Not many people know this, but this historic house in Oak Park is what Ernest Hemingway called home for the first six years of his life.

Ernest Hemingway Childhood Home: the House of a Future Nobel Prize Winner

Hemingway’s maternal grandfather, Ernest Hall, built the home in 1890, choosing architect Wesley Arnold to design it. To this day, the Earnest Hemingway Childhood Home maintains many of its original features, which allow visitors to easily imagine what the house must have felt like for little Ernest Hemingway.

On top of being Hemingway’s first home, this property was the first in the entirety of Oak Park to have electricity. We like to imagine the sound of Ernest’s mother’s voice, opera singer and composer Grace Hemingway, brightening the home from within. The office is where the Hemingway children would go as punishment.

This is also where Tyler Hancock, Ernest’s uncle, stopped between trips as a salesman and regaled the children with stories from faraway lands. This very well could be the place where Hemingway was first inspired to explore the world. His travels are indeed famous for frequency and distance, having Hemingway traveled to Western Europe, East Africa, the Caribbean, and Cuba.

Ernest Hemingway’s Childhood Home Today

The wonderful thing about this home is that it is now owned and protected by the Earnest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park since 1992, so that visitors can follow guided tours to learn more about his life. It’s currently also known as Ernest Hemingway’s Birthplace Museum.