Study completed: 2007

The National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) in Washington D.C. and The Hemingway Preservation Foundation in Concord, Massachusetts were authorized to send a team of architects and engineers to conduct a historic preservation assessment of Finca Vigía, or “Lookout Farm,” Ernest Hemingway’s home from 1939 to 1960. Built in 1886 on a hillside 12 miles from Havana, Finca Vigía is where Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, A Moveable Feast, and Islands in the Stream.

Leland D. Cott, FAIA of Bruner/Cott Architects and Planners, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and William Dupont, AIA of the National Trust will lead the technical team, which will include Bruner/Cott's preservation specialist Henry Moss, AIA. The team will work with their Cuban counterparts to assess structural problems and damage by the elements that have caused the rambling Spanish colonial villa to deteriorate so severely that the National Trust placed it on its 2005 list of the 11 most endangered historic places.

While many of the Nobel Prize-winning author's furnishings and personal belongings have been moved into storage for their protection, evidence of the author's daily life remains. Many first editions of Hemingway's books are in the study, his fishing tackle and boat Pilar are still in place, and records of the author’s weight and blood pressure remain penciled on the bathroom wall.

“Ernest Hemingway is one of the world’s most celebrated authors, and Finca Vigía is the home he loved best,” said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust. “Even though it stands on foreign soil, this house is part of the shared cultural heritage that defines us as Americans.”

for more information please visit:

Hemingway Preservation Foundation

National Trust for Historic Preservation

Boston Globe Article September 2005