Hemingway Doll, photo courtesy of Uneek Doll Designs

Ernest Hemingway’s Birthplace Museum

Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace, at 339 North Oak Park Avenue in Oak Park, is where his life began and is now a museum ready for you to visit. It was built in 1890 for Hemingway’s maternal grandmother, according to the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park website. Visit the museum and then the home for a broader understanding of the full life of the author. Oak Park is a village near Chicago with a population of approximately 52,000. When Hemingway was born there, however, the population was only around 500.

“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.”
— Ernest Hemingway

Read more about Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), one of the most popular US authors of all time, at biography.com. His contemporaries included F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. This era of American writers ushered in a new style of writing that attracted instant success and critical acclaim. Writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas, from an earlier generation of journalists, wrote her opinion of the phenomenon within her autobiography Voice of the River.

A list of his published works is here: https://www.thoughtco.com/ernest-hemingway-works-740054. Some of his best known books include A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Hemingway’s life ended in Ketchum, Idaho, and he is buried at the nearby Ketchum Cemetery.

More Hemingway Places to Visit

See the FloridaIdahoMichigan, and South Carolina pages for information about more places you can visit connected to Ernest Hemingway, including his residences and archives.

Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace is the second stop of our Illinois Author Adventures Trail.

Patricia Smart