Ernest Hemingway Birth Home

339 North Oak Park Avenue, Oak Park

According to the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park website, “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…

According to the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park website, “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.” Tours are available (about 90 minutes) that “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.”

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