Address Restricted, Ketchum, Idaho. County/parish: Blaine.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places March 13, 2015. NRIS 13001073.
2 contributing buildings.Also known as:
The Ernest and Mary Hemingway House, in Ketchum, Idaho, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015. The National Register does not disclose its location but rather lists it as "Address restricted." The house itself is private, and not open to the public.
The house was built 72 years ago in 1953 for Henry J. "Bob" Topping Jr. It is a two-story, 2,500-square-foot (230 m2) home in Ketchum, west of the Big Wood River. The property is the last undeveloped property of its size within the city limits of Ketchum. Similar to the Sun Valley Lodge a few miles away, its exterior walls are concrete, poured into rough-sawn forms and then acid-stained to simulate wood. It was sold to Hemingway in 1959 for its asking price of $50,000, and the Hemingways occupied it in November 1959.
On the morning of Sunday, July 2, 1961, Hemingway died in the home of a self-inflicted head wound from a shotgun. After a brief funeral four days later, he was buried at the city cemetery.
The Nature Conservancy acquired ownership in 1986. In May 2017, ownership was transferred to The Community Library in Ketchum, a privately funded public library.
The Ketchum, Idaho, house, and its associated 13.9 acres of land alongside the Big Wood River, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its association with the writer and because it is an exquisite example of mid-century architecture.
The house is incorporated into a larger historical and literary program that explores Hemingway's abiding connections to the remote and rugged region, a place he visited for two decades, and the place where he turned to make his final home after his departure from Cuba.
Artifacts from the Ernest and Mary Hemingway House and Preserve are being preserved by the Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History and will be made accessible to the public through periodic displays at the Library and the Wood River Museum of History and Culture, as well as through research requests.
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