O’Connor bought the property and decided not to simply repair it as a private home | Wikimedia Commons
Danny Boy O’Connor first saw the Tulsa house being used as the Curtis brothers’ home in The Outsiders when he was touring the city with House of Pain in 2009. The 1920s bungalow at 731 North St. Hinton’s novel and Francis Ford Coppola ’s 1983 film. Smithsonian reports that O’Connor bought the house in 2015, while the museum’s own account and a 2016 fundraiser describe the purchase as taking place in 2016. O’Connor estimated that simply making the property livable would require about $150,000. Hinton agreed to support the project and contributed $10,000, according to Smithsonian. Instead, it stretched beyond three years and ultimately cost about $175,000, according to Smithsonian. A 2016 GoFundMe campaign launched by O’Connor described the property as being in extremely poor condition and sought money to restore it to its movie appearance. The film set became the museum’s blueprint The restoration was based on the 1983 movie rather than simply recreating a generic 1920s Tulsa home, and the museum’s collection eventually grew to include movie costumes, furniture, photographs, paintings, foreign editions of the book and other memorabilia. Smithsonian reported that the roughly 1,400-square-foot interior includes Ponyboy’s desk, wardrobe pieces and props associated with the film. The museum describes its purpose as preserving both the home and memorabilia from The Outsiders , which was filmed in Tulsa in 1982.
Smithsonian reported that he had little memorabilia from the movie at the time, just a poster, but still chose to turn the house into a museum.
A contemporary report from Tulsa television station KJRH said O’Connor planned to reproduce the living room and dining room from the film, down to details including the couch, green curtains, fish bowl and pencil sharpeners. The campaign said the goal was to open the house to the public as a museum containing O’Connor’s collection of Outsiders memorabilia. Louis Avenue was still standing, but it was badly deteriorated. Years later, O’Connor bought the property and decided not to repair it as a private home; he wanted to turn it into a museum devoted to S.E. Smithsonian describes the one-story Craftsman bungalow as being in terrible condition when he eventually bought it. Instead of stopping at a basic renovation, he planned to restore the house to resemble its appearance in the movie and fill it with material connected to The Outsiders . The project would eventually require more time and money than he had expected. O’Connor had grown up with a difficult family life and later struggled with alcohol and drugs. In the Outsiders story, he identified with the Curtis brothers and their experiences of family, hardship and loyalty. By the time the property went up for sale, O’Connor had decided that he wanted to save it. Before moving ahead with the museum, O’Connor contacted S.E. Hinton, who wrote The Outsiders while she was a teenager in Tulsa. She also gave O’Connor a brown leather jacket worn in the film by Matt Dillon and C. Thomas Howell. The restoration was initially expected to take about six months. The early fundraising effort shows how different the final project was from the original plan. The house itself remains recognizable from the film.
