During his eventful lifetime, David Bowie was hard to pin down. Even when the musician’s primary residence was in one place, he was busy touring the world or otherwise traveling for inspiration. The man even owned a yacht, after all. Behind his many fabled properties stands the shadow of even more homes and apartments across countless countries that he rented or stayed in with friends. Below, we outline some of the iconic musician’s most memorable properties.
Bowie’s Birthplace, 40 Stansfield Road, London
David Bowie was born as David Jones on January 8, 1947, at a humble home in Brixton, a district of South London, England. Bowie lived in the home until he was six years old, at which point his family moved to Bromley, Kent. No plaque stands to mark the significance of the structure, per Atlas Obscura, but just eight minutes away on foot, a large mural of Bowie offers a more photogenic pilgrimage site for fans. According to records, the home last sold in 2015 for roughly $1.25 million, and prior to that the previous owner used it as a rental property, according to The Mirror.
Haddon Hall, Beckenham, England
Bowie lived in a flat in Haddon Hall during pivotal moments in his life: While living there, his then wife Angie Barnett sewed his first ever Ziggy Stardust costume, and their son Duncan Jones (then Zowie) was born. According to The Guardian, the couple paid roughly $8.85 a week for a flat on the ground floor of the Victorian villa between October 1969 and May 1972. The building was demolished in the early 1980s, though the home’s significance in Bowie’s life is immortalized in the book Haddon Hall: When David Invented Bowie by Néjib.
Oakley Street, London
After Haddon Hall, there was a brief stint in actor Diana Rigg’s apartment that reportedly ended because the Bowie family made too much noise. They moved to 89 Oakley Street in London’s Chelsea neighborhood and lived in the four-story home between the years of 1973 and 1976, and, according to London Magazine, they did their fair share of personalizing. The most dramatic amendment was painting the entire interior black, which Bowie apparently did in 1974 during the miners’ strike so he could picture what it was like to live in a coal mine. Both Oscar Wilde and Bob Marley lived on the same block of Oakley Street at different times.
Blonay, Switzerland
In 1976, Bowie, Barnett, and their son moved to Switzerland. It’s rumored that this move was in the interest of tax breaks, but in any case, their primary residence was in a small Swiss village. In Barnett’s memoir, Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie, she describes the home as, “a commodious cuckoo-clock of a house très Swiss.” During this time, Bowie also spent a lot of time in Berlin as well, where he lived in an apartment at Hauptstrasse 155, though it’s unclear whether he ever owned property. Barnett and Bowie divorced in 1980 and Bowie kept the Blonay house and lived there until 1982.
Chateau du Signal, Lausanne, Switzerland
After selling the Blonay home, Bowie purchased the Chateau du Signal, a much grander 20-room home that was built in 1900 for a Russian prince. During this same time he also owned a property in Sydney, Australia, that he would stay in for month-long stints. Bowie married Iman in 1992 at a ceremony in Lausanne’s town hall. Though accounts differ, it seems the couple didn’t spend much time living in Lausanne together, but Bowie held onto it until 2000.
The Britannia Bay House, Mustique Island, Grenadines
Now referred to as the Mandalay house and available as a vacation rental, the Britannia Bay House was built for Bowie in 1989 by architect Arne Hasselqvist and designer Robert Litwiller. When the home was featured in the September 1992 issue of AD, Bowie himself described what he wanted the house to be like: “I wanted something as unlike the Caribbean as possible, because it’s a fantasy island, Mustique. Everybody just builds a getaway from it all so they can get there and see the same people they see all around, but in a holiday situation.” Bowie spent five or six weeks at the home over Christmas, along with visiting in the summertime. He sold the property in 1995 for $5 million.
Essex House, New York City
Beginning in the early ’90s through the rest of his life, Bowie spent most of his time living in New York. Between the years of 1992 and 2002, Bowie and Iman lived in a condo in Essex House, the acclaimed residential hotel that boasts views of Central Park. At 1,877 square feet, the home might have felt humble compared to his grand Switzerland home, but there’s no doubt that residence there came with a number of luxurious amenities. The house was most recently on the market in 2021 and it sold for $6 million.
285 Lafayette Street, New York City
In 1999, Bowie and Iman purchased another New York City apartment—this time a SoHo pad for $3.81 million. The four-bedroom apartment measures 5,000 square feet, plus 1,000 square feet of outdoor space across three terraces, according to The Wall Street Journal. Though there could have been any number of reasons why Bowie and Iman decided to make the switch to this apartment, their first and only child together was born in 2000 and the SoHo home definitely offered a lot more space for the family.
Upstate Home, Woodstock, New York
For a long while, Bowie and Iman’s Woodstock home was a total secret. Even to this day, little is known about its precise location. According to a 2021 Vogue profile of Iman, Bowie first took interest in Woodstock in 2002 after recording his album Heathen at Allaire Studios in nearby Shokan. The couple bought the 50-acre property in 2011, attracted to its total seclusion, and Iman still owns it to this day. “They intended for it to be their forever home, the place that they would be in when they were old and gray,” model, activist, and friend of Iman Bethann Hardison states in the Vogue story.
