Hemingway Plaza (formerly The Riviera)
229 Ward Pkwy, Kansas City, Missouri 64112, United States
In 1931 Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, waited at an apartment in this building, which was called The Riviera at the time, for the birth of their second son, Gregory Hancock Hemingway. Before coming here they had once again stayed at the home of Ruth White Hemingway, Ernest’s cousin, in Mission Hills, Kansas, just as they had done in 1928 when Pauline was pregnant for the first time.
Gregory was finally delivered by Caesarean on November 12th 1931 by Dr Don Carlos Guffey, the obstetrician who had delivered the couple’s first son, Patrick, three years earlier, also in Kansas City. In appreciation, Hemingway presented Dr Guffey, who was one of the first serious collectors of Hemingway books and manuscripts, with the manuscript of Death in the Afternoon, the book he had been working on at the time of his son’s birth. Dr Guffey eventually sold the manuscript to Manhattan’s House of Books for $13,000 in 1958 – one of the highest sums ever given for a manuscript by a living author.
Gregory, who was the youngest of Hemingway’s three sons, went on to have a troubled life, suffering from alcoholism, bipolar disorder and drug abuse. His relationship with his father was at times a strained one. From an early age, Gregory experienced gender dysphoria, often dressing as a woman. In later years, he sometimes used the name Gloria and ultimately underwent surgery to transition. Gloria died in sad circumstances in 2001 and is buried next to her father and half-brother Jack in the cemetery at Ketchum, Idaho.
The Literary Tourist 