is a private, non-profit corporation dedicated to the preservation of author Jack Kerouac’s last home in St. Petersburg, Florida and the promotion of local arts, artists, and culture. While the Kerouac house will not be a museum per se, it will be used as a venue for various cultural and educational activities such as poetry readings, streaming events, lectures, seminars, meetings, and other event
s consistent with its mission to enrich the culture of St. Kerouac lived with his wife Stella and his mother Gabrielle in the house at 5169 10th Ave N from 1967 until his death on October 21, 1969 although Kerouac had lived in central Florida off and on for over a decade. Throughout his adult life Kerouac alternated between a quiet, domestic life with his mother and the restless wandering that made him famous in his most popular novel On the Road. His house at the corner of 10th Ave N and 52nd St was the last place he came off the road. Jack Kerouac published fourteen novels during his lifetime, and many works of fiction and poetry posthumously. Kerouac has been a counter-culture icon since even before the publication of On the Road in 1957. He and his friends Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among others, were the face of a loosely defined cultural resistance to conservative, mainstream America in the years after WWII: the Beat Generation. They weren’t the only disaffected youth of the period, and their work, attitudes, and lifestyle were mirrored globally. Quite simply, the Beats were the progenitors of the youth movements to follow them in the 1960’s and 70’s. Petersburg hopes to provide a place for current artists, scholars, and other creatives to do what they do best: enrich the cultural life of our city. Petersburg’s cultural renaissance continues to expand, we hope the house will be a resource for local cultural groups and producers.