This house museum is accessible.
This house museum is available for events.
Tours: Hourly during regular hours.
Considered one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner Ernest Hemingway set down a style of prose which epitomized American modernism in its fearless depiction of the world “as it was.”
The Ernest Hemingway Birthplace
339 North Oak Park Avenue, Oak Park, IL 60302, USA708-848-2222
This Queen Anne-style Victorian house was built in 1890 for Ernest Hemingway’s maternal grandparents. With a wraparound porch, elegant parlor, and meticulously restored architectural features, Hemingway’s boyhood home was the first residence in Oak Park to have electricity. It was also within walking distance of the trails and nature preserves that so inspired the author’s later work.
Interior
Exterior
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HISTORIC FIGURES
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FAMILY
Clarence Hemingway, a doctor, and Grace Hall Hemingway, an opera performer, raised their son Ernest in a loving environment of learning, music, religion, and art. These early influences inspired much of his later work on these subjects.
PRESERVATION
The Ernest Hemingway Foundation purchased the home in 1991, and restored it from a modernized three-flat to the Victorian showpiece it was when the Hemingways lived there.
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BOOKS
Ernest Hemingway’s work, drawing on themes of the natural world, was inspired by the learning that took place inside his childhood home. As a physician, his father’s study was filled with medical texts and natural journals.
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DECORATIVE ARTS
The period furnishings and décor in the Hemingway Birthplace were acquired or reproduced with the assistance of the Hemingway family, particularly relatives of Hemingway’s older sister Marcelline. Her recollections provided details about the rugs, wall coverings, paintings, and other features of the house.
MUSIC
Ernest Hemingway’s mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, was an accomplished opera singer and composer. She took music students in the home’s parlor and later from a music room of her own.
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FINE ART
Grace Hall Hemingway and her mother were both skilled painters and artists. The walls of the Hemingway Birthplace are filled with examples of their work.
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HOUSEHOLD TECHNOLOGY
The Hemingway home was one of the first in Oak Park to have electric service, a symbol of the fading Victorian era and the dawning of the 20th century.
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ARCHIVES
Grace Hemingway kept records of all the family’s household possessions, so the Ernest Hemingway Foundation knows everything the family owned. These records are displayed for visitors to see in the doctor’s consulting room and the family’s library.
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PARLOR
With five children and two generations of adults living together under one roof, the Hemingway Birthplace home had an atmosphere of constant activity. Evening dinners and daily prayer times were gatherings that helped connect the family to one another and form close familial bonds.
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Interior
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Exterior
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