Thursday, May 2, 2024

Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum Key West, Florida

ernest hemingway house in florida

Hemingway also built a boxing ring on the property, allowing the self-styled pugilist a place to spar. 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. An author, artist, filmmaker and balloonist, Bensemer has lived and worked in Florida since his parents moved to Clearwater when he was nine years old, 66 years ago. He pursued his passion for art at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota before serving in the U.S. Navy and using his abilities as an Illustrator/Draftsman for the “Cruiser-Destroyerman” magazine while stationed on an aircraft carrier in Mayport.

Life and career

As a metaphor for the expense of the pool, Hemingway took a penny and stuck it into the wet concrete of the patio surrounding the pool. One of the most unusual features of the home is the large swimming pool. It was completed in 1938 at a cost of $20,000, which was a lot of money in those days. You find many more interesting things to do in Key West near Ernest Hemingway House & Museum.

About the Hemingway Museum in Key West: A Cultural Heritage Spotlight

He was living in Paris with the first of his four wives, Hadley Richardson. The Ernest Hemingway House, also known as Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, is located in the heart of Old Town Key West. It sits just a block away from the busier Duval Street and with great Key West hotels just around the corner. We know that many of you worry about the environmental impact of travel and are looking for ways of expanding horizons in ways that do minimal harm - and may even bring benefits.

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In 1964, they opened the house as a private museum, but continued to live in the loft area (in the building behind the main home). Today, the property remains in the hands of their family, who still run the house as a museum, proudly displaying all the Hemingway furniture, and memorabilia, adding Hemingway’s loft on the tour. Pauline was a trooper, in that she tried to accept Ernest as he was, and kept herself busy in several ways. She lived to renovate, and organized repairs, renovation projects, and remodeling, creating a lovely home! The second floor loft of the carriage house behind the main home became Ernest’s area to write. Her remodeling projects included attaching the kitchen to the main house, and adding a small breakfast nook.

A Florida Home Inspired by Ernest Hemingway's Key West Estate - The Wall Street Journal

A Florida Home Inspired by Ernest Hemingway's Key West Estate.

Posted: Tue, 27 Aug 2019 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Ernest Hemingway's Florida Home Is a Surprising Fount of Decor Inspiration - ELLE Decor

Ernest Hemingway's Florida Home Is a Surprising Fount of Decor Inspiration.

Posted: Mon, 27 Mar 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Visual artists Roger Bansemer and Xavier Cortada and musicians George Clinton and Lynyrd Skynrd are the 2024 inductees to the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, according to Wednesday's announcement from the Florida Department of State. Pauline has also been seen by a lot of people, though I can’t find any hard evidence proving that she is there, outside of eyewitness accounts. Eyewitness accounts are believable, and SEFGR’s evidence points to the fact that at least Ernest is still in residence.

Tours

Ernest Hemingway was a Nobel Prize-winning author known for his concise writing style and profound influence on 20th-century fiction. His adventurous and robust lifestyle was a source of inspiration for his novels. Ernest Hemingway was a man who lived in many wonderful places, and traveled to many more. But the house on Whitehead Street in Key West was of particular importance, both in Hemingway’s personal life and in his literary development.

History of the Hemingway Cats

Most recently, Clinton was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a special proclamation from Leon County, and a key to the city of Tallahassee. The paranormal group SEFGR have caught some hard evidence pointing to the existence of spirits in the house museum and Ernest’s writing workroom in the loft. Her gray apparition has been seen the most at the top of the central staircase by staff and visitors, being the courteous, welcoming hostess. This social pleasure was something she didn’t get to do much while alive, because Ernest abhorred outside visitors. She is a gracious hostess, a cultural norm she learned from her upbringing.

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Hemingway wrote some of his most famous works while living in the Florida Keys, including The Green Hills Of Africa, To Have And Have Not and most notably, For Whom The Bell Tolls. Hemingway’s original typewriter, leather writing chair and a collection of treasured novels have been preserved as he left them. Normal cats have five toes on their front paws and four on their back. Hemingway’s first cat, Snowball, was a polydactyl cat with six toes on her front paws and five toes on her back. At times as many as 30 cats descended from Snowball had the run of the place.

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Ernest Hemingway lived an exciting life and the guides do a great job telling the story. A fun touch when visiting the Hemingway home is that approximately six-toed cats live on the property. These cats are descendants of the cat Snow White that a ship captain once gave to Hemingway. The Ernest Hemingway House in Key West, Florida is full of interesting stories and even some legends. Built in 1851 by Asa Tift, a master mariner and ship’s chandler, the historical building was where author Ernest Hemingway lived with his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer while he wrote “A Farewell To Arms” and “To Have And Have Not”.

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). 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.

They placed it next to Pauline’s pool, where it still serves as the water bowl for the family’s cats. The Key West Lighthouse that was built long before he entered the scene stands just across the road from the old home. As the story goes, the lighthouse was very well-needed, if not necessary, to guide Hemingway home to the house after his wet nights on the town. So you have plenty of chances to make their acquaintance when you visit the Ernest Hemingway house in 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. The Hemingway pool—the only one within 100 miles in the 1930s—was truly an architectural feat. My name is Lynda and I am a recovering sugar addict and travel junkie. I’m also a mom of two children & 2 dogs, wife of 1….and a messy cook taking life one bite at a time. Whether your tour guide looks like Ernest Hemingway or not, you will learn a lot about the great writer, his wives, his time in Cuba, and so much more. While you can explore the home on your own, we recommend that you go on one of the guided tours.

ernest hemingway house in florida

As in Key West, Hemingway happily held court, in a home filled with mementos and items that the notorious pack-rat refused to throw out, and surrounded by a gaggle of cats. Recently, he received a Creative Capital Award in 2022 to support his latest art project, "The Underwater," which involves over 2,000 students from his alma mater, Miami Senior High School, in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. Ernest did use his Key West home as a stop-over residence on the way to other places while he lived in Cuba,  and still saw his kids and Pauline. When Pauline died in 1951, after one of her sons was arrested, he rented the main house.

Descendants of Snowball descendants, at least 50 or so, have the run of the place now – those weird, six-toed cats that are a favorite of tourists. 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.

Key West Lighthouse & Keeper’s Quarters Museum is located just across the street from the Hemingway House. The guided tour includes information about all aspects of Hemingway’s interesting life. But you surely don’t have to be a fan of Hemingway to find a visit to Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum inspirational. 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.

He is friendly with staff and visitors, though in life he didn’t care for the public. Hemingway House, FL (In life, Pauline was devastated when Ernest left her for his new lover. She must have some peace now, being so close to him once again, seeing him work from her special window and doing what she can for him). Hemingway’s house of course was put on the maps of famous places, causing unwanted intrusions from mainland tourists. In 1935, Ernest was fed up with looky-loo tourists walking into his yard, and even coming into the house, invading his privacy. He had his friend Toby build a wall of stone to give the Hemingway clan and his celebrity guests some peace away from the clamorous new throngs of humanity who came to Key West.

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