1851 Key West Bar Built Around an Original Hanging Tree
428 Greene St, Key West, FL 33040
Age
21+
Cost
$$
Drinks and casual food at standard Key West bar prices. No cover; live music most nights.
Access
Limited Access
Crowded historic bar interior with the original hanging tree growing through the center of the room
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1851 · Original Sloppy Joe's (Hemingway Era) · Spanish-American War Telegraph Site · 19th-Century Key West Morgue · Hanging Tree Built Into Structure
The building at 428 Greene Street was constructed in 1851 as an ice house that doubled as the City of Key West's morgue. The combined use was practical: ice preservation and cold storage of bodies in a tropical port that absorbed substantial maritime casualties. The structure was built around an existing tree that had already served as a gallows in the open courtyard for decades. Local tradition, supported by 19th-century newspaper accounts, holds that approximately 75 executions took place at the tree before the building enclosed it.
The condemned reportedly included pirates from the wrecking-era Caribbean trade and others judged guilty of capital crimes in territorial Florida. The 1851 expansion enclosed the tree within the building rather than removing it. Today the trunk still rises through the center of the bar room, with the bar physically built around its growth.
The building's later uses extended the same combination of commercial and historical density. By the 1890s it housed a wireless telegraph station. On February 15, 1898, the station received and relayed the news of the USS Maine's destruction in Havana Harbor — a transmission that propagated worldwide and helped trigger the Spanish-American War. The space later operated as a cigar factory, a bordello, and several different bars.
In 1933, Cuban-born Joe "Josie" Russell purchased the bar and opened it as Sloppy Joe's. Ernest Hemingway, living in Key West, made the bar his afternoon office. Russell and Hemingway became close friends; Russell partly inspired the Harry Morgan character in Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not. In May 1937, Russell moved the Sloppy Joe's operation across Duval Street to its current location, leaving the original Greene Street site to other operators.
Tony Tarracino, a former charter-boat captain and Key West character, purchased the bar in 1968 and renamed it Captain Tony's Saloon. Tarracino served briefly as mayor of Key West in the late 1980s and remained associated with the saloon until his death in 2008. The bar continues to operate under his estate's direction.
Local tradition holds that the original poolroom in the back of the bar sits over the foundation of an early Key West cemetery, and that human remains have been found beneath the floor during subsequent renovations. The most-cited account names a young woman, called Elvira Edmunds in some sources and Elvira Drew in others, reportedly hanged on the winter solstice for killing her abusive husband. The specific identification varies enough across sources that we treat the narrative as folkloric rather than fully documented.
Sources
The bar's paranormal reputation rests on an unusually dense overlap of documented historical functions: morgue, gallows site, execution yard, and Civil War-era telegraph station that transmitted news of mass death. Reports collected by Key West paranormal investigators and ghost-tour operators cluster around three areas.
The hanging tree itself, growing through the center of the main bar room, draws the most consistent accounts. Patrons describe cold spots concentrated immediately around the trunk, unexplained tugs at clothing and hair, and the sense of being watched while standing beneath the lower branches. The tree's branches inside the building are decorated with patrons' bras — a long-running bar tradition — but the trunk itself is the focus of paranormal reports.
The back poolroom is the most-reported area. Local tradition holds that the floor sits over the foundation of an early Key West cemetery and that human remains have been encountered beneath the floor during renovations. Reports describe cue balls moving on tables when no players are present, voices coming from the corners of the room, and the apparition of a young woman in 19th-century dress sometimes called Elvira. Some published sources identify her as Elvira Edmunds, others as Elvira Drew; primary documentation for either identification is thin, and we present the narrative as folkloric.
The bar's upstairs office and storage spaces, formerly part of the morgue use, generate reports of phantom footsteps and the smell of pipe tobacco. Captain Tony Tarracino, the long-time owner who died in 2008, has himself become part of the bar's paranormal narrative in the years since, with staff describing the smell of his preferred cigars in unoccupied rooms.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Drink at Key West's oldest bar — built in 1851 as an ice house and city morgue, later the original Sloppy Joe's where Ernest Hemingway spent most of his evenings between 1933 and 1937. The original hanging tree grows through the center of the barroom; staff describe the bar as built around it rather than beside it.
The saloon is a regular stop on multiple Key West ghost-tour itineraries, with guides covering the building's morgue history, the hanging tree, and the burials reportedly remaining beneath the floor of the back poolroom.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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