For $1.6M, ‘Bull Durham’ house hits market selling Southern charm and 1980s nostalgia
Thirty-six years after “Bull Durham” debuted, the 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 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. Inside, Annie’s Laura Ashley-flower wallpaper has been stripped. They’re now painted a modern charcoal gray and emerald green.
But it still drips with old-world Southern charm: asymmetrical windows, offset gables, a polygonal wrap-around porch.
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.
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 nearly 30 years before selling it to its new owners.
Now, a piece of cinematic history is up for grabs once again.
