A Tulsa house from ‘The Outsiders’ was falling apart; Danny Boy O’Connor turned it into a museum

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. 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. 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.The house had been left in poor conditionSmithsonian describes the one-story Craftsman bungalow as being in terrible condition when he eventually bought it. O’Connor estimated that simply making the property livable would require about $150,000. 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.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.O’Connor had discovered the house years earlierIn 2009, while in Tulsa with House of Pain, O’Connor paid a cab driver $100 to take him around the city looking for locations from The Outsiders. He found the Curtis brothers’ house and was struck by how poorly it had been maintained. The discovery also led him to establish the Delta Bravo Urban Exploration Team, a group that documented locations associated with movies and other pieces of popular culture.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. 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.S.E. Hinton helped with the restorationBefore moving ahead with the museum, O’Connor contacted S.E. Hinton, who wrote The Outsiders while she was a teenager in Tulsa. Hinton agreed to support the project and contributed $10,000, according to Smithsonian. 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. Instead, it stretched beyond three years and ultimately cost about $175,000, according to Smithsonian. The early fundraising effort shows how different the final project was from the original plan. 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 campaign said the goal was to open the house to the public as a museum containing O’Connor’s collection of Outsiders memorabilia.The film set became the museum’s blueprintThe 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 house itself remains recognizable from the film. The museum describes its purpose as preserving both the home and memorabilia from The Outsiders, which was filmed in Tulsa in 1982.The museum finally opened in 2019O’Connor’s six-month estimate turned into a restoration lasting more than three years, and the Outsiders House Museum officially opened in August 2019. By then, the restored house had become a public museum rather than simply a preserved movie location. Smithsonian reported that about 20,000 people visited in 2022, with school groups visiting during the week and the general public attending on weekends. The museum remains at 731 North St. Louis Avenue in Tulsa, and its current site lists weekend public hours and describes the property as dedicated to preserving the house and memorabilia from the film.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.