page_title: Ernest Hemingway House
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ernest Hemingway House / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Tourists visiting the Hemingway House in Key West, Florida. Photo by Jim Heaphy.
context_page_description: The Ernest Hemingway House was the residence of author Ernest Hemingway in Key West, Florida, United States. It is at 907 Whitehead Street, across from the Key West Lighthouse, close to the southern coast of the island. On November 24, 1968, it was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark.
context_section_description: This was Hemingway's home from 1931 to 1939, although he retained title to the home until he died.  It is a private, for-profit tourist attraction now populated by six- and seven-toed cats that are descendants of Hemingway's cats. The author's second son, Patrick, who lived in the house, stated in a 1994 interview in The Miami Herald's "Tropic" that his father had peacocks in Key West and that he owned cats in Cuba. However, a photo on display at the Hemingway Home in Key West shows Patrick and his younger brother, Gregory, in front of the Cuban water jar near the swimming pool, and Gregory is holding a white cat named Snow White. In addition to the photo showing Patrick and Gregory with Snow White, Hemingway's wife at the time, Pauline, wrote the following in a January 22, 1937, letter to Hemingway (who was staying at the Barclay's Hotel in New York City):
  Snow White has become his (G's) fox fur that walks. Esther is having the same old cat looing troubles, with discussed alternatives of 1) getting little female, 2) letting him out and NOT worrying, which turns into letting him out and worrying, 3) castrating, 4) putting ad in paper asking for return of brown, blue-eyed cat with reward.
  Descendants of Hemingway's original cats continue to live on the premises. In 2009, the cats became the subject of federal litigation after a museum visitor expressed concern about the cats' welfare. United States Department of Agriculture investigators visited the museum and subsequently ordered the museum to take measures to tag the cats for identification and to shelter them. The museum fought the regulations in court but lost their case in the court of appeals, which ruled that the cats "substantially affect" interstate commerce and thus are protected by the Animal Welfare Act of 1966. The house does not sell cats but does continue a selective breeding program for them.
  It was in this house that Hemingway wrote some of his best work, including the short story classics "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", his novel To Have And Have Not, and the non-fiction work Green Hills of Africa.
  The house stands at an elevation of 16 feet (4.9 m) above sea level but is still the second-highest site on the island. It was originally built in 1851 by Asa Tift, a marine architect and salvage wrecker, in a French Colonial estate style, out of limestone quarried from the site. As testament to its construction and location, it survived many hurricanes, and the deep basement remained, and still remains, dry. Before Hurricane Irma struck the Florida Keys in September 2017, the entire population of the island chain were ordered to evacuate by the federal government, but the museum's curator, general manager and a team of Hemingway Home employees declined to leave the house or evacuate its cats. Several Hemingway Home employees stayed with the cats and the house. They all survived the storm intact.
  The Hemingways had spent the previous three years living in Key West but had rented housing, the last being a two-story home at 1301 Whitehead Street. Pauline (the writer's second wife) found the Tift house for sale at a tax auction in 1931. Pauline's Uncle Gus bought it for her and Ernest, for $8,000 cash, and presented it to them as a wedding gift.
caption: Tourists visiting the home in 2019
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