F. Scott Fitzgerald Lived (and Wrote) Here
The F. Scott Fitzgerald House in St. Paul, MN/Photos by Hope Anderson ProductionsWhile visiting the Twin Cities for a wedding over Labor Day weekend, I squeezed in some sightseeing. One of my destinations was the F. Scott Fitzgerald house on St. Paul's Summit Avenue, a street notable for its grand Victorian houses and large lots. Though Summit is St. Paul's Millionaire's Row, the houses on it include apartment buildings, at least one former boarding house, and row houses, including Fitzgerald's. Always keenly aware of money and social standing, he referred to his family's house as "a house below the average on a street above the average," though it is attractive and substantial. Rented by Fitzgerald's parents while he was at Princeton, it was the home Fitzgerald returned to after leaving college for the Army and a stint in advertising in New York City. In 1919, he wrote This Side of Paradise, his first novel, in his bedroom, taking cigarette breaks on the balcony because he wasn't allowed to smoke indoors. When This Side of Paradise was accepted for publication, Fitzgerald ran up and down Summit Avenue, spreading the good news to drivers of passing cars.
Today the Fitzgerald House is on the National Register of Historic Places. (It's also for sale: $625,000 for 4 bedrooms, 2 baths and 2 half-baths.) As I gazed at it, I was struck by the contrast between the place where Fitzgerald's career began and the nondescript West Hollywood apartment house where it ended only two decades later. Between those residences were a great many other Fitzgerald residences, including the estate on Long Island where he wroteThe Great Gatsby, apartments in Paris and Rome, a villa in the South of France, and a grand hotel in Asheville, North Carolina, near the sanitorium where his wife Zelda was institutionalized.
As he moved from house to house, Fitzgerald's career soared and foundered. At the start the Depression in 1929, Fitzgerald's short story rate at the Saturday Evening Post was $4,000--$40,000 in today's dollars. He spent as fast as he earned, however, and by 1937 he was laboring in Hollywood as an unsuccessful, albeit highly paid, screenwriter. In 1940, while writing his comeback novel, The Last Tycoon, Fitzgerald was felled by his third heart attack in the ground floor apartment of the gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, his last companion. He was only forty-four but had lived in more houses than most centenarians.
Next time: F. Scott Fitzgerald Died Here
Sources: Matthew J. Bruccoli: "A Brief Life of Fitzgerald," 1994. "F. Scott Fitzgerald Walking Tour of St. Paul, MN" http://wcaudle.com/fscotwlk.htm