Hey, Mr. Real Estate Man, Sell Bobby Zimmerman’s Home for Me

Bob Dylan’s childhood home in this northern Minnesota mining town is up for sale, and realtor Curt Curtis doesn’t need a weatherman to tell him a big profit could be blowin’ in the wind.

Curtis, owner of Interstate Realty in Hibbing, knows he has a hot property on his hands.

Since he placed a classified ad in Rolling Stone magazine’s Oct. 6 issue, calls from Dylan fans, serious investors and the merely curious have been pouring in.

“There’s a tremendous amount of interest in that house,” he said. “It’s appraised FHA value is $46,000, but the owners are asking for $84,000 because of the house’s historical value. With the kind of response I’ve been getting, I’m thinking about putting a 2 in front of that 80,000.”

The house has been owned by Terry and Angel Marolt since 1967, when they bought it from Dylan’s mother, Beatrice Zimmerman. Dylan’s father, Abraham Zimmerman, had just died and the family wanted to move to Minneapolis. Dylan--originally Robert Zimmerman--moved to Minneapolis in 1959.

The next year, he went to New York to pursue his now-legendary singing and songwriting career.

It is a two-story, three-bedroom stucco house with a spacious living room with fireplace. But more importantly it still has many of the Zimmermans’ original furnishings, including a dining room set.

For Dylan fans, the most interesting item is probably a Dylan poster made in the 1960s by the musician himself. It was a gift to his mother, Curtis said.

Over the years, the Hibbing Chamber of Commerce has noted the house as a point of interest in its bus tour, and for the last 20 years or so tourists have stopped to snap pictures.

But the Marolts, Hibbing city officials and Minnesota politicians have never expressed an interest in promoting the city’s link to rock ‘n’ roll fame.

Angel Marolt said Dylan has returned twice to the house since his family moved, once in 1969, when he was in Hibbing for his 10-year high school reunion, and again in 1984, when the star was in Duluth to visit his father’s grave.

“He was real nice,” Marolt said. “He was feeling nostalgic. He went down to the family room and looked at the paneling. He said he remembered how hard his father worked one year to put it up.”