A massive Victorian—“the epitome of crumbling magnificence”—was both home and studio for the “Space Oddity” singer in the late ’60s and early ’70s

David Bowie paints the coving of his ground floor flat at Haddon Hall silver in this 1972 photo. Photo: Michael Putland/Getty Images

He wrote songs about space exploration, but David Bowie was a master of time travel, bringing the future of music, style, and culture to an astonished public. He was a postwar baby; born David Robert Jones on January 8, 1947, the young Bowie grew up in London ’s Bromley borough playing in the ruins of bombed-out buildings. As a budding musician, he performed in a series of 1950s rock-and-roll bands before going solo as David Bowie, naming himself for what he told Rolling Stone was the ultimate American knife.

Not just a rock star but an entire galaxy unto himself, Bowie became a singular force in glam rock, electronic and ambient sounds, dance pop, art rock, and gender-bending fashion.…