Ernest Hemingway House Description, History, & Facts
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The cats don’t seem to mind their human visitors and enjoy pets and scratches from their adoring fans. His writing studio at the home was on the second floor of the converted carriage house. The only typewriter on the property that Hemingway actually used sits on the desk. During his time in Key West, Hemingway wrote many notable books and short stories, including Green Hills of Africa, Death in the Afternoon, To Have and Have Not, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
Early history
Ernest Hemingway's Florida mansion suffers wind damage from Hurricane Ian but cats fine - Daily Mail
Ernest Hemingway's Florida mansion suffers wind damage from Hurricane Ian but cats fine.
Posted: Thu, 29 Sep 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The Ernest Hemingway house in Key West is nearly 170 years old, but has been preserved to look much as it did when Hemingway lived there for nine years in the 1930s. The Hemingway Home and Museum is open every day, including all holidays, from 9 AM until 5 PM. This is a good one to read before your trip to Key West because it’s the story of an honest man forced to run contraband between Key West and Cuba and his adventures doing so. Another one set in 1920s Paris, this one was published posthumously. It gives a sneak peek into the lives of not only Hemingway, but also his famous friends and the shenanigans they got up to.
Florida Keys
Pfeiffer would remain in the Key West home until her death in 1951, and the house would later be sold by the Hemingway sons after their father’s death. As he had been in Key West, Hemingway seemed inspired by his new surroundings, writing works such as For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, and receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Until the 1940s when Key West first had fresh water piped in and the pool was converted to a fresh water system, the pool was very high maintenance. Using the salt-water pump, it took two to three days to completely fill the pool. During the summer months, the salt water would remain fresh for only about two to three days. Then the pool would need to be completely drained, another day or two would be required to scrub down and remove the algae and debris, and then the cycle would start again.
Ernest Hemingway’s Wives
The site where the pool is located was formerly the setting of Hemingway’s famous boxing ring, where he would spar with local amateur boxers such as Shine Forbes. Construction of the pool necessitated relocation of the boxing ring to the site now occupied by the Blue Heaven Restaurant on Petronia Street, a few blocks away. You find many more interesting things to do in Key West near Ernest Hemingway House & Museum. Key West Lighthouse & Keeper’s Quarters Museum is located just across the street from the Hemingway House. During a tour your guide tells you about all the stages of Hemingway’s life. As the house is shown interesting events and facts from the beginning to the end are told.
Around the property
The photo above shows Hemingway atop that flying bridge as Pilar pulls out of Havana harbor. Regardless of the legend behind the pool, it was an architectural feat in 1937. To construct the first in-ground pool in Key West, solid coral had to be excavated with picks and sledgehammers. The only pool within 100 miles, it measured 24 feet by 60 feet and was filled with 80,000+ gallons of salt water which had to be drilled because there was no running water (at the time). The Ernest Hemingway House in Key West, Florida is full of interesting stories and even some legends. Key West afforded Hemingway the opportunity to enjoy the sport fishing that he loved so much.
Hemingway actually had a beloved boxing ring where the pool is now, but when he returned from Spain as a war correspondent in the late 1930s, he found this pool in its place. He told Pauline she might as well take him for his last red cent, and promptly stuck one in the still-wet cement beside the pool, where it remains today. There were 63 polydactyl (six-toed) cats roaming around the house when we visited! Fifty-five adults and eight kittens (born in October 2019) make their home on the property, so you’re sure to see some.
And Ernest did complain mightily about the growing expenses of construction costs. ” Whether the story is apocryphal or not, there is a penny embedded in cement at the north end of the pool to memorialize Ernest’s purported outburst. Ernest Hemingway received a white six-toed cat named Snow White as a gift by a ship captain.
Ernest Hemingway's Florida home intact and property's 59 cats are safe after Hurricane Ian - Fox Business
Ernest Hemingway's Florida home intact and property's 59 cats are safe after Hurricane Ian.
Posted: Thu, 29 Sep 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
While visiting the Hemingway home, guests are likely to spot some of the polydactyl cats that have lived there since Ernest’s time. Captain Harold Stanley Dexter sailed to Key West with his white six-toed cat, Snowball. After Snowball had a litter of kittens, the captain gifted Hemingway with one whom he named Snow White.
The Legend of the Pilar
And the story about Hemingway is both informative and entertaining. The second fountain is a Hemingway-era one, and comes with a humorous story. When Joe Russell, Hemingway’s buddy and the owner of Sloppy Joe’s moved his establishment, he enlisted the help of his patrons to transport the contents of the bar to its new location. Hemingway would sometimes joke that he chose the location of the house because of its proximity to the lighthouse. On drunken evenings returning from his favorite bar, Sloppy Joe’s, he’d never get lost making his way home.
Bernice Dixon, a local jewelry store owner, bought the house at auction after Hemingway’s death for $80,000. She lived in the home until 1964 when she moved into the guest house and opened the main building as a museum. The house was the first in Key West to have an upstairs bath with running water (fed by the cistern on the roof), and one of the first with modern plumbing. It was also the first with a swimming pool, installed by Hemingway’s second wife Pauline in 1938. Tickets include an optional 30-minute guided tour of the house and grounds, but you’re welcome to explore the property on your own.
Pauline worked for Vogue in Paris, so her tastes were a bit high-faluten for the Florida Keys, but she didn’t mind. She actually removed all the ceiling fans in the house and had them replaced with elaborate chandeliers! She also brought beautiful–and impractical–sofas and loveseats to the home as well, which are still there and still impractical for the region, and overrun with the most spoiled and chill cats you’ll ever see. When he left Cuba in 1960 with his fourth wife, Mary, he knew he’d be back. But the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 cut off his return and separated him from his beloved Pilar.
We are committed to go as far as possible in curating our trips with care for the planet. That is why all of our trips are flightless in destination, fully carbon offset - and we have ambitious plans to be net zero in the very near future. There is certainly an element of vintage appeal throughout the house. The paintings, chandeliers, and other architectural details, which have been immaculately preserved over the years, foster a sense that time has magically stood still at the Hemingway house. Did you know – Culture Trip now does bookable, small-group trips?
To make the most of every visit the general admission fee includes a 30-minute guided tour. The tour takes you around the extremely well kept Hemingway property in Key West. Imagine the stories that they would tell about the previous occupants. Imagine the parties on those porches and then around the pool once built. The story about the urinal truly made me smile - classic Hemingway. Excavating the limestone for the pool was a massive undertaking, and the project cost $20,000 when construction finished in 1938 (that’s about $365,916 in today’s dollars).
Throughout the years, Key West has been home to many writers and artists, but none whose presence and influence is as profound as Ernest Hemingway’s. It was on the advice of John Dos Passos, a fellow member of the “Lost Generation” of ex-patriate artists and writers populating Paris during the 1920s, that Hemingway was first prompted to visit Key West. Hemingway did not go directly to South Florida from Paris, but rather arrived through Havana, Cuba—a city and country that would prove to be critically important in Hemingway’s later personal and professional life. Upon his arrival in Key West in April 1928, the first order of business was to locate the new Ford Roadster that Pauline Hemingway’s wealthy Uncle Gus had so generously purchased for the newlywed couple. Hemingway and his wife left Cuba in 1960, following Fidel Castro’s overthrow of the Batista government (although the left-leaning Hemingway’s sympathies were with the revolutionaries).
Soon after arrival, Hemingway made the acquaintance of Charles Thompson, who ran the local hardware store. Charles Thompson introduced Hemingway to the exciting world of big game sport fishing, and a long friendship was born. Charles and his wife Lorine entertained the Hemingways at their home on Fleming Street. Lorine Thompson proved to be as friendly and gracious as her husband Charles, and it was during those early days in Key West she and Pauline forged a friendship that would endure for the rest of their lives. Both Ernest and Pauline grew to love Key West and its inhabitants, and soon decided to look for a permanent residence. After two seasons in Key West, Pauline’s Uncle Gus purchased the house on Whitehead Street for them in 1931.
The Hemingways quickly became part of a group of American expatriates who poured into the French capital in the decade after WWI, including F. Dubbed the “Lost Generation,” they wrote, painted and composed by day, and drank, debated and caroused the City of Lights by night. Ernest Hemingway was given a white six-toed cat by a ship’s captain and some of the cats who live on the museum grounds are descendants of that original cat, named Snow White. Key West is a small island and it is possible that many of the cats on the island are related. The pool has a mammoth 80,784 gallon capacity, and at the time of installation there was no fresh running water in Key West. Accordingly, in 1938, pool construction involved drilling down to the salt-water table and installing a water pump to retrieve salt water to fill the pool.
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