The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park

Birthplace Home Part of 'Oak Park Afternoon'

Join The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, Pleasant Home and Cheney Mansion in a three-site tour of Oak Park's historic and literary attractions as part of Wright Plus. On Friday, June 1, tour all three buildings, in any order, with light refreshments. Tours of the Birthplace Home will be offered throughout the afternoon on a continuous basis. One-site visit cost will apply to continue on to the Museum.

Purchse your tickets now!

Come Celebrate the Holidays with Hemingway!

 

Entertainment Schedule:

12 - 1 p.m. The Young Family String Ensemble

1 - 2 p.m. Barbara Ann Fackler, Harpist

2 - 2:30 p.m. The Hemingway Readers Theater

2:30 - 3 p.m. John & Katherine Atwood: Christmas Songs

3 - 3:15 p.m. Christmas Readings by Paulette Cary

3:15 - 4 p.m. Home Street Recorder Ensemble

4 p.m. - 5 p.m. Laura Fako Utley, Harpist

 

Reminder: Hemingway & Twain October 28 at the Birthplace Home

 
Hemingway & Twain: Thursday, October 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hemingway Birthplace Home, 339 N. Oak Park Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois. Admission is free.

Twain and Hemingway wrote clear poetic prose about life as they encountered it. This program explores how the American heartland where they grew up shaped their outlooks and styles. And how they wrote about the even vaster, more enduring, land of the heart.

Redd Griffin, the presenter, is a founding director/past chair of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. Early family connections with the lives and writings of Twain and Hemingway ignited his lifelong interest in them. He has spoken and written about them, especially Hemingway, for various media in many venues, including Big Reads for several libraries, including Oak Park’s Scoville Institute. Griffin, a former state legislator, teaches at Triton College and serves on advisory boards for the Illinois State Historical Society, WTTW and various community organizations.

This program is part of the Oak Park Public Library’s Big Read and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park’s Great Places for Learning project.  

For more information please contact the Foundation at (708) 848-222.

Join Us for Boxing Day 2009!

Hemingway Foundation Featured on Comcast Community Connection

Video: Inside the Hemingway Birthplace Home

The following slideshow will give you an idea of the kind of environment in which Ernest Hemingway began his legendary life.

Washington Post Features Hemingway's Birthplace

From Sunday's edition:

As a writer, I ashamedly had no clue that the Pulitzer- and Nobel Prize-winning writer was born and raised in Oak Park. Paris, Cuba and Key West, Fla.: Those are the places I had associated with Hemingway. Yet there on Oak Park Avenue stood the six-bedroom Victorian where baby Ernest was born in July 1899 in a second-floor bedroom, the second of six children of Clarence "Ed" Hemingway, a doctor, and Grace Hemingway, a music teacher.

The house on Oak Park Avenue was owned by Hemingway's maternal grandfather; after he died, 6-year-old Ernest and his family moved to a house a few blocks away on North Kenilworth Avenue. While the latter is closed to the public, the Oak Park Avenue residence is open for visitors interested in more than a walk-by. The wrap-around porch and round tower alone gave me a serious case of house envy. A nearby museum inside the Oak Park Arts Center offers further insight into the writer's life. Artifacts on display include a letter from the nurse who broke Hemingway's heart, thereby helping to inspire his novel "A Farewell to Arms."

Inside The Hemingway Birthplace

ENTRY HALL
Open the beautiful front double doors and step into the entry hall. It is large and inviting, and leads to the parlor to the left, the library straight ahead, and the stairs to second floor. Marcelline Hemingway (Ernest's sister) has indicated that there was another small room, in between the first and second floors that served as a room for her father to see his medical patients, which we are still in the process of uncovering.

LIBRARY
This formal, masculine room can be accessed from the entry hall and parlour. The library served at least two purposes. First, it became a retreat for Grandfather Hall when he wished to have an after dinner smoke or a drink with men folk without upsetting his daughter and son-in-law. It also served as the main repository of books for this family of avid readers.

PARLOUR / LIVING ROOM
Enter the parlour and you can see the functionality and beauty of this room. The inviting fireplace is set off by flowered carpet that was typical of the time, pink and green wall covering, and genuine Notthingham lace curtains, similar to those that hung in the windows over 100 years ago. The white plaster cornice at the ceiling is original to the home, and its rose relief pattern is reflected in the carpet. This space served as a music, prayer and study room, as well as a general gathering area for the entire family.

DINING ROOM
Large oak double pocket doors lead to the dining room. The rose relief pattern in the white plaster cornice that you saw in the living room / parlour is also original to this room. Marcelline tells us that on a typical morning, Dr. and Mrs. Hemingway would have their breakfast and then leave the room to Grandfather Hall and the children. After finishing his breakfast and morning newspaper, Grandfather Hall (affectionately called Abba, the Biblical name for grandfather) would proceed to entertain his grandchildren with stories recalled from his childhood and stories featuring animal characters.

KITCHEN
The kitchen is most noteworthy for the fact that Grace Hemingway seldom appeared here. She had been taught by her mother to be a professional woman, one who could afford to hire others to do the cooking, laundry, house cleaning, baby sitting, and other household chores. Many of the maids who were skilled in the kitchen were also voice and music students of Grace's. They utilized the back staircase off of the kitchen.

2nd floor
The second floor hallway runs the length of the home and leads to six bedrooms and one bathroom, and an entrance to the attic.

NURSERY
Ernest and Marcelline slept here in matching white cribs, which are represented here. The room was tidy and decorated for the children. The toy box on the floor belonged to Marcelline. The nursery was connected to Grace Hemingway's bedroom.

GRACE'S BEDROOM
This may be the most accurate restoration in the entire house because a remnant of the original wallpaper was found in the closet, enabling us know the color as well as the pattern. Mrs. Hemingway occupied this room and it was here that the first four of her six children were born, delivered by Dr. Hemingway.

DR. HEMINGWAY'S ROOM
It had been the Victorian custom for Ernest Hall and his wife Caroline to occupy separate bedrooms. Dr. Ed and Grace did the same. It was also a convenience given their frequent need to be up at night. He often needed to see patients while she needed to look after the children. The room faces East, and Oak Park Avenue.

ABBA'S ROOM
Abba occupied the turret bedroom, which faces Oak Park Avenue. At this time in his life Ernest Hall had retired as the co-owner of a successful cutlery business, a career parallel to that of his father back in Sheffield, England. Ernest Hall was also an investor in stocks and bonds. Mr. Hall died here in 1905 after suffering for several months from Bright's Disease, a kidney ailment.

MAID'S ROOM
As in many middle class households of the time, the cook and other household help lived with the family and descended to the kitchen and the basement or outdoor toilet facilities by a back stairway. In some cases, they were taught to be accomplished singers by Grace Hall Hemingway and gave the children an opportunity to converse with them in their foreign languages. The room is not carpeted and its decorations are very simple, frugal and plain.

UNCE TYLEY'S ROOM
Benjamin Tyley Hancock was the spirited middle aged bachelor brother of Carolyn Hall who lived with the family when he wasn't taking trips on business selling iron and brass beds for the prestigious Miller Hall Co. With great spirit at family gatherings, he challenged Ernest and everyone at games and lake. His room is at the back of the home, facing the yard.

The Hemingway Boyhood Home
When Abba died, the Hemingway family left the Oak Park Avenue home. Grace, along with architect Henry G. Fiddelke, designed and built a new family home at 600 North Kenilworth Avenue, where Ernest spent his high school years. This home, while owned by The Ernest Hemingway Foundation, is not yet open to the general public.

Restoring The Birthplace Home

When the 1890 Hemingway Birthplace Home was acquired by The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park in December 1992, funding for the purchase was provided by First Bank of Oak Park and some revenue was derived from the sale of furnishings that were included in the acquisition.

Since there was no money budgeted for restoration or period furnishings, a capital campaign was embarked upon and ultimately produced $600,000 toward administration and construction costs. John Thorpe, preservation architect, provided pro bono services and recommended skilled artisans for various portions of the restoration in addition to Kaufman and Wicklow, preservation contractors, for overall construction.

Plans were drawn, research was undertaken, Hemingway family resources and memory items from the home were sought out. An interiors consultation team of Virginia Cassin, Chair of the Restoration; Linda Hutchinson, interior designer; and Elaine Harrington, historic furnishings consultant began a seven year project to decorate and furnish the house.

The first floor was opened to visitors in June and the second floor in November 1993. Construction was ongoing with mostly volunteer efforts and furnishings were sparse. With infusion of funds from the campaign, professional services for carpentry, heating, plumbing, roofing, etc. were employed. The major goal was to have a presentable house by the Centennial Birthday celebration in 1999. Unfortunately, money was depleted by the beginning of that year.

The Foundation earlier had embarked on efforts to get a grant from the Illinois Government in Springfield to commemorate the Centennial Hemingway Birthday. In May of 1999 there was notification that an $800,000 grant had been approved! Based on this official information, it was possible to secure bridge loads to cover the costs of construction. The house was substantially unfinished when the Hemingway sons and their families entered the front door on July 21, 1999.

At the Centennial dinner, the Governor upped the grant to $1 million dollars and the completion work began again, and ended with a joyous celebration on November 10, 2001.

The house is authentically returned to its 1890's roots when Ernest's grandparents, Ernest and Carolyne Hall, built the home as their retirement home. Ernest, his father and mother and three siblings lived in the house with widowed grandfather Hall until his death in 1905. Six owners and many architectural changes later, The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park purchased the home to beautifully restore it with over $1 million dollars and hundreds of hours of volunteer time; dedicated professional expertise and the faithful support of sister Marcelline's children - John and Jim Sanford, their sister Carol Coolidge and other Hemingway family; and the loyal community of Oak Park.

The literary world is the richer for these remarkable contributions and visitors from everywhere will enjoy the ambiance and the story of young Ernest's significant years in this fine old home.

About The Ernest Hemingway Birthplace Home

Hemingway's Birthplace is a good place to begin to explore the roots of the author's life and art. Here Ernest was born in a second floor bedroom on July 21, 1899. This Queen Anne house, built by his maternal grandparents and recently restored, is as it was when Ernest lived there. Young Ernest spent his first six years in these grand rooms rich with Victorian decor.

On the first floor, Hemingway joined his family in Grandfather Abba's Bible readings and prayers. His mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, gave music lessons in the parlor. The top floor of the tower was a mini-museum, where Ernest's father, Dr. Clarence Hemingway, kept his wildlife specimens. Grace's uncle, Tyley Hancock, who roomed on the second floor, had traveled widely. Ernest listened avidly to his colorful tales, and acted out poems and stories from the family's well-stocked library.

When Ernest was five, he watched Abba die, and with him a strong link to the Victorian Age. The family then left this house of ancestral echoes for a Prairie-style house, more streamlined like the new century-and Ernest's writing to come.

BIRTHPLACE & MUSEUM HOURS
Sunday through Friday 1pm-5pm Saturday 10am–5pm Closed New Year's, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Martin Luther King Day, Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, Fourth of July and Thanksgiving.
NOTE: subject to change, please call the Hemingway Museum to confirm.

ADMISSION (includes both sites)

• $8 adult
• $6 senior (65 and over)
• $6 youth (18 and under)
• Free to children 5 and under
• Rates as of March 2005 and are subject to change.

Group Rates & Tours are available. Advance reservations are required.

TOURS
Tours of the Home and Museum reflect on the influence and impact that the family and the community had on the early life of the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author, and last approximately 90 minutes. We suggest you begin your tour at the Museum.