Free previewStop 6 of Key West Walking Tour: Mallory Square to the Southernmost Point
The Penny at the Bottom of the Pool
You're on Whitehead Street, at number 907, and the house behind that tall brick wall is the Hemingway House. Turn around for a second. The lighthouse is right across the street, because this lot sits on the second-highest ground on the whole island, about 16 feet above the sea. Now look back at that brick wall. It's six feet high, and it went up for a reason Ernest Hemingway probably didn't put in his letters home.
Hemingway and his wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, came to Key West in 1928 and spent three years in rented housing. When Pauline first saw this place on a house-scouting tour, it was in foreclosure and in deep disrepair. She called it a "damned haunted house." Then she looked again. Thick limestone walls, 18 inches deep, and a big secluded lot, room for a writer to disappear.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 6 of Key West Walking Tour: Mallory Square to the Southernmost Point (3 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
