Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author Ernest Hemingway was born and Raised in Oak Park. Before the life of adventure and authoring “The Sun Also Rises”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “The Old Man and the Sea” among others, he was a writer for the local high school newspaper and yearbook. Oak Park was where he received the extent of his formal education. He once referred to the area as “A place of wide lawns and narrow minds” but the area certainly had a positive impact on his love of writing and the outdoors.
The Ernest Hemingway Birthplace Museum was actually his Grandparents home. The Stately Victorian home housed three generations of his family and is today beautifully restored and open to the public.
To go Beyond the Birthplace, the Oak Park River Forest Museum is a great place to start. Not only do they have a few Hemingway related items, their “Open House: The Legacy of Fair Housing” exhibit may shed some light on his wide lawns and narrow minds quote. To experience how diverse and open Oak Park is today, you might not realize it had ever been different. The Oak Park Library is also a wealth of Hemingway information including some of his early essays.