There's a What?

Today the Tribune reported that the police raided a grow house in Tampa. But that's not what caught my eye. It was that the grow house was hidden in an old Army Air Corps underground ammunition bunker, which is now evidently part of somebody's yard!

The house is in the Drew Park neighborhood, east of the airport and west of the stadium. During World War II, Drew Park was part of Drew Field, an Army Air Corps training base.

Every house has a story. Some are more eventful than others.

Florida Videos on the Web

Neal Hecker, with Program Services at WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami brought this website to my attention: uVu, described as "uVu is a video sharing website and companion digital broadcast channel powered by WPBT Channel 2, South Florida’s PBS station. The website consists of video content created and submitted to the site by individuals, community groups and cultural/educational institutions, which allows the community to experience, at any time, the important happenings of South Florida."

Here's a few of the videos that caught my attention, but I'm sure you'll find your own favorites.

Roadtrip to Yoder's Restaurant

MiMo Architecture

Palm Beach's Famous Doorways

Florida's Key Deer

Tour of Versailles in Little Havana

Stone Crabs

Miami Bungalows

Old Houses on Campus

The University of South Florida-St. Petersburg has a small, two-building historic district on campus, consisting of the Williams House and the Snell House.

The Williams House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and desinated a City of St. Petersburg Landmark in 1986, was built in 1891 by Genreal John C. Williams, a key figure in St. Petersburg's earliest days. This Queen Anne-style house was originally located in downtown St. Petersburg, where it was part of the Manhattan Hotel for many decades before being moved to the USF-SP campus.

The Snell House gets its name from an historical association with C. Perry Snell, a leading St. Petersburg developer in the early twentieth century. Snell built this eccletic Dutch Colonial bungalow in 1904 as his own home, where he lived with his wife Lillian for a few years. Like the Williams house, the Snell House was part of a downtown hotel before it was moved to its current location on the USF-SP campus. It is now home to the Florida Studies and University Honors programs.

The Snell House features rounded rooms, three sided bay windows, classical columns, and a gambrel roof.

Leisurama South

A February 1964 New York Times article described new homes being built in Lauderhill, Florida, where you could buy a 2-bedroom, 1 1/2 bath house for $16,990, "completely furnished, even down to the dishes and linens." This was the Leisurama South development, built by All-State Homes, which also built Leisurama in Montauk, on Long Island, New York.

A 2005 episode of PBS' History Detectives traced the path from Nixon and Khrushev's Kithchen Debate in Moscow to these modern homes near Fort Lauderdale. Architect Andrew Geller designed the kitchen where those two world leaders argued the relative merits of their contry's political systems, while looking at household appliances. Geller also designed the Leisurama homes.

Herbert Sadkin was the developer of Lauderhill. An interesting quote from the History Detectives: "Richard Nixon used the kitchen debate to sell the world capitalism. Herbert Sadkin used it to sell houses in Florida." (click here for a pdf of the episode's transcript)

The City of Lauderhill's website includes the story of how its name came close to being "Sunnydale," if not for the advise of William Safire.

Heritage Village

Yesterday I took my class on a fieldtrip to Pinellas County's Heritage Village. This park and museum offers 25+ historic structures, exhibits, educational programs and classes, a gift shop, and a nature trail. The oldest structure is a mid-nineteenth-century dogtrot log cabin. Other buildings include cracker houses, barns, a church, a railroad depot, a general store, a bandstand, and a shelter from an old cemetery, all moved here from somewhere else in Pinellas County (except the railroad depot is from Sulphur Springs in Tampa). And as if that weren't enough there's a caboose and fire engine. All this, and a really helpful and enthusiastic group of guides, interpreters, and volunteer docents.

Coming up soon, on October 27, will be the Annual Country Jubilee and Heritage Village 30th Birthday Celebration (9:30 am to 4:30 pm, free admission, shuttle parking). Come enjoy crafts, live music, activities, and special guests in the historic buildings.

Nancy Moskovitz

Florida artist Nancy Moskovitz was nice enough to talk to me yesterday about her artwork, particularly the house portraits she has done. She told me that when she paints or draws a house, she tries to capture the "essence of the house," rather than create a formal architectural rendering. She noted that these artworks make nice corporate gifts, but some clients just want a reminder of a special house. Also, sometimes she is asked to paint landscapes of property particularly meaningful to a family, like a ranch or farm.

Nancy also paints portraits, and you can see her work on both her website and her blog. I like her paintings of the Sharpe's Ferry Bridge, a 1920s drawbridge over the Oklawaha River in the Ocala National Forest.

Other Voices

Saurly Yours -- "Our Trip to Egmont Key"

"Vintage Urbanism in the CBD" -- Boom or Bust: Miami looks at restored historic buildings in Miami

"Go Go Gatorland!" -- Celebration Florida visits a recovering Gatorland

Woodland Shoppers Paradise is "Searching for Webb's City"

Seminole Heights "As Grandma Remembers"

And a new blog, Florida Keys History This Week

Using Sanborn Maps to Find History of Your House

Researching the history of your house can be a jigsaw puzzle or a scavenger hunt. But like a a good detective knows his sources, a house historian knows the likely places to find a lead. Sanborn Insurance Maps are one of those sources. Created by the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, these incredibly detailed maps lead the way to historic treasures.

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Company created these maps to help evaluate fire risk and existing construction. Not every aspect of a house or building was be recorded (for example, the company did not care what color the house was painted), but what was included is tremendously useful. You can expect to find:

* the footprint or shape of the building
* use (house, apartment, store, restaurant, factory)
* the street name and address (especially useful if lots have been renumbered)
* how many stories it had
* location, number, size, and shape of porches
* the basic construction material (frame, concrete block, tile, etc.)
* setback from the street
* width of the street
* location of water tanks, wells, cisterns, or fire hydrants
* additions
* nearby buildings
* nearby public utilities (water mains, train tracks, streetcar lines)

Since the company wanted to keep current records on the structures they were insuring, the maps were meticuously updated every few years. These updates help narrow timeframes for when a building might have been built, or when a room was added, information that is very useful for determining what is original, historic, or modern in a particular house.

Sanborn maps were created for cities all over the United States, including Florida. These maps, however, focus on the properties within city limits or particular factories. Your particular house may not be included, or may only be on maps from certain years. Although Sanborn maps are valuable resources in urban areas, rural houses are rarely found. Another possible problem comes from how these maps were updated. The Sanborn company created these maps for their own business use, not as a future archive of historic structures. The maps themselves are in large atlases, and when they were updated, snips of paper were glued on top of the old map, obscuring the drawings below.

Original Sanborn maps can be found in local public and university libraries, as well as in some governmental offices. However, due to the size, age, and importance of these documents, access may be limited. For these same reasons, as well as copyright issues, photocopies of the originals are usually prohibited.

But don't despair. Those same public and university libraries and historical societies often have microfilm copies of the maps, which although they are in black and white, have most of the same information and you can print copies. Some libraries provide online access to their cardholders, and the University of Florida has color images of many Florida Sanborn maps available to anyone on line.

Sanborn maps are an important piece of the puzzle for finding your house's history.