A short but important chapter of Toronto history has hit the property market: a Bathurst St. apartment once occupied by American literary icon Ernest Hemingway officially goes up for sale on Tuesday.

It is an interesting little piece of the past that many Torontonians don’t know about, says listing agent Andrew Harrild of Condos.ca.

The 1,100-square-foot, two-bedroom-plus-den apartment is on the top floor of a four-storey building known now as The Hemingway. A historical plaque beside the main entrance honours the writer, who signed a yearlong lease for $85 a month on Oct. 1, 1923, and then left Toronto in January 1924 with his young family to return to Paris.

A 2012 Star story quotes a letter from Hemingway to poet Ezra Pound itemizing the Toronto rent at $125 a month. But the lease discovered about five years ago shows a price of $1,020 a year. It was found in the Hemingway Collection at the Kennedy Library in Boston.

Unit 19 of 1599 Bathurst St. is now selling for $730,000, a price that takes into account its size, the east and west exposures, and the easy access to shopping and the St. Clair West subway stop, as well as nearby ravine trails — all enjoyed by owner Laura Dimitry, who bought the place in September 2017 for $511,000.

She calls the apartment’s literary provenance “super cool.” She loves the idea of sharing the same views as the Hemingways and telling people that not only did the Nobel Prize-winning novelist live in her building, he occupied her unit.

The writer’s tenure in the brick and stucco building — which is now actually two buildings 1599 and 1597 — was brief but significant. He had returned to Toronto so that his first wife, Hadley Richardson, who didn’t want to give birth in Paris, could deliver her baby here. His son John (known as Bumby) was born at Wellesley Hospital on Oct. 10, 1923.

The writer, who was filing lively, international reports for the Toronto Star at the time, was on the return train from New York where he had been covering the arrival of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George when the baby arrived, wrote the Star’s Bill Schiller in 2012.

During his stay, Hemingway became a friend of Canadian novelist Morley Callaghan and broadcaster Gorden Sinclair, says the plaque that was posted in 1985 on the building once known as the Cedarvale Mansions.

Read more:

Center in Havana opens to preserve Hemingway’s legacy

The Old Man and the Play: Friend keeps word to Hemingway

The sum also rises: How Ernest Hemingway's story as a Star reporter helped boost the Santa Claus Fund so no child was left out at Christmas

Dimitry says the size of the apartment means it lives like a house. She has repurposed the rooms so that the den is a second bedroom and one of the bedrooms acts as a dining room.

“You’re still in the city but you’re far removed from downtown. You look outside and there’s greenery,” she said of the east view over the ravine that Hemingway also mentioned in letters he wrote from Toronto.

“It is so nice in the fall and the summer,” said Dimitry, who admits she has only read one selection from Hemingway’s oeuvre, The Old Man and the Sea.

Have your say

She is still thrilled to be associated by place.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“I hope the year he was here was enjoyable because of where he lived,” she said.

It is the third time Harrild has been involved in the sale of the apartment. It was Harrild’s familiarity with the building’s story that prompted Dimitry to look him up when she was ready to sell.

He calls the apartment “a bargain on a per square foot basis.” It comes with parking and a locker and condo fees of $900 a month.

The den at the back of the condo would have been Hemingway’s writing room, although there’s no evidence he wrote any fiction there.

“You just get that feeling when you walk into the space to know that someone like that lived and ate and slept and wrote ... There is something very cool and unique about that,” Harrild said.

“It just doesn’t happen very often where you get on something that’s just got a little bit of a unique piece of history, a story behind it,” he said.

“Before it’s sold I will be having a whiskey in his writing room just to connect with him somehow.”