City Park Grill

Ernest Hemingway was born and raised in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, but few know that he spent every summer of his childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood in Northern Michigan. The Hemingway family built and maintained a vacation home on Walloon Lake near Petoskey on the southern shore of Little Traverse Bay. Hemingway was a summer resident of northern Michigan from 1899 until his marriage in 1921.

The building that currently houses the City Park Grill was built in 1875. It was originally called McCarthy Hall and functioned as a pool parlor and drinking establishment catering to men only. The building was sold in 1888 and renamed The Annex by its new proprietor. It remained a popular saloon. Although Prohibition arrived in Michigan in 1917, there is evidence that The Annex continued to serve and smuggle alcohol. According to local legend, its owner, Frank Fochtman, was arrested at least once for bootlegging. Doors that hid his tunnels for smuggling are said to be found in the cellar.

The Annex was a favorite hangout of Hemingway during his last summers in Michigan. He would spend afternoons at the 32-foot-long solid mahogany bar smoking cigars, drinking, and writing. When Hemingway wasn't scribbling notes and ideas at the bar, he played pool and bet on bare-knuckled boxing matches in a nearby park. There is no doubt that Hemingway's time and experiences in Michigan influenced his later writings. The Annex is said to be the model for "The Index," a saloon in Hemingway's short story, "A Man of the World."

The Annex's original mahogany bar still stands in the City Park Grill. You can sit in Hemingway's purported favorite seat—the second stool from the end. If you look down, you'll see the burn marks that mar the bar's surface where it's said he laid his lit cigars. And, according to local legend, there is still the charred hole burned into the wood where he extinguished them. If you look up, an older Papa Hemingway stares at you from a framed, black and white photograph, as if to say, "What'll you have?"