set about gutting the interior, ultimately taking it down to the studs and transforming it into a highly upgraded six-unit apartment building. Despite the renovation, the façade still looks much as it did when Maurice lived there, as evidenced in the still above from the “Personalities” episode, as well as this photo of the hitmaker in front of the residence with journalist Larry Katz in 1987.
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Image Credit: Compass Today, the six units comprise a total of 14 bedrooms and 11 baths spread throughout 6,049 square feet.
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Image Credit: Compass Each space is bright and open with modernized kitchens and bathrooms, hardwood flooring throughout and in-unit washers and dryers. The building is surrounded by a 0.19-acre corner lot with a grassy expanse and parking for ten cars.
Repped by Eric Johnson of Compass, the property is being offered for $4.2 million. Not a bad price for what amounts to both an incredible investment opportunity and a veritable piece of music history!