In Neil Armstrong's childhood home, at the top of a creaky staircase, is his bedroom, where he launched model planes from the back window to see how far they would fly.

The room now showcases signed photographs of the astronauts who have visited this privately kept house, drawn to the very spot where Armstrong's initial steps toward the moon began.

Owned by a retired history teacher devoted to preserving its past and charming character, the home is for sale for the first time in nearly 40 years.

What will become of it remains uncertain.

Throughout Armstrong's hometown of Wapakoneta, reminders of his historic moonwalk are everywhere.

Yet few places had a greater impact on his early life than 601 W. Benton St. — the house where the Armstrong family settled in western Ohio when he was a young teenager.

It was in that very house that Armstrong assembled model aircraft from balsa wood and adhesive in the dining room, going so far as to construct a wind tunnel in the basement to evaluate his designs.

More often than not, he would cycle from home to the airstrip to attend his flying lessons.

At 16, Armstrong completed his inaugural solo flight and obtained his pilot’s license.

Merely two decades later, he ventured into space for the first time.

Following the 1969 lunar landing, he took up a teaching post at the University of Cincinnati.

Today, Armstrong's two-story childhood home is an occasional stop for visitors to the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, even though the house itself is not open for tours.

Upon purchasing the property in 1988, Karen Mikesell remained oblivious to its former resident until a fellow teacher promptly enlightened her.

Having transitioned from a history teacher to a school principal, Mikesell felt a duty to preserve the property "just as the Armstrongs had left it," she remarked.

She has played host to nine astronauts, among them Buzz Aldrin, who accompanied Armstrong and Michael Collins on their lunar voyage in 1969.

Aldrin stepped into the upstairs bedroom a few years after Armstrong passed away in 2012, Mikesell recalled, “and the tears just streamed down his cheeks.”

Over the years, she has been given a moon rock and a piece of gold foil that once covered the Apollo 11 capsule — a gift from one of the Navy frogmen who helped recover the command module and its crew.

Several astronauts inscribed their photographs with personal notes for Mikesell, including Mike Foreman, a veteran of two space shuttle missions, who wrote, “thanks for taking such great care of Neil’s home!”

"One can read extensively, yet never truly replicate the depth of firsthand experience that living here afforded me," she remarked.

"I could elaborate at considerable length."

The Armstrong family acquired the residence in 1944, following his father's relocation of the household roughly a dozen times in connection with his role as a government auditor.

Neil, the eldest of three siblings, was born in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Wapakoneta, which today constitutes a municipality with a population of just under 10,000.

The house on Benton Street, with its expansive front porch, has undergone little external change.

Inside, the layout remains largely comparable, albeit modernized over time.

In the backyard, a garage that Armstrong and his father constructed from scrap lumber still stands, although the chicken coop where he and his friends convened for Boy Scout meetings has long since disappeared.

Armstrong’s former bedroom now features photographs and paintings commemorating the moon landing, while a model of the Wright brothers’ inaugural production aircraft hangs from the ceiling — the aviation pioneers hailed from nearby Dayton and served as an inspiration to Armstrong.

She never met Armstrong, who was notoriously reclusive.

She did, however, converse with his parents, siblings, and children about the 1908 residence and its significance in shaping Armstrong’s formative years.

Mikesell, 82, said she hopes someone might buy the house and give it to the Armstrong museum, which its spokesperson Logan Rex says cannot afford to buy.

She is among the select few who have held ownership of the residence since the Armstrongs parted with it in the mid-1960s.

Upon acquiring the property, she found every room swathed in vividly hued wallpaper, prompting her to undertake the task of reinstating its original aesthetic.

Although the house, listed at $430,000, is not legally safeguarded against alterations, Mikesell remains hopeful that the incoming owners will treat it with due reverence — whether it continues to serve as a private residence or is repurposed for short-term lodging.

"It's time to give someone else the chance to be as fortunate as I have been," she said, "and to look after it, preserving it as a lasting part of history."