View from the Key West Lighthouse
Hemingway's House

The acre of land in the 900-block of Whitehead Street was originally the estate of Asa Tift. Arriving in Key West in 1826 to open a dry goods store, Tift immediately recognized the value of a good shipping company to the Southernmost City. He further expandaed his business interests to include real estate and forestry­ he even operated a warehouse storing ice shipped to Key West from Maine. His dock and wharf occupied the space known today as Mallory Square and Tifton, Georgia, bears his name.

By mid-century, Tift was ready to celebrate his success by building a mansion on Whitehead Street. Quarrying coral out of the ground, he created both the island's only basement and building blocks for the Spanish Colonial home. Heart-of-white-pine lumber was shipped from South Georgia and used in the home's interior. The house was occupied in 1851. Tift and his family weren't to enjoy their home for long­ his wife and children died of yellow fever in 1854. When Florida seceded from the union, Key West was garrisoned by union forces Tift, a staunch secessionist, left Key West to design ironclad warships for the Confederacy. Upon his return to Key West following the war, he designed the fountain in the shape of a gunship that still graces the front of the house.

Tift died in 1889 and his estate finally sold the house in 1903. When Pauline Hemingway's uncle gave her the money to buy the home in 1931, its price tag was $8,000. Interior doors were swollen with moisture, the ceiling leaked, and mold and mildew reigned throughout. But Pauline had found a love of her life­ a home on which she could lavish money and attention and create something unique. Her husband, Ernest, was comfortably ensconced in the only residence he ever maintained in the United States, until the last few years of his life. The world-class novelist who lived his life as a happy expatriate was now a happy U.S. citizen on the fringes of society in the country of his birth.

By 1935, though, Hemingway had reached his breaking point regarding tourists. The New Deal had brought Julius Stone to Key West and his big idea on how to lift Key West from the depression was to market the Southernmost City as a tourist destination. Visitors to the island with well-marked maps in hand would often wander into his living room. When new sewer construction on Duval Street made 19,000 old paving bricks available, Hemingway bought them and had Toby Bruce build him a privacy wall.

By 1939, with his marriage to Pauline in trouble, Hemingway left Key West for Cuba accompanied by new love Martha Gelhorn (whom he'd met at Sloppy Joe's.) Pauline and their sons remained in the home until Pauline died in 1951. Ernest continued to visit Key West until his death in 1961 and his heirs sold the house later that same year. In 1964, the home was opened as a museum.