The Ernest Hemingway Boyhood Home in Oak Park is 100 years old this year. To celebrate the occasion, on Tuesday, Dec. 5, The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, owner of this historic site at 600 N. Kenilworth Avenue, will convene a Centennial Summit meeting to help plan for century number two. Representatives from leading literary, architectural, artistic and historic organizations will meet at the Hemingway Birthplace at 339 N. Oak Park Ave. for a 7:30 a.m. continental breakfast amid Victorian holiday decor. Following will be a tour of the Boyhood Home and discussions at the Hemingway Museum at 200 N. Oak Park Ave.
On a cold, rainy day in April, 1906, the family, plus the architect and the minister, gathered around the fireplace to dedicate their unfinished new home with a ceremony that included singing, “Blessed Be The Tie That Binds,” and placing a time capsule in the hearth.
Hemingway’s boyhood house, where he lived from age 6 to 20, is Prairie-style, devoid of extraneous embellishments … a fitting parallel to the lean, activist prose that incubated here.
Built in 1906, it was designed by Ernest’s mother, Grace, together with architect Henry G. Fiddelke, as a stucco vernacular four-square with a low hipped roof and symmetrical facade. It was a radical departure from the Victorian house of Grace’s father at 339 N. Oak Park Ave. where they had lived previously and where Ernest had been born July 21, 1899. The Kenilworth house provided a welcome freedom for all, and it was where the young Ernest would find his voice.
Unusual for a house of this period, it provided professional space for both Dr. Hemingway and Ernest’s mother. Immediately adjacent to the front door was a waiting room for patients, and an examining room and lab. Grace carefully designed a large 30-foot-square music room, now gone, with a stage and a balcony where she gave music lessons and held recitals. She designed the kitchen with high counters, and had the sink lifted because “the Hemingway women are tall.”
One entered the big gray stucco house with white trim, located at the corner of Kenilworth Avenue and Iowa Street, via a generous front porch into an entry hall flanked by Dr. Hemingway’s library/waiting room and his examining room on the north. Ahead was a glazed door to the living room on which was set the family crest: a light blue “H” with clasped hands, a calla lily underneath, and above, a golden sun. Through this door you entered a large bright room with diamond pattern leaded windows on the south and a generous brick fireplace on the east wall. Simple oak woodwork and stair railing suggested mission-style decor.
Through French doors, glazed with art glass in a tulip pattern, was the dining room, large enough to accommodate a family-size, round table and eight arm chairs. Multiple windows on the east and a door into the garden on the north wall lit the room. A pass-through on the south wall above a built-in buffet opened up a view of the modern kitchen with everything close at hand and hard maple countertops with cupboards and drawers in abundance. A ventilation opener was installed above the stove.
The long stairway at the north of the living room led to the second floor with bedrooms for Dr. and Mrs. Hemingway, two for children, a nursery at the east end for the young children and a room adjoining for the children’s nursemaid. A charming porch on the south side of the house could be accessed from the nursemaid’s room. The rooms had ample closets and generous window spaces to make them bright. A full bath and a lavatory bathroom provided for a large family.
In the master bedroom there were closet/dressing rooms along the north wall for both Grace and Clarence. In one of the children’s rooms was a large fireplace to make it warm and cozy whenever it was used as an “isolation room” in the event one of the family fell ill. Simple oak woodwork was used throughout but in the nursery, the woodwork was painted white and the wallpaper sported a bright and cheerful geometric pattern.
Through a closet near the back stairway, where one could enter from either side, a third flight of stairs led to the top floor. At the east end there was a maid’s room and beside it a small bath with a tub, for the use of all on the third floor. Ernest’s large, bright room was a dormer with a generous closet and built-in drawer space. The light from the south windows flooded in.
The ample basement, though unfinished, contained a coal bin, a fruit and vegetable room, Dr. Hemingway’s work area, and a laundry room. It was dry and light and stored the produce from their farm in Michigan, which was shipped to Oak Park.
The boyhood home has witnessed much in its long history. During the Hemingways’ tenancy, there were many family functions and trips to their summer home in Lake Walloon, Mich. The family of six children hosted musicals, picnics, and a party for Italians, honoring Ernest’s bout in Italy in World War I.
In Ernest’s bedroom, he wrote stories for Tabula, the high school literary magazine, and Trapeze, the school newspaper. He began writing poems and short stories which he showed to friends. “Soldiers Home” and the Nick Adams stories probably were spawned during the Oak Park years.
But equally important, he was soaking up the impressions, sights and sounds he would use in his writings all his life. This room, this house and this village were becoming a studio for a maturing writer to find his own voice, express it and amplify its distinctiveness and power.
It was his father, an ardent naturalist, who taught him how to observe; he led excursions into the Forest Preserves and fishing expeditions on the Des Plaines River. During the years at the family summer home in Michigan, young Ernest accompanied his father to an Indian camp where he ministered at no charge to the ill.
From his mother, he would acquire a flair for self expression, the ability to express in images the look and feel of a place or person. By combining his father’s keen observational powers and objectivity with his mother’s sensitivity and powers of expression, Hemingway could write with clarity and power.
The family was to consider this house their home until 1936, when Grace sold the property and moved to River Forest. The last year Ernest Hemingway lived in the house was 1919, after which he lived in Chicago for a short time and then left for Paris and the world. His visits to the Kenilworth Avenue home were few. In 1928, the suicide death of his father brought Ernest back for the last time to Oak Park.
In the later years of Mrs. Hemingway’s occupancy of the house, she rented out rooms and used the music room as her painting studio and exhibit gallery. When she sold the house in 1936, the new owners failed to maintain the home, rented rooms to tenants who misused the property and generally let the house fall into disrepair. The neighbors were delighted when the property was sold in the 1950s to Mr. and Mrs. Burns, who took pride in bringing the home and grounds back to their former fine condition.
The Hemingway Foundation bought the boyhood home in 2001. It currently rents out the three different apartments, one on each floor. It also operates The Hemingway Museum and the award-winning restored birthplace house, which is open to the public.
These three properties, together with Oak Park and River Forest High School and First United Church of Oak Park, which the family attended, constitute the early world of the author.
“We are looking for new, interesting and economically feasible uses for the boyhood home,” says Virginia Cassin, chairperson for the upcoming summit. “Persons interested in participating in this summit, besides the invited guests, are welcome. Please call me at 708/848-2815.”
“The boyhood home supplied the Nobel Prize-winning author with material for his fiction, including examples of psychological roots, sibling rivalry and parental conflicts,” Cassin said, adding that Oak Park has a sterling opportunity and a sober responsibility now to determine how best to develop and use this extraordinary property for posterity.