Elizabeth Bishop House & Garden

Elizabeth Bishop and 624 White Street, Key West

Elizabeth Bishop arrived in Key West around New Year’s Eve 1936 when she was 25 years old and still trying to find her way in the world. Key West was inexpensive then; she rented her first apartment across the street from the county jail for only $4 a week. And it was utterly unlike the world she knew from her youth in New England and Nova Scotia. Bishop marveled at the Magnificent Frigatebirds soaring overhead, the lizards scurrying underfoot, and the mangoes and guavas ripening on the trees.

She was equally intrigued by Key West’s idiosyncratic architecture; in “Florida Deserta,” a poem published after her death, Bishop compares the island’s metal-shingled roofs to the scales of tarpon rolling beneath the surface of the water. She bought the 1890s-era eyebrow house at 624 White Street in 1938, for $2,000, with financial support from her romantic partner Louise Crane. “The house seems perfectly beautiful to me, inside and out,” she wrote to Marianne Moore, her friend and mentor. “We consider its lines to be the most elegant thing in Key West,” she explained to another friend, the literary critic T.C. Wilson.

Her biographer Thomas Travisano notes that “Bishop’s poetic style underwent a significant and lasting transformation” during her years on White Street. Captivated by what she viewed as the exotic character of Key West, Bishop learned to harness her powers of close and concentrated observation, in the service of poems that have delighted generations of readers. She sold the house to Lisbeth Weymouth in 1946, having written many of the poems that would appear, later that year, in her landmark debut collection, North & South.

The house stayed in the Weymouth family for more than 70 years. Then, in 2019, 40 years after Bishop’s death, Key West Literary Seminar acquired 624 White Street. This was one of the “three loved houses” whose loss she mourned in her beloved poem “One Art.” It is a registered Literary Landmark and one of Key West’s most important literary sites.

Years of meticulous work to restore and preserve the house to the way it was when Bishop lived there in the 1930s and 1940s are now complete. The garden is open daily to the public, and the interior of the house is open on occasion for special events and educational activities.

Key West Literary Seminar and Elizabeth Bishop

Our history with Elizabeth Bishop and her legacy dates to 1993, when our annual Seminar was dedicated to Bishop’s poetry. The program was the brainchild of John Malcolm Brinnin, a longtime friend of Bishop’s and one of our founding leaders. Brinnin’s program gathered together poets who’d known Bishop well such as James Merrill and Frank Bidart, with scholars, editors, and curators who were on the leading edge of Bishop studies.

Brinnin was among a small group who understood that scholarly and popular interest had grown toward Bishop in the years since her death, a wave which would eventually uncover previously unknown elements of her artistic output and broaden her impact beyond poetry alone. At the 1993 Seminar, Bishop’s paintings were exhibited for the first time, curated by William Benton. Her personal correspondence received its first public audience, read aloud by Robert Giroux, who was finalizing his landmark selection of her letters, One Art. Her former Key West home, at 624 White Street, was dedicated as a Literary Landmark by United for Libraries.

The Elizabeth Bishop House & Garden today is the public face of our commitment to Key West’s literary heritage, serving as our day-to-day headquarters and providing valuable resources for the public. It will be the site of exhibitions, lectures, and readings that explore and extend Bishop’s legacy. Visitors to the Bishop House will have an opportunity to see Key West through the eyes of this singular poet and understand Bishop’s important work in the context of this subtropical island city.

Help Preserve the Bishop House & Garden

Thanks to generous readers in Key West and around the world, we have raised more than $3.5 million for the restoration of the Elizabeth Bishop House & Garden. Future donations may be earmarked for ongoing maintenance and preservation efforts at the Bishop House, or for our general fund, to support programming, scholarships, and other needs.

The Bishop House is the physical embodiment of our mission — to promote the understanding and discussion of important literary works and their authors; to recognize and support new voices in American literature; and to preserve and promote Key West’s literary heritage while providing resources that strengthen literary culture.

All contributions are fully tax-deductible and 100% will be used to support our mission as a public charity under IRS code 501(c)(3).

Fine print

Key West Literary Seminar is recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt charitable institution under Section 501(c)(3) and all contributions are deductible for federal income tax purposes. Our federal tax ID is 59-2807058. Key West Literary Seminar has complied with the registration requirements of Chapter 496, Florida Statutes, the Solicitation of Contributions Act. Registration Number: CH34555. A copy of the official registration and financial information may be obtained from the Division of Consumer Services by calling toll-free within the state 1-800-435-7352 or online at www.FloridaConsumerHelp.com. Registration does not imply endorsement, approval, or recommendation by the State.