Polk County Science Building

From the Pfeiffer Chapel, I could see the Polk County Science Building. This is really several large, low, horizontal buildings connected by covered esplanades. The dome at the end is the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed planetarium to be actually built. The ventilation system on the roof was added during recent renovations. The book The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College has a photograph taken from a similar perspective (page 112) when the Polk Science building was under construction in the 1950s.













This was the last of the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings built on the Florida Southern College campus. It was built partly below grade, which caused problems with leakage and drainage (not an uncommon problem with Frank Lloyd Wright buildings...).




Walkway at Polk Science with aluminum-clad supports

Frank Lloyd Wright's Annie Pfeiffer Chapel

It's shameful. I've been living in Florida, studying its history and architecture for years and years and it wasn't until last month that I finally visited Florida Southern College's campus in Lakeland with its grand collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings.

The photograph above is of the William Danforth Chapel (front) and the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel. The original campus was in an orange grove on this hill overlooking Lake Hollingsworth, but the trees are gone now. Too bad, because the campus was glaring and hot even in April, especially with the concrete block buildings.

The Annie Pfeiffer Chapel was the first of Wright's buildings to be constructed at Florida Southern College. At its dedication, Annie Pfeiffer (wife of the founder of Pfeiffer Chemical Company) reportedly said, "They say it is finished," perhaps in reference to the metal bars forming a spire or steeple. Sometimes the chapel is referred to as "the bicycle rack."




















































FSC students provided labor for the construction of the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings on campus, including this chapel. Natural light inside the chapel comes primarily from the large skylight above. The walls are made of a special concrete block called tapestry block. The tapestry blocks have small squares of colored glass embedded in them, creating moving spots of red, blue, and amber on a sunny day.































The book Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College (Arcadia 2007) contains fascinating photographs of the chapel's construction and traces some of the changes in the building's interior and exterior over the years. Some of the major changes came after a 1944 hurricane shattered the skylight and parts of the building collapsed. During reconstruction the tapestry blocks above the first floor were stuccoed on the exterior to make them more weather proof.

It Was Nice, Even Though It Was Closed...

Well, what did I expect for the afternoon of the 4th of July! But I stopped by the Anna Maria Island Museum anyhow, and had a fine time. The museum itself is in one of those types of historic buildings I like, the ones that don't look like anything in particular, until you know the back-story. According to the historical marker, it was built in 1920 as an ice house, the "was subsequently used as city hall, the police department, a firehouse and the Turtle House" before being renovated in 1992 as the historical society's museum.

Here's the view from inside:

Again, the historical marker was helpful here, reporting that the jail was built in 1927 to handle overly happy guests of a local tavern. At the time, the jail did have bars, but no window glass, and it seems the mosquitoes had a "sobering effect." A fire in 1940 burned the wooden parts of the jail building, leaving the concrete/tabby parts to become a local tourist attraction.

Another historic building at the museum is the Belle Haven Cottage, built in 1920 in the bay next to the City Pier (click here for a historic postcard showing the cottage in its original location). Evidently the house's piers rotted and it fell into the water after just six years. Lyman Christy bought the cottage and had it barged around tot he other side of the island. He fixed it up and it was home for him and his wife Wanda for nearly 50 years. Then in 2001, the house was moved again, this time to the museum site. So say the historic markers. I like the flower bed border of mismatched plates.

For more information about the Anna Maria Island Historical Society and their museum, here's a link to their website. Do as I say, and not as I do, and go visit them when they're open!

Fairchild Tropical Gardens

On Old Cutler Road in Coral Gables are two wonderful parks, Matheson Hammock Park and Fairchild Tropical Gardens. Both are the creations of landscape architect William Lyman Phillips on land donated by Colonel and Mrs. Robert H. Montgomery. The tropical gardens were named in honor of David Fairchild.

Created in the 1930s and 1940s with the help of Civilian Conservation Corps workers, Phillips envisioned the Fairchild Tropical Gardens as a sort of outdoor museum with long galleries allowing both distant and close views of pieces. The gardens also served a scientific botanical purpose of allowing study of tropical plant species.


Here is the visitor center:















And the Gate House (at the original entrance):
















The Bailey Palm Glade, named in honor of Liberty Hyde Bailey:
















The Garden Club of America Ampitheater:

And a maintenance problem that Phillips didn't face:

Green iguanas have taken over the grass and wall in front of the amphitheater.


Further Reading:

Historic Landscapes of Florida, by Rocco Ceo and Joanna Lombard. Published by Deering Foundation and University of Miami School of Architecture, 2001.

Pioneer of Tropical Landscape Architecture: William Lyman Phillips in Florida, by Faith Reyher Jackson. Published by University Press of Florida, 1997.

Rainy Day at Tampa Bay Hotel

Even in a February drizzle, the historic Tampa Bay Hotel impresses me. I find it so easy to imagine the past here, ladies and gentlemen promendading on the veranda, waiting for the showers to pass. The leaves of the banana plant show the effects of a winter freeze, although it's warmer in Tampa today than it is in Philadelphia or Long Island. But as fancy as the iced gingerbread is on this building, what lingers in my mind is what went into making the walls.

The Tampa Bay Hotel was a major construction project in the 1880s. To say it was ambitious is putting it mildly. The new was barely worn off the railroad tracks to Tampa, and just hundreds of people lived here when Henry Plant thought of building a resort hotel on the banks of the Hillsborough River. Just where did he think they would find the men and materials for such an undertaking? Well, the men came from all over the country, but the logistics of was finding construction materials in a new frontier town was more difficult.

One need was shell for the concrete, and the builders found what they required where the Alafia River met Tampa Bay in the form of prehistoric shell mounds. Eating oyster and clam and mussells creates some trash. Shell mounds and shell middens are places where shellfish remains are discarded and accummulate, at times forming small hills. Often, other trash or refuse would get mixed in with the shell, such as bones from last night's dinner, or a broken bowl. If the mounds got big enough, they were useful as high pieces of ground, either a vantage point or somewhere out of the water. Today, archaeologists study and protect shell mounds, but in the lat 19th century, people all over Florida mined these hills for shell. The shell was used for road construction, or as in the case of the Tampa Bay Hotel, for making concrete. I wonder what was mixed into those walls along with the shell....

(Photo: Shell mound at New Smyrna, Florida State Archives, PR07602)

In another instance of resourcefullness, the Tampa Bay Hotel builders salvaged old submarine cable, selling the copper, but using the fiber and metal as construction materials. While I suppose you could look for comparisons to modern considerations of green construction or sustainability, they were really just making do with what they had at hand.

Transoceanic cable came to Florida shortly after the Civil War, through the efforts of the International Ocean Telegraph Company. The installation of telegraph cable was very important for south Florida, which in the 1860s was barely explored, much less settled, by the United States. Cable lines and railroads went as far south as Cedar Key, and that was it. South Florida was quite isolated from the world, and from knowledge of world events or markets that might provide needed capital. In 1867, the IOTC put up poles and telgraph wire from Cedar Key to Gainesville, and on to Lake City. The wire raced southward from Ocala to Dade City, then to Polk County and along the Peace River. Following the Caloosahatchee River, the wire reached Punta Rassa, where it connected with submarine cable from Key West. Another submarine cable connected Key West and Cuba.

Telegraph service in Florida began in 1867, and in following years IOTC added connection from Florida and Cuba to Jamaice, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad. The Florida - Cuba cable stayed in operation into the 1940s, and in the 1950s IOTC became part of Western Union.

In a 1989 journal article, Canter Brown, Jr., considered the impact of the IOTC cable on Florida, noting that while non-Florida contractors supplied materials, the company did created much sought-after jobs in south Florida. On a less positive note, Brown pointed out that the IOTC's early impact was limited by high prices it charged to send a cable -- "$4.00 in gold for transmitting a ten-word message from Lake city to Cuba" -- which was out of reach for the average Floridian. Brown considered the cable company's most significant impact to be from the roads it built along the wire's route. "Wire Road" became a major north/south corridor for pioneers settling south Florida in the late nineteenth century.

So when I look at the Tampa Bay Hotel, I think of both the historic events that took place within its walls and the history that went into its walls.

If you'd like to visit the Tampa Bay Hotel, your best option is the Henry Plant Museum. The museum now offers handheld audio tours, and an exhibit about Gasparilla's history.

Sources:

Plant's Palace: Henry B. Plant and the Tampa Bay Hotel, by James Covington (Harmony House, 1990)

"The International Ocean Telegraph" by Canter Brown, Jr. (Florida Historical Quarterly, 1989, Volume 68, Number 2, Pages 135-159).

Historic Ceramic Tile Floors

Two sources of information for preservation of historic ceramic and tile floors:

• Preserving Historic Ceramic Tile Floors (Preservation Brief 40, National Park Service)
• Preserving Historic Ceramic Tile Floors (The Old House Web)

And two photographs of interesting floors in Tampa's Italian Club building:

Florida News

"Cold Snap Has Iguanas Falling From Trees In South Florida" (Tampa Tribune, January 4, 2008)

"'Fountain Of Youth' Memories Bubble In Bay" (Tampa Tribune, January 5, 2008: "Not far from where the Tampa Bay Rays hope to build a new ballpark, something is bubbling to the surface.")

"A merman rests" (St. Petersburg Times, January 4, 2008)

"A look back at Sarasota's rare snowfalls" (mysuncoast.com, January 2, 2008)

"Looking back on 1968" (Gainesville Sun, January 6, 2008: about the University of Florida)

"Preserving Melbourne's past" (Florida Today, January 6, 2008)

"Secrets of Miami Circle, known as America's Stonehenge, lie buried" (Orlando Sentinel, January 2, 2008)

"The secret islands of Pasco County" (Miami Herald, January 6, 2008)

"Tampa youth retrieves Epiphany cross in Tarpon Springs" (St. Petersburg Times, January 6, 2008)

"Florida city pushes to preserve charm of brick streets" (Savannah Morning News, December 28, 2007: about St. Augustine)

Americana Motor Inn

Preservation Online reports that the Fort Lauderdale city council turned down a developer's request to demolish the Americana Motor Inn, most recently a Best Western, and currently vacant. The Americana's distinctive seven-pointed roof would have been replaced by a 12-story hotel (The Sails) near the Port of Ft. Lauderdale.

The hotel is an outstanding example of modern architecture in South Florida. Designed by Charles McKirahan and Arthur Rude in the early 1960s, the motel features a hyperbolic paraboloid concrete shell roof, which was intended to invoke images of ocean waves.

HOME Ft. Lauderdale featured the Americana Motor Inn in its November 2005 issue as one of the 10 most architecturally significant structures in Fort Lauderdale.

"Americana at Risk" (The Slatin Report)

Docomomo/US Florida

Old Memorial Highway

On the Upper Tampa Bay Trail, at the Old Memorial Highway Trailhead, is a historical marker, of sorts. A large sign straddles a surviving chunk of the original Memorial Highway pavement.

Historically, the highway ran from Tampa to the Pinellas County line. According to this sign: "Dedicated on January 1, 1921, the highway honored Tampa and Hillsborough County citizens who died in World War I. As part of the original projet, the Tampa Rotary Club planted oak trees on both sides of the road and erected monuments along the roadway to the war heroes."

The bottom left photograph on the sign shows the young oak trees lining the highway. And here's how Old Memorial Highway looks today, facing west from the trail marker.

The photo on the bottom right of the trail sign shows the World War I monument that stood at the intersection of Memorial Highway and Howard Avenue, until it became a traffic hazard and was moved to the American Legion Cemetery. Another similar marker stands on a small island in a sea of traffic at the intersection of Kennedy Boulevard and the modern start point of Memorial Highway (this is on the west side of Westshore Mall in Tampa).

The old highway was paved with asphalt blocks, which created a durable but bumpy surface. Asphalt blocks were a fairly common paving material in the early twentieth century, when they were made in local factories and transported to the construction site. (In St. Petersburg, some streets in the Old Northeast neighborhood were asphalt block.)

The Upper Tampa Bay Trail is maintained by the Hillsborough County Parks, Recreation, and Conservation Department. The Old Memorial Highway Trailhead offers shady parking and picnic tables, along with easy access to the trail. This trailhead is located on the southern end of Montague Street, south of Braulio Alonso High School.

Belleview Biltmore

Today's St. Petersburg Times has an article about the current status of the Belleview Biltmore Hotel in the Town of Belleview, just south of Clearwater. In the recent past, the 110-year-old hotel, which is possibly the world's largest inhabited wooden structure, has faced the real possibility of demolition. The issue became so critical that the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2005 list of most endangered historic places included the Belleview Biltmore.

I was at the Biltmore last month, and took a couple of pictures of the reroofing project underway (see above). That's a daunting task, with what must be acres of green shingles!

If you're interested in spending a night or a weekend enjoying the hotel's peaceful ambience or golfing on a historic Donald Ross-designed course, check the hotel's website for contact information. The website also has a very nicely done timeline of the Biltmore's history, starting with its construction in the late 1890s for original owner, Henry B. Plant.

Additional information and images are also available on the website of Save the Biltmore, a group dedicated to the preservation of the Belleview Biltmore.

Largo Feed Store

Yesterday I visited the Largo Area Historical Society with a tour group from the Florida Historical Society meeting. Largo's historical society is housed in the historic Largo Feed Store, a 1910 building moved to its current site in 1992.

In 1910 John Gainey built a feed store out of rusticated concrete block he manufactured himself. The store was run by Francis Marion Campbell, who had moved to Largo in 1867 and also owed and operated the Hotel Largo. Campell died in 1912, and from that year until the 1980s, a succession of owners ran a feed store in this building at this location.

When in the 1980s the Florida Department of Transportation began planning to widen Bay Drive, the Largo Area Historical Society worked to have the old Largo Feed Store moved to Largo Central Park. After it reached its current home, the historical society, the city, and the Florida Department of State worked together to have the building refurbished. Now, in addition to housing historical exhibits, it serves as a multipurpose building across the street from the Largo Public Library, and near the city's cultural center.

Rusticated concrete block, also called rockfaced concrete block, was made in a mold to create a surface texture that resembles stone. Its popularity as a building material peaked between 1905 and 1930. Concrete and concrete block were popular building materials well before then, but it took two technological advances to make mass production of rusticated concrete block possible. First, Harmon S. Palmer patented a hollow concrete block manufacturing machine. Second, the method of making Portland cement was improved and standarized. With a easy manufacturing method and reliable materials, rusticated concrete block became a widely popular building material, the ideal being that with nonskilled labor, the blocks could be made at the construction site. Block machines were even sold through the Sears catalog. Advantages of the blocks included that they were less expensive to lay than brick, they imitated the appearance of a more expensive material (quarried stone), and they were fire resistant.

In 1917, F. J. Straub patented a method of making cinder blocks. Cinder blocks used aggregates to make a lighter block, and they had smooth surfaces rather than the rough surface of rock-faced blocks. By the 1930s, cinderblock had replaced rusticated concrete blocks in popularity as a building material.

Sources:

"Historic of the Historic Largo Feed Store," pamphlet produced by the Largo Historical Society, Largo, Florida.

Pamela H. Simpson, "Cheap, Quick, and Easy: The Early History of Rockfaced Concrete Block Building," Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, 1989.

Linoleum and Touch of Tung Oil

This may not seem like it's about Florida at first, but bear with me.

Recently I read Linoleum, by Jane Powell and Linda Svendsen (Gibbs Smith, 2003). It's a coffee table book--oversized, glossy photos, not too much text. Yes, an actual entire book about linoleum, the floor covering of the hoi polloi. The photographs really make this book, transforming linoleum into abstract pieces of art. The text covers much the same territory as other books and journal articles on the topic, but with a welcome sense of humor. The last part of the book recounts the author's experiments to determine whether linoleum can withstand cat pee. (We're not to the Florida part yet.)

Frederick Walton, an Englishman, invented linoleum in 1855. It was basically canvas or burlap coated with oxidized linseed oil, cork dust, and resin. There have been variations on this over the years, but the key point is that linoleum uses natural products and is not vinyl.

Linoleum originally was made from linseed oil, which came the name. But later other kinds of oils were used, among them, tung oil. Tung oil comes from the nuts of the tung tree, which is native to China. The oil has other industrial uses, including as an ingredient in varnish.

Heading into the twentieth century, China was the leading producer of tung oil, and had cornered the market. So some Americans looked around for where tung trees might grow well in the United States, and came up with north central Florida. The first tung trees were planted in Florida in 1906, and the first oil was produced from their nuts in 1913.

Wars disrupted supplies of tung oil from China, which in turn encouraged increased production in Florida. The zenith of Florida's tung industry was during World War II. Jefferson County claims to have been the center point of this industry, with over 12,000 acres of tung oil trees in the 1950s.

But the tung trees weren't the only thing happening in Jefferson County at the mid-century mark. A young man named Homer Formby used some of that oil to make his own line of furniture finishing products. His first store was in Jefferson County, in the old Monticello Opera House.

Storms, freezes, and competition put an end to Florida's tung oil industry in the 1960s and 1970s. Formby made a pile of money, sold his company, and in the 1970s/80s owned some islands down in the Keys.

Florida just may be the Kevin Bacon of the 50 United States.