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Oak Park Library Fails to Sell
Hemingway Home

An 1860s Victorian frame house known as the “Ernest Hemingway Interim House,” where the author lived for nearly a year in 1906, failed to attract any bids when the Oak Park (Ill.) Public Library put it up for auction April 22.

The house sits on a lot next to the suburban Chicago library, and Director Edward Byers said the space is needed for expansion. “While we received no response on the sale,” Byers told American Libraries, “we had a mountain of publicity on the absence of bids—and that has caused a number of valid inquiries to come in.”

Prospective buyers could obtain the house for next to nothing, said Byers, but they would have to move and restore it. “Our main object is to preserve the house. For Oak Park, the house has a lot of connections that go beyond Hemingway: It is one of the oldest in the village.”

Posted May 3, 1999.

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