089. The Mansard Roof
Historic Marker Number 89 is located at 915 Eaton Street between Grinnell and Margaret streets.When first built, this location was steps from the shoreline. However, over the last century, demand for new land to meet development needs was met with a number of dredging projects that expanded Key West from a one-by-three mile land mass to its current size of two-by-four miles. As a result, the building is now several blocks from the water.The building's first use was as a bakery servicing the local neighborhood. Every neighborhood throughout the island had a bakery specializing in the production of fresh Cuban bread.The structure's most intriguing architectural element is its mansard roof. Mansard roofs can be traced back to French architect Francois Mansart's use of the architectural roofing style he helped popularize in France during the seventeenth century.This roof style is most often associated with cold climates due to its ability to shed snow loads and became popular because it turned unusable attic space into a livable extra floor. Its origin can be found in a Parisian taxation law that was passed in 1783, limiting the heights of buildings measured from the street level to the building's horizontal cornice line. Living space contained in the mansard roof portion of the building was exempt from taxation.The use of mansard roofs reached their peak of popularity in the 1850s in an architectural movement known as ‘Second Empire style’. The style spread to the United States, most notably New England, where Second Empire roofs were often used to embellish grand mansions and family residences. (see another mansard roof at Historic Marker #4).You may wonder how the style spread from New England to South Florida and Key West. In a sub-tropical climate, snow loads are not an issue and local property taxes have never recognized exemptions for livable spaces housed in mansard roofs.One possible explanation for the appearance of mansard roofs in Key West can be traced to sailors originating from the East Coast. Fishermen from New England routinely sailed to the Florida Keys and the Caribbean during winter months in search of warmer waters to continue their livelihood. Many captains, ship carpenters, and crew members settled here bringing their knowledge and skills of building mansard roofs along with classic three bay cottages seen throughout Key West's Historic District.Alternately, the style’s prevalence may relate to a builder's familiarity with constructing mansard structures, building material shortages or the international nature of Key West's population in the nineteenth century.This building has only changed hands 3 times since it was built more than 100 years ago. The second owner opened the Southernmost Sign Company which is still housed in the building today. His company brought a new light to the Florida Keys with the introduction of neon signs in 1953.
080. Industry Row
Historic Marker Number 80 is located at Margaret and Caroline Streets.The blocks along the Historic Seaport were filled with businesses that served the needs of fishermen, spongers, shrimpers and the turtle cannery. In turn, these businesses were reliant on ships and the Overseas Railway to import raw material and export their finished goods.Before 1912, the only way to transport all the essentials of life was by sailing ship or barge. The completion of Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railway in 1912 connected the island chain to the mainland and opened the channels of commerce.The largest structure on this lot was Norberg Thompson’s cigar box factory built in 1910. Obtaining enough cigar boxes for the thriving Key West cigar industry had always been a problem. Shipments from the mainland were sporadic at best. The Thompson Cigar Box Factory was a large enterprise consisting of a factory building where boxes were assembled. An adjoining lumber yard cut cedar and mahogany logs transported from Cuba into slim slats for premium boxes. A wood drying facility and lumber storage barn rounded out the business.With the advent of the successful shrimp industry in the 1950s, Thompson installed a large icehouse. Ice was produced with ammonia and chemicals. The process was volatile and dangerous but the need to pack fish and shrimp in ice for delivery to distant markets made it a lucrative business.On the water side of the lot, sandwiched between the lumber yard and icehouse, was a fish market. Land for businesses along the shoreline, including the Turtle Kraals Restaurant, was added in the 1920s.
077. Shrimp Boat Fleet
Historic Marker Number 77 is located at 200 Margaret Street at the edge of the Historic Seaport.The Historic Seaport has seen many industries come and go. For 50 years, the port was dominated by the sponging industry and the turtle kraals and cannery were present until the 1970s. From 1912 to 1935 commerce centered on the main terminal for Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railway. With the demise of the railroad, those docks became a military base and a training ground for Navy seaplane pilots. Today the docks are home to the United States Coast Guard.The Historic Marker is located at the epicenter of the Key West shrimp fleet. Florida pink shrimp were discovered off the Dry Tortugas in 1947. The new industry attracted nearly 500 shrimp trawlers. There were so many boats in port that it was often said that you could walk from one side of the seaport to the other without ever touching water.Fish markets, packing factories, icehouses, a cannery, rough bars and thousands of fishermen and shrimpers followed. The bustling shrimp industry became a significant driving force in the local economy for two decades and the shrimping era is often referred to as the ‘pink gold rush’.The bronze statue behind the marker honors Henry ‘Boots’ Singleton. He was one of the first fishermen to capitalize on the shrimp industry. He acquired four shrimp trawlers in 1948 and fished the Key West area extensively. He was an enterprising man and opened the Singleton Seafood Company in Fort Myers the same year. As shrimp supplies began to dwindle in the 1960s, he relocated his operation to Tampa. He purchased shrimp throughout the country and packed and trucked the product around the world. He was celebrated as the ‘king of shrimp’ for most of his life.Eventually the local shrimp business dwindled due to overseas competition and ever rising diesel prices. Today the icehouses have been replaced with hotels, offices and parking lots. The shrimp packing building now operates as a restaurant and the turtle kraals and cannery are a museum. Charter boats and ferries dock where the shrimp trawlers once called home.Tourism has replaced the historic endeavors and industries that existed here in bygone years. It is a good change for the seaport as long as we remember our history and cherish our maritime heritage.
079. Turtle Kraals Restaurant
Historic Marker Number 79 is located at 231 Margaret Street at the Historic Seaport.This building was constructed as a combination curio store, gift shop and tourist attraction. It faces the Historic Seaport with a good view of the turtle kraals, cannery building and Thompson’s Fish House.During the 1940s and 1950s, Key West tourism began to increase along with interest for travelers in visiting working waterfronts. Today, tourism has become the base of Key West’s economy.The workings of the turtle kraals and the cannery were of great interest to visitors from around the world. For 13¢, you could observe turtles, some weighing 300lbs or more, being unloaded from turtle trawlers anchored at the dock. Captured turtles were slid across the pier on their backs and lowered down a steep ramp into the kraal directly in front of you.Visitors were able to enjoy a tour of the cannery building, visit an unusually large turtle named ‘Big George’ and have the option of purchasing a can of turtle soup as a souvenir of their trip to Key West.The store was filled with a vast array of turtle memorabilia and postcards of the kraals. It is local lore this was the first paid tourist attraction along the Historic Seaport.The building has undergone several transitions over the years but still pays homage to its history with nightly box turtle races at the bar. Grab a number for your lucky racer and cheer your turtle to the finish line.
060. Thompson Fish House
Historic Marker Number 60 is located at the end of Margaret Street on Thompson’s pier in the Historic Seaport.The Thompson Fish House was part of Norberg Thompson’s sprawling enterprises in and around the Historic Seaport. He built the wooden structure at the end of the pier in conjunction with the Turtle Kraal pens and turtle canning building in the vicinity. The structure has had many uses over the years. It started out as a waterside packing location for fresh fish and turtles from the local fleets. The sea fare was packed in ice from an icehouse (see Historic Marker #80) and transferred to trains to ship to mainland Florida, Cuba and beyond. Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railway terminal (see Historic Marker #75) was a short distance by water or land from the fish house.For a time, there was a submerged wooden cage suspended beneath the building used to house exotic fish and maritime specimens caught by local fishermen. Selling the specimens to aquarium and maritime research ships proved a lucrative side business.From 1928 to 1930, Ernest Hemingway resided at the Trev-Mor Hotel (see Historic Marker #6) and often disembarked from this pier for many of the fishing excursions that fueled his love of the sea and the stories and lore of the local fishermen he met.During the golden days of shrimping in the 1950s, the pier was the epicenter of that industry. The burgeoning success of the shrimp industry brought entrepreneurs from all over the country along with a cast of colorful characters.
104. Dade County Pine
Historic Marker Number 104 is located at 804 Caroline Street between Margaret and William streets.It can be said that the building foundation of Key West was built on Dade County Pine. Dade County Pine is a highly prized old growth lumber that was the primary source of wood used to build most of the wooden structures in Key West’s Historic District. It is best known for its ability to withstand rotting conditions and stand up to termite damage.Dade County Pine was used for every aspect of a structures’ construction. Inspect any old house in the Historic District and you will find Dade County Pine was used to construct floors, walls, ceilings, framing, windows, doors, trim, stairs and support beams.The ‘Dade County’ name is somewhat of a misleading term for all of the pine used to build the city. Much of the lumber used in the construction of Key West was harvested outside of Dade County, Florida. Somehow, the name became synonymous with all Longleaf Southern Yellow Pine. Dade County Pine, a subspecies of Longleaf Southern Yellow Pine, comes from the ‘heart’ of the tree and is a favored construction material wood because it is strong, dense and highly resistant to decay and insect damage.The strength of this old growth lumber comes from a weather phenomenon found along land abutting large bodies of salt water. Salt laden spray and mist travels inland on a daily basis. The salt particles coat vegetation and tend to retard growth. Trees growing along shorelines up to five miles inland from salt water tend to grow at a slower rate. The long-term result of this slower growth in trees is the formation of tighter growth rings with less sapwood in between. Sapwood is the softer living parts of the tree were sap flows. Tighter growth rings give the wood its strength and less sapwood greatly reduces the food that insects thrive on.In the 1800s, Dade County Pine was harvested from the Florida Everglades, the western shores of Florida, and as far north as the Gulf shores of Georgia and Alabama. Wood mills were built on lumber harvesting sites and fleets of sailing ships laden with fresh-cut logs headed to Florida Territorial cities like Key West. Sadly, old growth Dade County Pine was over overharvested and is no longer available except from salvage operations.Modern construction material’s wood equivalent is grown in tree farms and is inferior to the slow growth lumber from the past. Today the emphasis is on growing trees quickly for more frequent harvests leaving the end product with less growth rings and an excess of soft sapwood.
046. Sponge Docks
Historic Marker Number 46 is located in Key West Bight near A&B Marina.Sponges were discovered in the waters of the Florida Keys as early as the 1820s. Native fishermen would often find sponges washed up onto the shores after storms. The first catches were only used for the local domestic trade.With the discovery of rich, thriving sponge beds in the remote backwater country of the Florida Keys, an industry was born. Most of the sponge beds were in about twenty feet of water. Fishermen used small boats, called ‘hook boats’ to navigate their way to the sponge beds. The most common method of harvesting them was with the use of a long pole with a three- or four-pronged rake at its end. The fishermen, branded as ‘hookers’, used the rake to pry sponges loose and retrieve them from the waters below.While Key West’s waters were abundant with rich sponge beds yielding high quality sponge, the remote location of the island made it difficult and expensive to get the product to market. In 1849, the first shipment of sponges was transported to New York City to determine whether there was a market for them. The softness and wide variety of the Keys’ sponges were an instant success. This began an island industry that lasted 50 years.At its peak, Key West held a monopoly on the sponge trade in the United States, by employing 1,200 men working on 350 hook boats. It produced an average of 2,000 tons per year which yielded the economy roughly $750,000.In 1904, Greek immigrants came to the Keys to pursue sponging. They used primitive diving suits with heavy lead boots which allowed them to reach sponges in deeper water. Local fishermen were skeptical of this practice and correctly believed that walking on the sponge beds with the lead weighted boots damaged the young sponges and reduced future harvests. A combination of the use of the diving suits, overfishing and the spread of a deadly sponge fungus brought the island’s sponging industry to an end.New, healthy sponge beds were later discovered off the coast of central Florida and the industry moved to Tarpon Springs where it still thrives today.Check out the 1953 movie Beneath the 12 Mile Reef. It is a Hollywood B movie starring a young Robert Wagner. The highlight of the movie is that it was one of the first movies to be filmed in CinemaScope. It was shot in Key West and is a fictionalized story of the sponging industry.
065. Coca Cola Bottling Court
Historic Marker Number 65 is located at 101 Simonton Street on the corner of Front Street.This historic site has had many lives. The original building, constructed in the 1800s, was engulfed in the Great Fire of 1886 along with a good portion of cigar factories in surrounding area (see Historic Marker #28). The fire damaged or destroyed much of the cigar industry Key West had come to symbolize.By 1892 a hardware store was constructed on the empty lot. The surrounding cigar factories had been rebuilt and the industry was producing 10 million hand rolled cigars a year. In 1914 Jack and Rosa Williams opened Jack’s Saloon. The saloon was well situated to wet the whistle of sailors, fishermen, residents and visitors.By 1923, the building was transformed into the Coca-Cola Bottling Plant. Bottling machines carrying glistening bottles of the refreshing drink were visible through the front windows. It is rumored that with the scarcity of fresh water, cistern water was used to produce the bubbly brew we have all grown to love.Deposits were offered for empty bottles that were washed, refilled and distributed to the next customer. With the advent of the Overseas Highway, the bottling plant closed, and Coca-Cola products were trucked in from the mainland.In recent years, the building’s uses have continued to evolve from office space, upscale clothing shops, liquor distributors, and a short run as a key lime pie factory. It is now home to the First Legal Rum Distillery.
013. William Wall Warehouse
Historic Marker Number 13 is located at 410 Wall Street adjacent to Mallory Square.William Wall was shipwrecked in Key West in 1824. Although the island had less than 600 inhabitants he chose to make it home until his death in 1866. Wall pioneered Key West’s cigar industry in 1831 and was the first Key Wester to own a cigar factory from which he amassed a substantial fortune.The warehouse was constructed by his descendants in 1879. The structure is an excellent example of late nineteenth century commercial architecture. A marble plaque above the front entry door reads, ‘ERECTED A.D. 1879 Wall & Co.’Asa Tift was the first owner of the building including the surrounding docks and ‘coal pockets’. The ‘pockets’ were large coal storage bins used to supply the massive steam powered motors of the shipping lines connecting Key West to the world.During the late 1880s and 1890s, Key West’s thriving cigar trade needed coal to serve shipping lines connecting Key West to Havana, New York, Tampa and Galveston. The United States Navy also recognized the need to have ‘coaling stations’ across the world so its ships would always have a reliable source of coal to maintain supremacy of the seas. Due to the building’s strategic location for shipping, the warehouse was acquired by the United States Navy and converted into Naval Station Building #2.The Navy dredged Key West’s harbor from 1888 thru 1897 to allow the Great White Naval Fleet access to the waterfront. The fleet included the Battleship U.S.S. Maine prior to its fatal voyage to Havana.The tragedy of the Maine was the final flashpoint between the U.S. and Spain. With the battle cry of ‘Remember the Maine’ the United States declared war against Spain in 1898. Throughout the Spanish-,American War Naval Station Building #2 served as a vital link for supplies and a lifeline for soldiers.Following the war, a surge in economic development of Cuba by the United States made Key West the destination point for businesspersons and entrepreneurs on their way to Cuba.Mallory Square and the Wall Warehouse are considered to be one of the best places to catch the sun setting over our island paradise. The waterfront behind the warehouse is no longer the industrial, military and fishing harbor it once was. The coal storage is gone along with the storage tanks and many of the original docks. The area now known as Mallory Square was turned over to the City of Key West and is the home of daily sunset celebrations. The docks are home to hundreds of cruise ships a year bringing millions of tourists to discover the charms of our unique island.The Wall Warehouse is a living history collection of Cuban Key West, complete with historic photographs as well as dioramas of the islands rich Cuban American heritage based on the paintings of famous Key West folk artist Mario Sanchez.Be sure to see the sculpture memorial garden next to the warehouse. There you can see life sized, bronze busts of famous Key West founders, businesspersons and local characters.Research provided by Dr. Loy Glenn Westfall.
051. Cayo Hueso
Historic Marker Number 51 is located in Mallory Square.Key West got its name from a combination of cultures and languages. Early Spanish explorers named the island ‘cayo hueso’ which loosely translates to English as ‘bone island’.Historians and scholars believe that the first part of the name can be easily explained. ‘Cayo’ was adopted by the Spanish explorers from the language of the Tiano Indians of Cuba which refers to a small island. The equivalent word in English is ‘cay’. Over the years, American Colonists’ terminology for the island became ‘key’.‘Hueso’ has two meanings in Spanish. The direct Spanish translation means ‘bone’. The origins of the name are commonly believed to be a reference to the piles of bones scattered about the island. The bones are thought to be human remains of a skirmish between two competing Native American tribes, shipwreck victims, or piles of fish bones accumulated over hundreds of years of fishing by the native people and nearby island groups. There are even stories by John Whitehead, one of the founding fathers of Key West, talking about piles of bones being found as the island was settled in the 1820s.The Spanish pronounce ‘Hueso’ phonetically as ‘wayso’. The Spanish also referred to Key West as ‘oeste’ which translates to English as ‘west’. Key West is the western most island of the Florida Keys.Through a general merging of the names along with references in English navigation charts, ‘hueso’ was replaced with ‘west’. Today the many origins of Key West’s name go hand in hand with the rich, diverse, multi-cultural history and heritage the island has to offer.
037. Mallory Steamship Line
Historic Marker Number 37 is located at 402 Wall Street in Mallory Square.Charles Henry Mallory of Mystic, Connecticut formed the Mallory Ship Line in the 1860s. By 1873, the Mallory Line offered passenger and freight service between New York, Key West, and Galveston. Starting in 1876, the ships also began delivering mail to ports along the Atlantic and Gulf Coast.Mallory started with sailing ships with average travel time taking nine days each way from New York to Key West. The company began using steam powered ships which reduced traveling time to four days. When a Mallory Line ship left New York City for Key West, a tandem ship would leave Key West for New York. That meant that six steamers were necessary to maintain the weekly service schedule desired.At their zenith the Mallory Steamship Line operated as many as seventy ships for their many routes. Their routes were known as the Clyde Line, Porto Rico Line and the Ward Line. All disembarked from New York and stopped at various ports along the East Coast, Gulf Coast, and several Caribbean ports.The cost of passage was not necessarily cheap. In 1898, a first class, one-way ticket could range from $20 to $60 or more depending on the destination.Today, the only remains of the Mallory Steamship Line are the ticket office built after the Great Fire of 1886. The ticket office was built on the site of the former office and observation tower of Asa Tift’s Company in Mallory Square (see Historic Marker #13). The ticket office building was moved to its present-day location in Mallory Square in 1962.
052. Key West Aquarium
Historic Marker Number 52 is located at 1 Whitehead Street on Mallory Square.The Key West Aquarium was the first and largest of its kind in Florida. It was built between 1932 and 1934 when Key West was in the grips of the Great Depression and on the verge of bankruptcy. The City of Key West had turned its charter over to the federal government and President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) was charged with reviving the island’s faltering economy.The Aquarium was the brainchild of Dr. Robert Van Deusen, the Director of the Fairmount Park Aquarium in Philadelphia, and a frequent visitor to the island. A WPA project, it was designed to be both the world’s first open air aquarium and garden, as well as a research center and clearing house for subtropical aquatic animals and plants. It was thought that the Key West Aquarium would bring visitors to the island and thus strengthen the economy. The building of this first tourist attraction in Key West signaled the shift in our economy from the export of goods to the import of tourists.
111. Coast Guard Headquarters
Historic Marker Number 111 is located at the corner of Whitehead and Front streets.Construction of this imposing brick structure began in 1856 and was completed in 1861. Even though the present day building is identified as the Coast Guard Headquarters, it began as the United States Navy Coal Depot & Storehouse, Building #1. The historic functions of the building were defense, commerce, trade, warehouse and naval administration until 1932. During the Civil War, the Union’s East Coast Blockading Squadron was headquartered here. The blockade is credited with shortening the Civil War and saving countless numbers of soldiers on both sides of the conflict.One of the structures greatest assets, in the 1800s, was as a coal depot. The U.S. Navy began to convert its fleet from sailing ships to steam powered vessels in the 1840s. Sail transportation was quickly outmoded as the reliability of steam engines improved and iron hulled, screw-propelled ships were developed. Steel-hulled ships could be built substantially larger and longer than their wooden counterparts could. The only downside of a steamship was the need for large amounts of coal to keep the boiler furnaces stoked.Key West was a strategic coaling location for steamships embarking on Trans-Atlantic, Caribbean, or South America voyages as evidenced by the numerous coal sheds lining the harbor in the mid-1800s.Initially, coal was shoveled into bins and pushed along piers to waiting steam ships where it was shoveled onboard. As the need for coal increased, it was moved from shoreline storage facilities on large aerial conveyor belts to a coal transfer station suspended over the harbor waters. Ships were able to transfer coal from the harbor station quicker and with less manual labor.The second floor of the navy building was reserved for sail makers. As the use of steamboats made inroads into traditional sail powered ships, the need for a good sail remained. The irony of many of the early steamboats is that they were outfitted with rigging and sails to augment steam power and as a safeguard in the advent that steam propulsion failed.In 1932, the offices of the 7th Lighthouse District opened in this building. Their duties included overseeing Florida Keys lighthouses, light ships and channel markers. By 1939, the U.S .Coast Guard changed the name of the building from the Naval Coal Depot to the Coast Guard Headquarters to depict their use of the building.The Coast Guard Headquarters building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and remains Key West’s oldest brick structure.
048. Clinton Place
Historic Marker Number 48 is located in front of 281 Front Street.At the start of the American Civil War, Florida’s position in the conflict was uncertain. Leaders in Tallahassee were divided over whether to remain with the Union or join the Confederacy. As the state leaned toward secession, Union troops stationed in Key West were ordered to secure the island’s forts and military installations. From that moment, Key West remained under Union control for the entire duration of the war—making it the only Southern city to do so.Despite Union occupation, not all residents of Key West supported the North. Some local sea captains left the island to serve in the Confederate Navy. Others, especially those who had migrated from the nearby British-controlled Bahamas, chose to return there to avoid the conflict. While Confederate sympathizers were present, they never posed a serious threat to Union forces on the island. Nonetheless, both sides were aware of each other’s presence.After the war ended in 1865, the Union-affiliated Navy Club of Key West erected the marble obelisk that stands here today. It bears the inscription: “To the memory of the officers, sailors & soldiers of the Army, Navy & Marine Corps of the United States who lost their lives in their country’s service upon this station from 1861–1865.”Later, Jeptha Vining Harris—a Confederate doctor and the father of the man who built the Southernmost House (see Historic Marker #8)—installed the surrounding iron fence to honor fallen Confederate soldiers. This site is believed to be the only memorial in the United States that commemorates both Union and Confederate forces side by side.
064. Mel Fisher Maritime Museum
Historic Marker Number 64 is located at 200 Greene Street between Whitehead and Front streets.This impressive building stands at the entrance to Truman Annex, formerly Naval Station Key West. It was constructed by the U.S. Navy in 1900 as the U.S. Naval Store House. An interesting aspect of the building was its dual use as a coal storage structure. The top floor was retrofitted for storing large quantities of coal. This may not make sense unless you look at the layout and uses of this part of the island at the turn of the twentieth century.At the time of construction, the shoreline had not been expanded making the Custom House (see Historic Marker #71) beachfront property. Mallory Square, in its present-day configuration, was still part of the Gulf of Mexico.The military might of the Navy was dependent on access to coal and fresh water to power its steamships. Steam powered ships were faster and more reliable than any sailing ship of the day. With that in mind, the Navy stored large stashes of the precious material in strategic locations throughout the world. The practice was the backbone of naval superiority that the country relied on.Coal storage on the island consisted of large shoreline bins. Many a sailor spent his days filling the bins with coal from supply ships and then reloading the precious cargo onto outward bound steamships. It was a dirty back breaking job but vital to a busy a busy port.Eventually, large conveyer belts were suspended over the piers to deliver coal directly to ships. They were covered for inclement weather and in many cases looked like suspended barn structures hovering over the water.The height of the warehouse coal storage and close proximity to the water would have meshed well with the established conveyor belt delivery system. Shortly after the building was completed the Navy began converting to diesel powered ships. Luckily for the integrity of the building, the coal storage may have never been used.The Navy eventually used the warehouse as temporary storage for furniture and belongings of naval personnel that were transferring in or out of town to new assignments.Today the building is utilized as the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum.
001. Heritage House
Historic Marker Number 1 is located at 410 Caroline Street between Duval and Whitehead Streets in the Historic District.This house was built in 1834 by Captain George Carey, a wealthy Englishman who ran a seaport bar and wholesale liquor business. The original house, which is likely the second oldest structure in Key West, was quite small, consisting of two rooms and a separate cookhouse at the rear of the property. In 1844, Captain Carey enlarged the house to its current size for his bride, a German woman who, along with her four sisters, was rescued from a shipwreck off the coast of the island. Carey's bride and her sisters all married men from Key West and the shipwreck has come to be known as the 'Wreck of the German Brides'.Over the years, the house changed hands a number of times. In 1934 it was purchased and restored by Jesse Newton Porter, a fifth-generation Key Wester. Miss Jesse, as she was known to her friends, was instrumental in saving many historic structures of Key West and in creating our historic district. She lived in the house from 1934 until her death in 1979. Her home became the gathering place for many of Key West's famous visitors and residents including Gloria Swanson, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Ernest and Pauline Hemingway, John Dos Passos and Wallace Stevens.The small single story cottage located to the right of the house opening onto the backyard is named for the renowned poet Robert Frost who spent sixteen winters there as a guest of Miss Jesse.The Oldest House in Key West is located around the corner at 322 Duval Street.
016. Cosgrove House
Historic Marker Number 16 is located at 323 Whitehead Street between Eaton and Caroline streets.Four visionary businessmen originally purchased Key West from Spain. They were John Whitehead, John Simonton, Pardon C. Greene and John Flemming. Whitehead, Simonton, Greene and Fleming Streets still bear their names.John Whitehead was the original owner of this property, which was considered prime land due to its proximity to the deep-water port. In 1829, Whitehead sold the property to Greene. In 1850, the main house was built. It changed ownership a few times until Captain Phillip L. Cosgrove purchased it in 1871.The stately house and its history are literally overshadowed by a landscaping decision Myrtle Cosgrove, the Captain’s wife, made a century ago.In the 1800s, Key West was not the lush green island you see today. The lack of fresh water had always been a concern and most of it was collected in cisterns that were built to catch rainfall from roofs. If you were going to plant a tree and use your precious water supply to nurture it, you would plant a tropical fruit tree that would give you a bountiful supply of fruit to eat.Mrs. Cosgrove’s planting decision was apparently influenced by another tropical concern-the quest to find shade to escape the unrelenting subtropic summer heat. With that in mind, she planted a banyan tree.Banyans are fig trees characterized by aerial prop roots that grow into thick woody trunks that often become indistinguishable from the main trunk. Old trees can spread out laterally using their prop roots to cover a wide area. Some banyan trees in the United States have grown to cover more than a quarter acre. Myrtle Cosgrove may have accomplished her wish for shade but she should have had a larger yard for her choice.Over the years, seven adjoining historic houses on Whitehead Street and Eaton Street have been joined to create the Banyan Resort. The two-story Locke house on the corner was first used as a drugstore. It is named for William James Locke who was nominated to the Federal Judicial Services by Ulysses Grant in 1872.
093. Cornish Memorial AME Zion Church
Historic Marker Number 93 is located at 704 Whitehead between Angela and Petronia streets.This historic site is as much about a nineteenth century Free Black community leader as it is about the landmark Cornish Memorial AME Zion Church in Key West. The Black community member was Sandy Cornish who founded the Cornish Chapel for the Black residents of Key West. It is thought that its first meeting was held under a large Spanish Lime tree in the 200 block of Hutcherson Lane in 1864.Sandy Cornish was born into slavery in 1793. By the time he founded the chapel, he had purchased his freedom, relocated to Key West with his wife, acquired land, became a wealthy farmer and a leading spirit among the island’s Black community.The church's existence is a culmination of a number of conditions and events that existed in Key West during the Civil War. The 1860 census counted 2,832 people living on the island. What the census did not show was the diversity of the population. It was a port city of considerable importance – economically and militarily – a fact that led to extensive heterogeneity in its residents. It was a diverse population that comprised shipwreck survivors, Bahamian wreckers, immigrants, fishermen from New England and the Gulf states, businessmen, commercial adventurers, mechanics from the Northern States, and world wanderers from every corner of the globe.Blacks comprised slightly less than 20 percent of the 1860s Key West population. The low percentage should not deceive as to the influence of, or living environment enjoyed by, the Black community. Given the town's geographic isolation and general lack of available laborers, conditions tended to offer a great deal of flexibility to slaves and the town's 160 Free Blacks.The Civil War era and the increased presence of the Federal Government brought prosperity to Key West, permitting local Blacks to capitalize on government spending indirectly as well as directly. During the war, the U.S. government stationed regiments of the U.S Colored Infantry, along with the 2nd U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment, and some men from the 99th Regiment, part of the United States ‘Corps d' Afrique’. The gathering of Black soldiers, local slaves, and free Blacks, greatly increased Key West's desire for spiritual leadership.Prior to and during the Civil War, the American Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ) in Hartford, Connecticut was striving to expand the geographic coverage of its ministries. In 1864, AMEZ leader Wilbur Garrison Strong was sent to Key West, the southernmost Union stronghold, to establish a church. Reverend Strong is recognized as the first ordained minister in Florida. Under the leadership of Reverend Strong, the Cornish Chapel congregation quickly outgrew the meetinghouse where they started. Plans for a grand centralized church building began in 1885.The church was constructed in the form of European cathedrals and was designed to serve as a place of worship, a schoolhouse and a gathering place of safety. With volunteer labor of the parishioners, stone was quarried from the site for the foundation and ground floor then craftsmen trained by ships’ carpenters mortised together great timbers with wooden pegs to build the superstructure The church's wood edifice and the arched wooden ceiling beams are believed to have been salvaged from sailing ships.
096. Solares Hill
Historic Marker Number 96 located at 623 Angela Street between Simonton and Elizabeth streets.This Historic Marker denotes the highest point in Key West, measuring 18 feet above sea level. Its height became increasingly important as low-level development fell prey to flooding from heavy storms and hurricanes. By and large, Key West's livelihood has depended on the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico’s waters that surrounds it. However, one must be equally cognizant of the dangers inherent in living on low, relatively flat land surrounded by water and subjected to the actions of Mother Nature.During the early 1800s, Solares Hill was known as The Woods. The area was a small timber forest standing at the outskirts of town. The hill and surrounding neighborhood was later named Solares Hill for Mr. Solares who had a grocery store near this spot in the late 1800s.The Havana Hurricane of 1846 (see Historic Marker #40) is the strongest and most destructive storm in Key West’s history. When the storm struck, it was at Category 4 strength bringing extensive wind-driven flooding to the island. Torrents of seven-foot waves ravaged the town as they washed over the island from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean.It is documented that several of the residents that survived that hurricane crawled to Solares Hill and clung to trees and vegetation during the storm. A total of eight buildings remained habitable – the Key West lighthouse was washed out to sea drowning fourteen people; the City Cemetery at Higgs Beach was unearthed; and a salt pond that ran through the center of the town was cut off from the harbor (See Historic Marker #56).In response to the hurricane's destruction, the city made a concerted effort to relocate the damaged areas closer to Solares Hill's high ground. The City Cemetery moved two blocks from the hill, and the lighthouse was reconstructed on higher ground. The salt pond was filled in and became part of the land that downtown Key West is constructed on.
041. Benjamin Curry House
Historic Marker Number 41 is located at 610 Southard Street between Elizabeth and Simonton streets.Benjamin Curry Jr. purchased an acre of land on which to construct this home in 1855. He was the brother of Florida’s first millionaire, William Curry. The house remains in Benjamin’s family to this day. The home features the original doors, floors, windows, and framework from when the home was originally constructed. In the backyard, the 150-year-old cistern and double door, four-seat out-house are still standing.Like many homes in Key West, the family home began as a simple one-room cottage at the rear of the property. As their finances and family grew, they built the two-story structure with a deep front porch facing the street. They have since connected the one room cottage to the front house by a covered porch.Benjamin Curry Jr.’s grandson, Benjamin Curry Moreno, or B. Curry Moreno as he was called, was one of the original city engineers. B. Curry was responsible for helping to establish the current infrastructure of Key West. Thanks to his efforts, we have the streets and sidewalks as they are today.B. Curry Moreno married Rosina Zurhorst in 1917 after graduating from the University of Georgia and returning to Key West. They had one child, a daughter Laura who was known as Betty. Betty was one of the artists that originally designed the Mallory Square renovation. Betty also established the history department in the Key West Library.Betty married Toby Bruce, a man brought to Key West originally by Ernest and Pauline Hemingway. Toby grew up in the same town as Pauline and was a friend of theirs. Ernest brought him to Key West to renovate his newly purchased home at 907 Whitehead Street. Toby ended up meeting Betty and settled in Key West.Toby and Betty were friends with the Hemingways for the rest of their lives. They traveled together, enjoyed fishing trips, and would often entertain at each other’s homes. Toby was regularly referred to as ‘Hemingway’s Man Friday’. At Ernest’s funeral, Toby was one of the pallbearers.
005. James Haskins House
Historic Marker Number 5 is located at 600 Fleming Street at the corner of Simonton Street.James Haskins constructed this house in 1884. It missed the sweep of Key West’s Great Fire of 1886 by just 20 feet.The house was originally a single-family dwelling, but over time it went through several changes. The street level portion of the structure with its prominent bay window was altered in 1889 to accommodate a ‘Gents Goods’ store. A series of businesses followed including the local gas company, Fausto’s Food Palace and a furniture store.The main house became a prim and proper boarding house in the early 1900s and was converted to family apartments in the 1950s. By the mid-1970s the once lovely interior had been broken into a ramshackle warren of partitioned cubbyholes known as ‘Q-Rooms’ or quiet accommodations. Rented on a weekly basis the twenty-one sleeping spaces shared three bathrooms.Curiously, around that time, an order of Catholic nuns in New York to which one of James Haskins’ daughters belonged, inherited the property from the Haskins family. Upon her death the church sold the building.In 1987, the Haskins House was extensively renovated and restored and became the Marquesa Hotel and Cafe Marquesa. The renovation received numerous preservation awards on the national, state and local levels.The structure was expanded in 1994 when two neighboring historic structures were combined with the original house.
007. The Oldest Drug Store
Historic Marker Number 7 is located at 500 Simonton Street at the corner of Simonton and Fleming streets.The building’s exact date of origin is unknown, but it can be traced to city maps as far back as 1849. It is best known as the oldest remaining drug store building in Key West.Dr. John Maloney opened the Key West Drug Company with a partner in 1903. Less than a year later the partnership dissolved and Dr. Maloney became the sole proprietor of the business.Dr. Maloney was the surgeon for the Florida East Coast Railroad during the building of Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railway that ran from mainland Florida to Key West.In 1908 a railroad construction explosion up the Keys injured many workmen and they were sent to Key West for treatment of their injuries. Key West could not accommodate that large number of patients at one time, so the doctor hurriedly had beds set up in his office building at 532 Fleming Street, next door to the pharmacy.The emergency crystallized the doctor’s ambition to have a hospital in which to perform operations. It is believed that with the help of Henry Flagler he purchased the office building, moved it to the back of the lot and enlarged it. On October 6, 1908, the Louise Maloney Hospital, named in honor of his wife, became a reality.The hospital proved to be too small, so he bought the adjacent home at 504 Simonton Street and connected the pharmacy and the hospital on Fleming Street with an elevated walkway. Upon Dr. Maloney’s death in 1916 the hospital was renamed the John B. Maloney Memorial Hospital.
012. La Concha Hotel
Historic Marker Number 12 is located at 430 Duval Street between Fleming and Eaton streets.By the 1920s, Key West had become a major port and tourist destination. Affluent travelers could journey from New York to Key West on Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railway and have their rail car transferred to a ferry for the short trip to the gambling and entertainment palaces of nearby Cuba.Key West was at the height of wealth and prosperity but lacked sufficient hotel accommodations. Carl Aubuchon recognized the need for first class accommodations and started construction on the La Concha Hotel in 1925. After a short-lived labor strike, the hotel opened its doors on January 22, 1926.The ‘modern, fire proof’ La Concha was an immediate success catering to industrialists, visiting dignitaries, celebrities and high society. The owners had spent a then-remarkable $768,000 to build the hotel plus $130,000 on furnishings. Room rates were $3.00 per night. For an additional 35¢ a steak dinner would be provided.With the stunning crash of the Stock Market in 1929, prosperous Key West suddenly became one of the poorest cities in America. Within six months of the crash, the floundering hotel was sold and renamed the Key West Colonial Hotel. Locals continued to call it La Concha.Ernest Hemingway, who wrote of Depression-era rumrunner Harry Morgan’s days in his masterful To Have and Have Not, made reference to La Concha’s landmark tower as he sails from the island.In 1947, Tennessee Williams finished writing A Streetcar Named Desire at the hotel.
092. St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Historic Marker Number 92 is located at 401 Duval Street on the corner of Eaton Street.This grand structure stands as a testament to the faith, productivity, and tenacity of Key West's diverse community. The building you see before you is the fourth church structure built by St. Paul's parishioners within an 80-year period between the 1800s and early 1900s.In 1831, a mere nine years after the founding of Key West in 1822, St. Paul's church was formed by an official act of the Key West City Council. A signed petition was sent to the Episcopalian Bishop of New York requesting a priest be sent to the island and the Parish of St. Paul's be established.The first church rector, Reverend Sanson K. Brunot, arrived December 23, 1832, and held the parish's first service was held Christmas Day in the County Courthouse in Jackson Square. Since there was no church building or rectory, Brunot became a permanent houseguest of William Whitehead, one of the four founding fathers of Key West.Land for the church and rectory was given by Mary Fleming, the widow of John W. C. Fleming in 1832. Mr. Fleming was another one of the island’s founding fathers who had intended to set up a sea salt manufacturing business. He died in 1832 at the relatively young age of 51. Mrs. Fleming donated the land for the church with the stipulation that her husband's remains stay where they were. He is still buried on the grounds, but the actual burial site is unknown.The original church, made of coral rock was completed in 1839. The devastating Havana Hurricane of 1846 destroyed the building. The storm ravaged the island sparing only six of 800 buildings.The second church on this site was a wooden structure completed in 1848. As the church prospered, a rectory was added in 1857. Reverend Osgood E. Herrick was the first in a long line of rectors to call it home. The Great Fire of 1886 destroyed the second church, but by some good fortune, the Rectory survived unharmed.Rebuilding the church began immediately and a third church structure was finished in 1887. This building, again constructed of wood, stood in the center of the block facing Eaton Street. In 1890, the church purchased its first bells. Once installed, the first chime of bells heard in the state of Florida rang out on Palm Sunday morning in 1891.In 1909, yet another disaster struck and the church was wrecked by a powerful hurricane. Luckily, rectory and the parish hall survived – the latter was temporarily used for services after the storm.After losing three churches to storms and fire, plans for a stormproof structure were approved in 1911. The fourth structure was built primarily of solid concrete with the building methods and materials being heavily influenced by the construction of Henry Flagler's Overseas Railway that was under construction at the same time.The new building was designed to face Duval Street and was completed in 1919 with the pipe organ arriving in 1931 for Christmas services.The church has an extensive collection of stained glass windows that were ordered and installed beginning in 1920. A unique design of the windows is that they were intended to pivot open to catch cool ocean breezes. Today the church stands as a beacon to the faith and fortitude of Key West's ancestors.
068. Samuel O. Johnson House
Historic Marker Number 68 is located at 511 Eaton Street between Duval and Simonton streets.Built by Samuel Otis Johnson in 1886, this structure began its life as a grocery and butcher shop. Johnson’s architectural tastes were in step with the grand homes and mansions being built along the Duval Street corridor during the late 1800s. The building is a three-story Victorian mansion designed in the classical Greek revival style.Johnson built a small shop to the right of the house, and it was moved to the rear of the property in the early 1900s, serving as a carriage house. With the advent of the automobile, the owner’s horses were put out to pasture and the structure became a garage.The next owners purchased the house in 1913. The husband was the prominent surgeon and general practitioner, Dr. William Richard Warren, and his wife was Genevieve. Dr. Warren was a Conch or native of Key West. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and became a medical practitioner.Dr. Warren’s medical practice was located in the house and the front porch served as a waiting room for patients. The ground floor rooms were used for physical examinations and minor surgeries. Warren’s practice served a very diverse multi-cultural community including practitioners of the oldest profession.An unusual feature of the house is its enclosed three-story cistern. Fresh water on the island was hard to come by in the 1800s. Most homes collected rainwater from their roofs and stored it in large ground level holding tanks called cisterns. The main advantage of a slender vertical cistern was water pressure. Water released from the holding tank could be collected on the first and second floors without using a hand pump or dragging a bucket from ground level cisterns.The history of the house would be incomplete without noting that Dr. Warren’s wife Genevieve, who was also known as Miss Gen, was an avid gardener who created one of the first ornamental gardens in Key West. Her impressive orchid collection wound along the brick pathways and the circular planting areas. Miss Gen had topsoil brought in from Florida’s panhandle for her garden. This was an impressive feat considering every commodity arriving in the island was transported on sailing ships.An interesting Florida Keys story about dirt, in which Miss Gen had no part, involves a retired policeman and a scheme for fast profits. There were three Indian mounds in the Keys, the largest of which was located in Big Pine Key. The policeman made it known that he had access to the best and largest quantity of black topsoil in the area. He claimed that it came from the Everglades and was readily available. As it turned out, the unscrupulous salesman was removing part of the sacred soil from the Big Pine Indian burial ground and selling it as freshly found Everglades soil. He was not in business very long before his endeavors were discovered, and he was arrested for his deeds.Miss Gen’s garden, which consists of a fishpond fountain, rare palms that are more than a century old, a Brazilian jacaranda tree with blue bell-shaped flowers, and two tamarind trees native to India, continues to thrive in Key West.
011. Oldest School House
Historic Marker Number 11 is located at 336 Duval on the corner of Eaton and Duval streets.The Oldest Schoolhouse, also known as the Patterson-Baldwin House, was built in 1847 and is one of the oldest surviving structures in Key West. The building started as a modest one-and-a-half story cottage with a front and side porch. It now has elements of Classical Revival and Bahamian architecture. The exterior features a metal shingle roof, a two-story gallery, hand-sawn balustrades and elongated windows with shutters. The school bell hanging above the second story porch is a clue to the building's original use.The building was moved to its current location in 1847 when Alexander Patterson, once the Mayor of Key West, purchased it. The move occurred in 1846, after a devastating hurricane damaged or destroyed most of the buildings in the city. After the storm, building materials and skilled carpenters were in scarce supply and many surviving structures like this were relocated to the surrounding streets.Mr. and Mrs. William Pinkney lived in the house where his sister, Madame Passaloque began the island’s first schoolhouse and conducted classes until 1860. In opening a school, Madame Passaloque was ahead of her time since Florida’s public school system was not organized until the 1870’s.In 1860, John P. Baldwin, who claimed to be a member of an aristocratic British family, purchased the property. His wife was a music teacher, and their three daughters were schoolteachers.The Baldwins moved to the Bahamas during the Civil War returning at the war’s end. In 1867, they enlarged the cottage with the two-story addition at the front of the lot. The building remained in the Baldwin family for 102 years.Joan and Edward B. Knight purchased the property in 1962. At that time, a fire had heavily damaged the schoolhouse portion of the building and the main structure had fallen into a sad state of disrepair.In order to visually enthuse citizens and visitors with the idea of purchasing and refurbishing Key West’s buildings, Mr. Knight completely restored the facade and landscaped the front of the building while leaving the Eaton Street side boarded up and strewn with waist-high weeds. He then erected a large sign that read the ‘Before and After House’. Knight’s improvement campaign gained wide attention when the National Trust for the Preservation of Historic Homes published photos of the house to inspire other locations to do the same.Over the years, the Knights have painstakingly restored the property and their efforts have served as a catalyst for the Key West Historic Preservation program.
003. Oldest House
Historic Marker Number 3 is located at 322 Duval Street between Caroline and Eaton streets.The oldest house in southern Florida was originally located a block or two away on Whitehead Street. The Oldest House has weathered hurricanes, fires, and Key West’s harsh marine environment. Its resiliency is largely due to the skill of Captain Richard Cussans, a ship’s carpenter who built the house. His mortise and tenon joinery, horizontal wallboards and ventilation hatches or ‘scuttles’ have enabled the house to withstand the tests of time.The expansion of the city from its deep-water port beginnings was slowed by the existence of a natural saltwater pond that ran from Whitehead Street through the Old City Hall site to the seaport. By 1829, a large portion of the lake had been filled and the structure was moved to its current location.The house was enlarged to four rooms with a center hall to accommodate its next residents, Captain Francis Watlington, his wife Emeline and their nine daughters. Captain Watlington held a number of maritime positions in his career including pilot, port warden, wrecker, coastal pilot for the U.S. Navy during the Second Seminole War and the Inspector of Customs. One of his duties for the Customs Office was to oversee the lightships, vessels that were used as floating lighthouses at dangerous coastal and reef locations.Captain Watlington served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1858 to 1861 only to resign his office at the outbreak of the Civil War. He joined the Confederate Navy in Mobile, Alabama and served as the captain of the gunboat Gaines of the Naval Squadron.With the Union victory in Mobile, Captain Watlington surrendered in May 1865 and was paroled shortly after. He returned to Key West and his family and descendants lived in the house until the early 1970s.
002. Key West Woman's Club
Historic Marker Number 2 is located at 319 Duval Street between Eaton and Caroline streets.Captain Martin Hellings built this red brick home in 1892. Captain Hellings was the manager of the International Ocean Telegraph Company. He had an incredibly important job especially if you consider that before the advent of radio and telephones, the telegraph was the only way to communicate long distances.The Captain’s wife Eleanor was the daughter of William Curry, who was one of the foremost merchants of his time and is believed to be Florida’s first millionaire. Eleanor Hellings was the founder of the Key West branch of the Christian Science Church.In 1940, the Key West Woman’s Club purchased the building. During the first 20 years of their ownership the house had two main functions – the left side of the building was maintained as the only public library in Monroe County and the rooms on the right side were club rooms.The Woman’s Club was instrumental in the establishment of the Key West Library building in 1959 located at 700 Fleming Street in the Historic District.Behind the house, the red frame structure with a gabled metal roof was once a carriage house for a horse used by the U.S. Post Office. It is currently the home of the Red Barn Theatre.
004. Dr. Joseph Yates Porter House
Historic Marker Number 4 is located at 429 Caroline Street between Duval and Whitehead streets.The house you are looking at was originally built in 1839 as a two-story house. The home was constructed by Judge James Webb, the first Federal Judge of the Southern District of the Florida Territory. Webb introduced influential legislation regulating salvage, which helped establish wrecking as a legitimate legal business in Florida.In 1870, a third floor, featuring a mansard roof and gable dormers, was added. The mansion has a wonderful mix of Bahamian, New England, and French architectural elements. Notice the elaborate ornamentation of porch posts and hand-wrought iron balconies.The mansion is best known for one of its inhabitants, Dr. Joseph Yates Porter, Florida’s first Public Health Officer. Dr. Porter was instrumental in discovering that yellow fever was carried and spread by mosquitoes.Prior to this discovery, many ill-founded remedies were used to rid communities of the deadly disease. One of the most common of these was the use of quarantines. Ships would be detained in port and whole communities would be restricted from traveling to neighboring towns. Another remedy was to burn all of a patient’s belongings. Dr. Porter and his colleagues put an end to these practices and to the scourge of Florida that had lasted from before the Civil War well into the early 1900s.Dr. Porter lived in the mansion for 80 years and died in the same room in which he was born.
018. Fogarty Mansion
Historic Marker Number 18 is located at 227 Duval Street at the corner of Duval and Caroline streets.Charles Curry, son of Florida’s first millionaire William Curry, originally constructed the grand home in 1875. The current structure was built in 1887 after the first house was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1886. This home was characteristic of the grand mansions built by the Curry children, second only to the Southernmost Mansion built by his sister Florida.After Charles’ death, his daughter Corinne’s fiancée, Dr. Joseph Norman Fogarty, bought the home in 1900 as her wedding present. Dr. Fogarty was a prominent member of the Key West community and now owned the nicest home in the ‘blue blood’ district of Key West. Dr. Fogarty was Mayor of Key West for an impressive 6-year, 6-term span, very unusual in those days.In 1912, during the last year of Fogarty’s Mayoral term, they hosted two very important receptions at their stately manor. On January 22, 1912, there was a large reception for Henry Flagler to celebrate the completion of Flagler’s Overseas Railway. On December 21, 1912, the Fogartys held a reception for U.S. President William Howard Taft, as he stopped over in Key West while on his way to inspect construction progress of the Panama Canal.After the Fogartys passed, the house fell slowly into disrepair. Through the 1960s it became a hippie crash pad and was nearly razed in 1970 after countless complaints of the vagrants inside. Eventually, it was purchased by John and Dolly Dedek in 1971 who restored the structure and transformed it into the Fogarty House 1875 Restaurant.
066. Curry Mansion
Historic Marker Number 66 is located at 511 Caroline Street between Eaton and Greene streets.The site was originally where William Curry, Florida’s first millionaire, built his home in 1855. He lived here for nearly forty years. His son Milton, a partner in the William Curry & Sons Company, demolished all but the stone kitchen in 1905 and constructed the grand Victorian style mansion that stands on the property today.Local lore has it that in the kitchen, back when it was part of William Curry’s original house, a cook nicknamed ‘Aunt Sally’ baked the first official Key Lime Pie in the woodburning stove. This event would make the Curry Mansion the birthplace of the now world-famous Key Lime Pie.The Curry Mansion is a beautiful structure. Woodwork carved from Birdseye maple is featured throughout the 22-room mansion. The building is constructed of Dade County Pine, a wood that is both handsome and durable. Dade County Pine is stronger and more resistant to termites than other woods shipped in from around the world. This is one of the reasons the mansion has remained in pristine condition over its 115 years.It is rumored that William Curry gave each of his children $5,000 towards their new homes. It was either a handsome down payment or a clever way to entice his children to move out and find a house of their own. In a friendly rivalry, each of his children went to great lengths and expense to outdo one another.Milton Curry was one of the seven Curry offspring who built extravagant homes in Key West. The other seven homes are the Woman’s Club (see Historic Marker #2), the Southernmost Mansion (see Historic Marker #8), Fogarty’s Restaurant (see Historic Marker #18), the Hard Rock Cafe (313 Duval), and 612 Eaton Street (private residence).
061. Cypress House
Historic Marker Number 61 is located at 601 Caroline Street between Simonton and Elizabeth streets.The stately building before you is the second structure to stand on this lot since Key West became a frontier territory of the United States in 1822. The Samuel Kemp family purchased a quarter of this city block in 1845 to construct their family home. The Kemp family was some of the original colonizers, originating in the Bahamas Islands, who migrated to Key West shortly after the island was settled.Their first home was lost in the Great Fire of 1886. Richard Kemp rebuilt the current house in 1888 and it remained in the family for 72 years. The structure was built by John Sawyer, a skilled ship carpenter. The design of the house reflects simplified classic revival island architecture. It is considered to be one of the best examples of Key West-Bahamas style architecture in the Historic District and is recorded in the Library of Congress.While its elegant and simplified architectural lines are a sharp contrast to its Victorian counterparts, it harkens back to large homes that were designed to impress from the street. The height and width of the structure required wooden beams of great length. It was a costly venture since all building materials were transported by sailing ships and in some cases obtained by demolition of existing structures around the island.The Kemps are a noteworthy family that changed the finances and notoriety of Key West. Richard Kemp owned a thriving furniture store at a time when the population of Key West doubled within a ten-year period. By 1890, the island was the largest city in Florida with the wealthiest citizens per capita in the nation.Like most successful citizens of the day, Richard was in touch with the unique environment that surrounded his world. He was responsible for properly identifying the Ridley turtle as an unnamed species. The turtle was officially named Kemp’s Turtle by scientists at Harvard University as a way to honor the discovery.The Kemps greatest financial accomplishment was taking some sponge samples from the fledgling local sponge industry to New York in an attempt to find a market for the products. Richard’s first attempt met with little interest but his second try a year later brought great success and spurred a new and flourishing industry for the islanders.One of Richard’s daughters married a man named Arapian, the first sponge merchant of Florida, who greatly influenced the development of the sponge industry for the next fifty years. At the height of the industry there were approximately 350 sponge boats catching 200 tons of sponges per year and supplying eighty percent of sponges purchased nationally.
006. Casa Antigua
Historic Marker Number 6 is located at 312-314 Simonton Street between Eaton and Caroline streets.In 1919, Benjamin Trevor and George Morris constructed Casa Antigua, which was then known as the Trev-Mor Hotel. The Trev-Mor was one of Key West's first hotels and was advertised as the island's first fireproof hotel due to its 13-inch-thick walls that were made from repurposed bricks taken from Fort Zachary Taylor (see Historic Marker #70). The fort’s bricks date back to 1845. The Trev-Mor Hotel offered 46 rooms on the second and third floors and featured a Ford automobile dealership on the first floor.In April 1928, Ernest Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, arrived in Key West on an ocean liner, having spent seven years in Paris. The Hemingways came to Key West in order to pick up a new Ford automobile that Pauline’s uncle had ordered for the couple from the Trev-Mor Ford Agency so they could drive up the Keys to the mainland.The car was late being delivered and the Hemingways were stranded. Trevor and Morris apologetically put them up in a hotel room on the second floor. They waited two weeks for the car to arrive. During this impromptu stay, Ernest fell in love with Key West. He was able to view the seaport from the hotel and stroll down to Mallory Square to find boats for deep-sea fishing adventures. Of course, his nighttime jaunts – a few blocks to bars around Duval Street – became legendary. He also wrote during his stay, finishing A Farewell to Arms in his hotel room.The Hemingways returned to Key West during the next two years, staying at the Trev-Mor on each visit. Pauline’s uncle eventually purchased the home at 907 Whitehead Street for the couple (see Historic Marker #36).Over the course of the next two decades, the fame and fortune of the hotel changed. It was sold a few times and operated as a rooming house. In the 1950s, the first floor car dealership was transformed into a jazz club.In 1975, having survived fifty-six years of hurricanes, the ‘fireproof’ building was gutted by fire. The current owners renamed the building Casa Antigua, which translates to ‘old house’ from Spanish. The remains of the hotel have been transformed into one of the most unusual homes on the island. It features an open-air three-story interior atrium. The atrium overflows with tropical plants that surround the pool that was the original cistern.
055. United Methodist Church
Historic Marker Number 55 is located at 600 Eaton Street at the corner of Simonton and Elizabeth streets.The act of settling a small coral island with limited resources situated between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean took a strong belief in oneself and sense of a greater power watching over your life. The island’s unique melting pot is made up of the descendants of shipwreck survivors, Cuban expatriates, fishermen, wreckers, spongers, soldiers, pirates, cigar rollers, sailors, Bahamians and a wide array of people looking to reinvent themselves. Yellow fever epidemics, disastrous fires, powerful hurricanes and storms and government bankruptcy challenged the great success of Key West from the Civil War until the Great Depression in the 1930s. The one constant for the community was their strength of faith.Ten years after the founding of the city, two traveling Methodist preachers arrived by schooner in 1832. For the next twelve years the gathering spot for worship was a simple meeting in the home of Samuel Kemp, a Bahamian Methodist lay person. The first Methodist Episcopal Church South was formed in 1845 making the Old Stone Church the oldest Methodist church in South Florida.However, that is just part of the story. The current limestone church structure is the fourth building that has housed this congregation. The first church building was a wooden structure on the corner of Eaton and William Streets. The second church structure stood in the 600 block of Caroline Street. The third worship hall was a wooden structure built in 1846 on today’s site that was subsequently destroyed by the Great Havana Hurricane of 1846 (See Historic Marker #40).Shortly after, the congregation built a small temporary wooden worship hall and began planning for a substantial structure that could withstand natural disasters and the wrath of Mother Nature. By 1870, William Kerr, a noted builder and architect who first came to Key West as a member of the Union Army to help construct local forts, was commissioned to design and build the new church. It took fifteen years from 1877 through 1892 to build the current structure.The new building was significantly larger than the wooden worship hall it was replacing. The coral stone was quarried from the church grounds with the foundation and walls erected around the wooden building. When Kerr installed the roof in 1884, the earlier wooden worship hall was dismantled and carried out the front door. The Old Stone Church was completed in 1892.
085. Arch House
Historic Marker number 85 is located at 810 Eaton Street between William and Margaret streets.This unique structure is known as the Arch House and is believed to be the oldest remaining carriage house in the Historic District. Key West has the distinction of being recognized as the largest collection of historic frame vernacular buildings in the United States.Built in the 1880s, the house, along with a cluster of smaller outbuildings was a novelty of architectural design and function. In Key West, it was uncommon for the average person to possess a horse much less a carriage on the one by three mile island located more than a hundred miles from continental Florida. Horses, food, building materials, and all of the essentials of life had to be brought in by sailboat or barge from the mainland. The ability to steer your carriage off the crowded dirt lined streets into a private covered entryway was most assuredly a sign of wealth and distinction.The carriage entryway may have also been used by the cigar factory located directly behind the Arch House. Built in the early 1800s, a cigar entrepreneur erected the Alfonso Cigar Factory in the center of this block. It was a three-story structure that produced Cuban cigars featuring Cuban tobacco hand rolled by skilled Cuban cigar artisans.It was not uncommon to have a cigar factory near your home. By 1890, Key West had 200 cigar factories with 80% of the island’s population producing 100,000,000 hand rolled cigars a year. This small island was recognized as the Cigar Capital of the World.By 1889, the Alfonso factory ceased operation and sat vacant. The loss of Key West’s prosperous cigar industry to Tampa, coupled with the exodus of the U.S. Army after the Spanish-American War, left many structures around town abandoned and neglected. The following decades saw many buildings lost to fire, hurricanes and neglect.The Arch House was no stranger to those realities but by chance withstood years of non-use and the ravages of time. Fortunately, a renewed interest in preservation in the 1970s saved the house and made it possible for the reconstruction of the cigar factory on its original footprint.Through a series of preservation minded owners, the Arch House and the cigar factory still stand as a testament to an era of prosperity and an unusual architectural design that has withstood the test of time.
086. Island City House
Historic Marker Number 86 is located at 411 William Street between Eaton and Fleming streets.By the Civil War, Key West was the dominant manufacturing and population center in Florida lasting through the beginning of the twentieth century. The original structure on this location was a two-story private residence built by a wealthy Charleston merchant in the 1880s. Its location was in the middle of town and only two blocks from the Historic Seaport.In the early 1900s, South Florida was consumed with meeting the challenge of building the eighth engineering Wonder of the World. Henry Flagler had committed his immense fortune and lofty ambitions to extend his Florida East Coast Railway from Florida’s mainland to Key West including a ferry connection to Cuba via the Overseas Railway.In anticipation of the arrival of the Overseas Railway in 1912, the private residence was rebuilt and converted to a hotel. The footprint of the house was enlarged to cover most of the lot and a third story was added to increase room capacity. The expansive double porticos across the front and side of the structure were designed to capture fresh ocean breezes and take advantage of the subtropical climate.A decorative homage to the new purpose of the building was created by carpenters on the top portion of the front facade. Notice the wooden silhouette of the railroad's unique bridge spans stretching across the building. By 1912, the building opened as Island City House Hotel.The hotel was a private venture built to capitalize on the marvel of the Oversea Railway and predates Flagler’s grand Casa Marina Hotel completed in 1920 on Key West’s south shore.
103. Shotgun House
Historic Marker Number 103 is located at 525 Elizabeth Street between Fleming and Southard streets.It is believed that the term ‘shotgun house’ comes from the ability to fire a shotgun blast through the front door and cleanly out the back door without hitting the house itself. In the 1880s, shotgun homes became popular in Key West for three reasons.First, the long, narrow, one room wide building style was well suited for the narrow lots of the small, one-by-three mile wide island.Second, Key West has always been short on housing supply. The relatively small, one-story houses were easy to build and could be accomplished with the limited local building materials of the nineteenth century. Everything needed to build a home had to be shipped by sailboat from the U.S. mainland or the Bahamas. It was common to use ‘single ply’ construction due to material shortages. Single ply refers to attaching siding and a roof to the frame of the house but excluding inner walls or ceilings. The building practice is also referred to as open stud construction.The third reason hides inside or just behind houses along the streets of the Historic District. Shotgun structures were easy to expand as space needs grew or your prosperity increased. Often due to the limitations of small lot sizes, original shotgun structures have been swallowed by the larger, newer structure. Cigar factory owners constructed many of the homes scattered throughout Key West’s Historic District as worker housing during the heyday of the cigar industry in 1890. Locally they are fondly referred to as ‘cigar maker's cottages’. For more on cigar makers and where they lived, please see Historic Marker #20.It was not uncommon for families of six or more to raise their children in the cramped quarters; however almost any form of housing in the nineteenth century was a prized commodity.
099. Metal Roofs
Historic Marker Number 99 is located at 718 Southard Street between William and Elizabeth streets.Roofs in the historic district are predominantly sheathed with metal. The silver metal roofing material is not a style or a fad left over from the 1800s, but a practical response to a real problem. Key West started out as an industrial city where wooden structures were erected in close quarters. Roofs were made of wooden shakes, which were a readily available material as well as being cost efficient. Unfortunately, they were also highly flammable.With nothing but dry wooden structures in front of it, the Great Fire of 1886 consumed two-thirds of Key West’s buildings (see Historic Marker #28).In an effort to prevent future fires, the city required metal roofs on new and replacement buildings in what is now the island’s Historic District. There are four main styles of metal roofs commonly seen in Key West. There are roofs with metal shingles were 6"x6"squares of galvanized steel stamped with a raised pattern that were hooked together and nailed at the edges. Roofs with 4'x6' sheets of metal that are stamped to resemble metal shingle roofing are also common. The panels were overlapped and secured by nails with a lead washer to seal the nail hole. Another style of metal roofing in the Historic District is two-foot wide, flat galvanized panels that run from the roof ridge to the eave end of the roof. The panels overlap and are secured to the roof with screws and rubber washers. A relatively modern steel protection treatment is coating galvanized metal with an additional coating of aluminum. This process is called galvalume.While metal roofing is more expensive than wooden shakes, it has a number of advantages. Property insurance costs were reduced on buildings with metal clad roofs due to their fire resistance and indirect advantage of acting as a fire barrier for interior fires. The most significant advantage is the cooling effects the light-colored material has in Key West's subtropical climate. When sunlight and ultraviolet light shine on the silvered metal roofs, much of it is reflected and passes back through the atmosphere into space. Light colored metal roof buildings are, on average, 15% cooler than structures with dark roofs. Metal roofs also hold up well in hurricanes and have a 60 year lifespan if properly maintained.
101. Eyebrow House Architecture
Historic Marker Number 101 is located at 906 Southard Street between William and Elizabeth streets.You are looking at a Key West ‘eyebrow house’. An eyebrow house is a style of architecture, which is unique to the Florida Keys and the Caribbean Islands.In architecture, the windows of a building are often referred to as the ‘eyes’ of the structure. Eyebrow houses got their name due to the overhanging porch roof that partially obscures the second floor windows and protects them from direct sunlight, keeping the house much cooler than it otherwise would have been.The design had its origins in the living conditions of Key West’s sub-tropical climate. Long before electricity was available for fans or residential air conditioning had yet to be invented, this design was part of a high tech cooling system that blocked the sun and took advantage of the cool breezes from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean.Along with the covered windows, eyebrow houses used cooling techniques based on the knowledge that cool air settles and hot air rises. As a result, the house has features such as a raised foundation on blocks or piers to facilitate air circulating beneath the house. Eyebrow houses also have double hung windows made up of an upper and lower sash throughout the entire house. On the first floor, the lower sash of windows were opened to let cooler air into the house and on the upper floor, the upper sash of the windows opened a pathway for escaping hot air. The circulation of cooler air throughout the homes could drop the overall temperature of the building by 5 to 10 degrees.Another element of eyebrow houses was their wide front porches. The shaded area was a great space to catch a breeze and enjoy an indoor/outdoor living style.
102. Saw Tooth Architecture
Historic Marker Number 102 is located at 924 Southard Street between Grinnell and Margaret streets.This house hides a secret when looking at it from the street. It looks like many of the homes and cottages with metal gable roofs you see throughout the Key West Historic District. Attached to the backside of the structure are house additions that have clues to the original building size, the growing space needs of its owners, and more importantly, the lack of fresh water sources on the island during the 1800s.Many homes started out as one and two room cottages due to a lack of building materials, shortage of skilled labor and scarcity of dwellings for the island's burgeoning population in the latter half of the 1800s.As families grew and prospered, additional living space was needed. Small additions were added to the backside of the home as needed. Today it is common to see anywhere from two to four of these additions on the back of a house.Each of the additions has metal-clad gable roofs that seem to defy standard roofing logic. Roofs are traditionally designed to shed rainwater away from the structure. The building additions’ multiple gable roofs run parallel to the main house gable roof and connect with each other at the lowest point creating roof valleys. The purpose of the roof valley was to collect rainwater and guide it to gutters that funneled the fresh water into ground level cisterns. When the number of gabled additions increased, the surface of the new metal roof collected an additional amount of water for the cistern.Cisterns often were the sole source of water throughout the 1800s. In 1912, a reliable source of water from the mainland was supplied through pipes that were constructed along Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railway.These multiple gable roofed homes are called saw tooth homes because the profile of the roof peaks and valleys resemble the metal teeth of a hand saw blade.
