Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Thursday 17 May 2018
Where ‘Great Gatsby’ writer lived, a museum with an Airbnb

By BETH J. HARPAZ holic, died at age 44. Zelda
AP Travel Editor battled mental illness and
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) perished in a hospital fire at
— As she sat in the house age 47.
where “Great Gatsby” writ- In the 1980s, the house was
er F. Scott Fitzgerald and threatened with demolition
his wife, Zelda, once lived, to make way for condos.
a visitor contemplated the Local lawyer Julian McPhil-
famous Jazz Age couple. lips and his wife, Leslie,
“I tried to imagine how bought the house and es-
maybe Scott would tell tablished a nonprofit for it.
a joke and Zelda would McPhillips is a Princeton Uni-
laugh,” said Farong Zhu, a versity alumnus; Fitzgerald
Fulbright scholar from Chi- also attended Princeton,
na who translated Zelda’s and the museum displays
only novel, “Save Me the a copy of his grade report,
Waltz,” into Chinese. “Ev- showing many dropped
erything was very beautiful. courses before he left
I was so excited to be close school to join the military.
to the Fitzgeralds, I couldn’t The museum also owns 11
sleep well the first night.” of Zelda’s paintings, per-
But you don’t have to be sonal belongings like an
a literary scholar to stay This April 28, 2018 photo shows the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Ala. inkwell and beaded purse,
in this apartment upstairs Associated Press and first editions of Fitzger-
from the F. Scott and Zel- tory, according to Airbnb it generates revenue,” al- didn’t live in the house for ald’s novels.
da Fitzgerald Museum in spokeswoman Alyssa McE- ways a challenge for his- long, Montgomery was im- As a tourist destination,
Montgomery, Alabama. wan. toric sites. portant in their celebrated, Montgomery is best-known
The Fitzgeralds lived in the It’s also the only site on the Fitzgerald Museum director tumultuous lives. Zelda was for civil rights history. This is
house in 1931 and 1932, Southern Literary Trail open Sara Powell said she wor- a Montgomery native, and where Rosa Parks refused
and for $150 a night, any- to the public for overnight ried when rentals began they met at a country club to surrender her seat on
one can rent the apart- stays. “It’s a wonderful op- in April that visitors might here in 1918 during World a bus to a white man,
ment on Airbnb. There’s portunity for travelers,” said throw wild “Gatsby”-style War I. She was a teenage sparking a bus boycott by
nothing else quite like it in trail director Sarah Mc- parties. But those concerns debutante and he was sta- African-Americans that re-
the rental website’s inven- Cullough. “And of course proved unjustified. As Mc- tioned at a nearby military sulted in the U.S. Supreme
Cullough put it, “Most of the base. Court declaring segrega-
people who would want to Once married, rich and tion on public buses uncon-
stay there probably have rootless, they moved from stitutional.
a great love for the writer place to place, including That protest also turned a
and the writer’s work and Paris and New York, where young Montgomery minis-
would have great respect a stay on Long Island plant- ter, Martin Luther King Jr.,
for the property.” ed the seed for “Gatsby.” into the leader of the civil
The house dates to 1910. In Montgomery, he worked rights movement.
The apartment is furnished on “Tender Is the Night” In April, two new sites
in casual 20th century style: and she wrote “Save Me opened in Montgomery
sofa, armchairs, decora- the Waltz.” It was the last that are already attracting
tive lamps, Oriental rug, place they lived together a lot of attention: a memo-
and pillows embroidered with their daughter, Scottie, rial to victims of racial terror
with quotes from Zelda like who turned 10 there and lynchings, and The Legacy
this one: “Those men think later was sent to boarding Museum: From Enslavement
I’m purely decorative and school. F. Scott, an alco- to Mass Incarceration.q
they’re fools for not know-
ing better.” It has two bed-
rooms, a working kitchen
and Wi-Fi, but the ambi-
ence evokes another era,
with a record player and
jazz albums, a balcony and
flowering magnolia trees in
the yard, all tucked away
on a quiet street in Mont-
gomery’s historic Old Clo-
verdale neighborhood.
“It’s hard for writers to be
disconnected from their
own world, even for a sec-
ond,” Powell said. “We’ve
had people tell us it was so
good to be up there, even
This undated photo provided by the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzger- for a couple of days. You
ald Museum in Montgomery, Ala., shows a pillow on a chair do unplug and get out of This undated photo provided by the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
embroidered with a quote from Zelda Fitzgerald: “She refused your headspace.” Museum in Montgomery, Ala., shows a living room in an
to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring.” Though the Fitzgeralds apartment upstairs from the museum.
Associated Press Associated Press