Hemingway's Key West house named literary landmark

KEY WEST, Florida -- Ernest Hemingway's Key West home, where the American author lived in the 1930s, has been designated a literary landmark.

Hemingway, who lived in the Spanish-colonial home with his second wife Pauline and their two sons, owned the property until his death in 1961. It became a museum honoring the Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winning author in 1964.

Hemingway worked on many of his best-known manuscripts in the Key West property's second-story writing studio.

"Hemingway was probably our first and most popular writer to take residence in Key West," said Dave Gonzales of the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum. "He lived here only nine years, but wrote 70 percent of his lifetime works in that nine-year period -- the most prolific period of his life."

Among them were "For Whom the Bell Tolls," ''The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and the Key West-based "To Have and Have Not," Hemingway's only novel set in the United States.

"This is a recognition long overdue," said author Les Standiford, who presented the designation. "There are a number of other literary landmarks in Key West, but none dedicated to Hemingway."

Literary landmark designation is conferred by a division of the American Library Association. The Hemingway home is Key West's eighth literary landmark. Others include the former homes of playwright Tennessee Williams and poet Elizabeth Bishop.