The Mermaid & The Alligator

The House Norvin Maloney Built for the Trade Winds

In 1904 a young lawyer and city attorney named Norvin G. Maloney built himself a Victorian house on Truman Avenue. It was among the grandest in Key West at the time, and the detail contemporaries admired was the verandas: wide, deep, and oriented to take the easterly trade winds through the rooms. The house is still there, still oriented the same way, and it now operates as a nine-room guesthouse under a name it borrowed from two weathervanes. Inside, the proportions of the original plan survive, the artwork has been chosen rather than ordered, and the garden has been allowed to grow tall.

Why It Works

We were drawn to the scale. Nine rooms means the owners know every guest by the second morning, and it means breakfast is cooked to order rather than laid out in trays. The property is adults only, which suits the quiet the garden creates. A plunge pool sits at the centre of the planting, small by design and screened on all sides. And it is a member of Select Registry, an association that vets the houses it lists, which is a useful signal in a town with a lot of buildings calling themselves historic inns.

Why This Location

Truman Avenue is the working spine of Old Town, and the 700 block puts the guesthouse three blocks from Duval Street: close enough to walk to dinner without thought, far enough that the noise does not follow you home. The Hemingway Home and the Key West Lighthouse are a few minutes on foot, the cemetery and the residential lanes begin behind the house, and Mallory Square and the sunset sailings are a walk through the centre of town. Higgs Beach and the Atlantic shore lie south. Nothing here needs a car once the bags are down.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: Victorian, art-filled, green, adults only, owner-run

• Rooms: Nine rooms, individually decorated, in a 1904 house and its garden buildings

• Best For: Couples, architecture and garden travellers, repeat visitors who want a house rather than a front desk

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The verandas Maloney designed for the easterly trade winds, which still do the job they were built for

• Dining: Made-to-order breakfast every morning and a complimentary happy hour; the restaurants of Duval and Petronia Street are three blocks away

• Amenities: Tropical gardens, plunge pool, hot tub, verandas, adults-only policy, Select Registry member

• Attractions: Duval Street three blocks away, the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, the Key West Lighthouse, Higgs Beach, Mallory Square and the sunset sailings

Nine Rooms and a Plunge Pool in the Garden

The rooms are decorated one by one rather than to a scheme, spread through the main house and the buildings that open onto the garden, and they differ in size, outlook and access to the verandas. That variation is worth a question at booking. The garden is the shared space and the reason the property reads as a retreat rather than a townhouse: tropical planting grown to full height, with a plunge pool set into it for the middle of the afternoon and a hot tub for the end of the day. In a town where most outdoor space is decking, this is a real garden.

Breakfast Cooked to Order

The made-to-order breakfast is the daily proof of the guesthouse model, and it is the thing returning guests talk about first. It is served in the garden, it changes with what the kitchen has, and it takes as long as the morning allows. Happy hour follows the same logic at the other end of the day, poured on the veranda or by the pool. Check-in is from three in the afternoon and check-out at eleven. There is no restaurant and no bar to speak of, and none is needed with Duval three blocks away.