Literary Lineage: Florida Home of Poet Elizabeth Bishop is Restored
In Key West, Florida, the entrance gate to a crisp white house with distinctive green shutters holds a plaque designating it a literary landmark, and for good reason: Acclaimed poet Elizabeth Bishop owned the property from 1938 to 1946. Recently the Elizabeth Bishop House & Garden, built in 1889 and one of the few remaining vernacular eyebrow houses in Key West, was restored to the period of her residence.
photo by: Mark Hedden
The rear porch in the Elizabeth Bishop House.
“It was 50 years old already when Bishop bought it,” says Arlo Haskell, executive director of the Key West Literary Seminar, a nonprofit that acquired the home in 2019. “So we tried to capture that period of her ownership and keep the modifications she had made and get rid of anything that came after.”
Supported through a capital campaign that has raised $3.8 million for the building’s purchase, restoration, and maintenance, the project included restoring windows and louvered shutters, the two porches, and the house’s color palette.
The poet described its hues in her writing, including the dark green shutters and floors and the “heavenly pale blue” tongue-and-groove ceilings of the rear porch (above), which she added. “So much of what we have done here is rooted in Bishop’s writings about the house,” Haskell says.
This includes the garden, which is open to the public five days a week. The house serves as the nonprofit’s headquarters and will also be used for exhibitions, tours, and events that meet its mission of preserving local literary history. “It is an opportunity to see Key West through the eyes of Bishop,” Haskell says. “And to understand Bishop’s work in the context of Key West.”
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