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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.
Tips for visiting Ernest Hemingway Key West Home & Museum
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11 Facts About Hemingway's Cats.
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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.
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The swimming pool, built in 1938 as a present from Pfeiffer to her husband, was the first residential swimming pool built in Key West. The coach house became a pool house, and Hemingway had walls built around the grounds. He also installed a catwalk that allowed him to walk from the bedroom to his studio in the pool house. There he wrote the nonfiction Green Hills of Africa (1935), the novel To Have and Have Not (1937), and the short stories “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (both 1936). According to legend, a fellow sailor and ship captain gifted Hemingway with a male cat with six toes named Snow Ball. Polydactyl cats were popular among sailors for their both their rat-hunting skills and as a supposed source of good luck.
From Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum
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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.
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.
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From there I stand on the veranda and gaze down at the swimming pool, the first swimming pool in the city, and beyond that to the bungalow where, surrounded by animal heads and stuffed fish, he wrote in longhand. Ernest and Pauline divorced in 1940, Hemingway took up residence in Cuba with his third wife, Martha Gellhorn. He continued to visit Key West during the 40’s and 50’s until death in 1961.
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.
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Ernest Hemingway was married four times, and each of his wives influenced his writing. In the garden, in a grove of bamboo, I sprawl across the bench and open the book. “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish,’’ is the first sentence. One of the six-toed "Hemingway cats" at the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum in Key West.
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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.
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?
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).
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.
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 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.
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