Monday, April 29, 2024

Hemingway Home And Museum Key West, Florida

hemingway house key west

When the pool was built, it was the only one within a 100-mile radius of Key West, and it was an impressive feature, to say the least. Everything in Old Town Key West is quite walkable, including the Hemingway Home. There is parking available, but it’s extremely limited, so I recommend walking, Ubering, or taking a pedicab there. No reservations required for this back-in-time experience and tickets can be purchased at the gate. The Ernest Hemingway Home is located in Old Town Key West at 907 Whitehead Street, approximately 0.8 miles from Mallory Square. If you board the free Duval Loop Bus, get off at stop number 8 for Whitehead & Petronia.

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hemingway house key west

Hemingway’s home was originally built in 1851 by Asa Tift, a former naval architect and sea captain from Groton, Connecticut. Tift owned several stores in Key West, along with ships and a large salvaging operation, making him one of the wealthiest men in the area at the time. The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum is located at 907 Whitehead Street, close to the Key West Lighthouse and Museum. The line can be long, especially on days when cruise ships are in port. He landed at Normandy to report on the D-Day invasions and earned his Bronze Star as a civilian.

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In ill health and increasingly suffering from the depression that ran through his family, and which he had struggled against all his life, Hemingway settled in Idaho. On July 2, 1961, he shot himself in his Ketchum home and died, aged 61. During Hemingway’s Key West years he wrote some top novels and poems. From the Key West house famous Hemingway works written include The Green Hills of Africa, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Death in The Afternoon and to Have and Have Not. Did the cats actually bring him the wrong kind of luck, or did they share some of their nine lives with him? Likely fueled by alcohol, Hemingway ripped out the bar’s urinal and brought it home to use as a watering trough for his cats.

Early history

But in 1931 when the Hemingways received it the house was in massive need of restoration. So they made an overhaul to get the Key West home to the state and National Historic Landmark it is today. Hemingway loved polydactyl cats, especially because sailors believed they bring good luck. Hemingway suffered multiple serious injuries and survived numerous accidents during his life. Many of his books are really short stories, so you could read one on the flight down or a few days before your trip.

hemingway house key west

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When the 30-minute tour ends I buy another copy of “The Old Man and the Sea” in the gift shop, which I always seem to do, and a postcard that shows a grinning Hemmingway posing with a dead marlin. The Hemingway on the postcard reminds me of my bare-chested dad when we lived in Key West when I was a boy, only my dad was one of those men who fished off the seawall because he got seasick. Writers have always loved the Keys, none more famous than Ernest Hemingway, who bought a beautiful Spanish colonial home at 907 Whitehead Street in 1931 and stayed eight years. The warm waters surrounding Key West seemed to beckon Hemingway. He quickly became obsessed with deep-water fishing, and soon bought his own boat, the Pilar. "Papa" Hemingway, as he’d dubbed himself, took to sailing the nearby waters with friends in tow, who were soon nicknamed the Key West Mob.

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After Hemingway’s death in July of that year, his widow gave the ship to Gregorio Fuentes who had served as her captain. Fuentes also served as the basis for the character Santiago, in The Old Man and The Sea and passed away in 2002 at the age of 104. Wheeler was known and rewarded for producing exceptional hand-crafted wooden boats. He also requested extra-large fuel tanks so he could stay at sea for longer periods of time. The boat had two motors - a 75hp for traveling and a 40hp for trolling.

And just as the famous author once did, the cats are named after famous people. The two-story house was built in 1851 in a Spanish Colonial style with an open courtyard and fountain surrounded by lush tropical plants. The house is filled with artifacts from Hemingway’s life, including old photographs, letters, books, furniture, and even the typewriter he used to write some of his most famous works. The home where he and Pauline lived is now open to the public, offering tours of the house and the studio where Hemingway worked. Many of the places Hemingway loved to visit, such as Sloppy Joe’s Bar, celebrate his patronage. Several years earlier, he’d met journalist Martha Gellhorn while she was vacationing in Key West.

He sailed his boat, Pilar, around the Keys and fished the Gulf Stream extensively. Many famous images of Hemingway picture him standing dockside in the Caribbean, the catch of the day hanging beside him. Those tourists bothered him, knocked on his door, distracted him from his writing. That’s what he told people anyway, though the truth was more complicated. The cats are not shy at all and you find them all over the grounds.

responses to “Everything You Need to Know about Visiting Hemingway’s House on Key West”

When Hemingway returned, he famously shouted, “Pauline, you’ve spent all but my last penny, so you might as well have that! A notable spot on the grounds is the swimming pool, which Pauline built when Hemingway was away covering the Spanish Civil War as a correspondent. Although it was his idea to build a pool, he left the oversight of the project to Pauline while he was away.

Hemingway's house and cats spared by Hurricane Irma - Los Angeles Times

Hemingway's house and cats spared by Hurricane Irma.

Posted: Mon, 11 Sep 2017 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The Hemingway property has two notable fountains with interesting histories. Asa Tift constructed the fountain, and it’s in the form of an ironclad ship. JL stopped us for a bit at what she called the “Wall of Wives” to talk about Hemingway’s four marriages. He certainly followed a rogueish pattern of meeting women, falling desperately in love, and marrying them soon after the last wife served him with divorce papers. Asa Tift was a slave owner, and enslaved people likely were the primary labor source for the excavation, stone cutting, and construction of the home.

When poor eyesight kept him from enlisting during World War I, Hemingway volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance driver and was severely wounded in Italy at age 18, leading to a long convalescence. For more than a decade, Ernest Hemingway called Key West home, producing some of his most famous works and immortalizing what had been a somewhat remote stretch of land in southern Florida. Today, his estate is a tourist hotspot, providing visitors with a unique look into the legendary writer’s life. One of the more stunning and unusual features of the Hemingway Home property is the in-ground swimming pool, an extraordinary luxury for a residential home in 1930s Key West. Even more mind-boggling is the sheer labor of digging, in solid coral, a massive hole 24 feet wide, 60 feet long, 10 feet deep at the south end, and 5 feet deep at the north end.

Because the car had been delayed in transit, the Ford dealership insisted that they take up residence in an apartment located above the showroom on Simonton Street. Ernest and Pauline accepted the offer, and he resumed work on a war story he had started on the ocean passage to Key West. Hemingway continued his Paris habits of writing during the early mornings, and taking time to explore his surroundings in the afternoons. Hemingway’s time at Finca Vigia long outlasted his brief, tempestuous marriage to Gellhorn. They divorced after five years, thanks in part to mutual infidelity and Hemingway’s resentment of her flourishing career.

In addition, the house and grounds are occupied by dozens of six-toed cats that are said to be descended from a cat that Hemingway owned. The Ernest Hemingway House was the residence of American writer Ernest Hemingway in the 1930s. It is at 907 Whitehead Street, across from the Key West Lighthouse, close to the southern coast of the island. Due to its association with Hemingway, the property is the most popular tourist attraction in Key West.

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