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.

Ode to Odet and Those Who Came Before

In my mind it was a quiet day. Boys were throwing sticks, dogs were licking baby faces, parents were napping or cleaning up after lunch. An ordinary day.

Then the Spanish came.















Do you see them? Is that Panfilo de Narvaez, the man standing on the deck, eyes straining toward shore? If it is, you had better run and hide.

Now Philippe Park, then the Native American village of Tocobaga, this site on the shore of Safety Harbor was a sort of ground zero for the radical cultural and social changes that came along with Spanish exploration of La Florida in the 16th century. Each time I visit here, I look across the harbor toward Old Tampa Bay and wonder what it's like to have your way of life end.

Yet for all that, Philippe Park is a very pleasant place. It's big; there's room for everyone, with picnic shelters, a boat ramp, and great playgrounds for little and not-so-little kids. The oaks provide shade for you and shelter for frisky squirrels who have their beady eyes on your KFC. After dinner, the kids run up and down the old Indian mound. Where else in coastal Florida do they see a hill such as this? I suspect any child who tried this 500 years ago got a good clout on the ear.







































The park has a quirky history as well as a prehistory. In the 1840s, when settlement was just starting around here, a man named Odet Philippe picked this spot to be his homestead. Or Count Odet Philippe, or Dr. Odet Philippe -- he was a colorful man with a past, who claimed to be French royalty and a friend of Napoleon Bonaparte. If all the stories were true, he was over 100 years old when he died here. But no matter -- he was a true Floridian, who started a new life, reinvented himself, and stuck it out in the end. He certainly had his share of adventures here -- an exerpt from an interpretive sign at the park:















"Originally, this mound was rectangular in shape, but a tremendous hurricane in 1848 washed away approximately 1/3 of the mound. At that time, Odet Philippe used the mound to save his family from the tidal surge."


Just another typical day at the park.

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For more information or directions and events, visit Pinellas County's website for Philippe Park.

Clearwater Marine Aquarium

Clearwater Marine Aquarium, just over the Memorial Causeway Bridge (shown in the photo below, completed in 2005) from the mainland, is not as glossy as SeaWorld or the Florida Aquarium. The facility was converted from a sewage treatment plant in the 1970s, and that along with the large amounts of salt water and sea life contained within its concrete walls give it somewhat of a utilitarian air. The point of visiting here is to learn about sea life, not to admire architecture, although that does come into the story later on). The Aquarium's mission is to rescue marine animals, rehabilitate them, and release them back into their natural environments. Some animals cannot be returned to the wild because of injuries sustained, and they stay at the aquarium, becoming educational ambassadors. On the Aquarium's most famous residents is Winter, a young bottlenose dolphin who became entangled in a rope at a young age. The rope cut off the bolld supply to her tail. Now without a tail, she cannot swim as well as other dolphins. She captured national media attention when she received a prosthetic tail.

On a recent visit to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, I did catch a glimpse of Winter, as well as several sea turtles, stingrays, sharks, and a sea otter. We also went on the aquarium's two-hour boat tour of Clearwater Bay, a nice trip for families, visitors, and all age groups. The trip is on a pontoon boat, with schedules stops to raise a crab trab and do some shelling on a spoil island. A couple of kids on the boat found sea urchins (reddish things in photo below), which they shared with the rest of the group. The tour guides/educators also run a seine net out, sampling underrwater life at different points in the bay. Creatures we all got to see included grunts, sea squirts, spider crabs, arrow crabs, tiny blue crabs, and bigger blue crabs. At one point a pod of six dolphins -- several of which were just youngsters -- lept beside the boat.

Along the way down the Intracoastal Waterway, the captain pointed out several houses on the shore, including Hulk Hogan's Swiss chalet-style mansion. Now, it's probably not a surprise to any of you, but I'm kind of a history geek, and I was a lot more interested in another house the captain mentioned.

This is Spottis Woode, sometimes called Spotswood, Donald Roebling's waterfront estate. The captain mentioned that Donald Roebling was the grandson of the man who built the Brooklyn Bridge, but Donald is noteworthy based on his own acheivements.

In 1930, Donald Roebling bought this parcel of land in Clearwater, naming it honor of his finacee, Miss Spottiswoode. Roebling built a fabulous Tudor-style mansion, then added a machine shop to the estate. After the 1928 Lake Okeechobee hurricane, Roebling saw first hand how difficult rescue efforts had been. In his machine shop, he built the first prototypes of the Roebling Alligator, an amphibious tractor or tank. He repeated tried to get the military interested in his invention, but unsuccessfully so until the Alligator was featured in a 1937 issue of Life magazine. By 1940, Roebling was suppling the vehicles to the Marine Corps. The Alligator played an important role in the Pacific Theater during World War II, after being testing on the beaches of Clearwater Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

For more information about Donald Roebling and the Roebling Alligator:

"Roebling's Amphibian The Origin Of The Assault Amphibian," by Richard W. Roan

"The Alligator Amphibian: A Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark" (from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a pdf file, includes photographs)

Florida News Stories

"Flight 401: Rescue in the Swamp" St. Petersburg Times 9/16/07

"Vote for State Song May Not Be Online" St. Petersburg Times 9/16/07

"Grand Hotel, Grand Plan" St. Petersburg Times 9/21/07

"Public Gets A Look At Biltmore Plans" Tampa Tribune 9/19/07

"Wine, Cheese and Crackers" Sun-Herald 9/20/07

"FDR Shooting Attempt in Miami To Be Retold" Miami Herald 9/20/07

"Blackout Lifted on Historic Courthouse Tours" DeLand-Deltona Beacon 9/18/07

"Jewish Pioneers Gathered at Family Grove for High Holy Days" Orlando Sentinel 9/16/07

"Orphans in Unmarked Graves Identified" Florida Baptist Witness 9/20/07

"Marker in Miami to Commemorate Deadly 1926 Hurricane" Orlando Sentinel 9/17/07

Florida Stories in the News

"Inventor Wants to Sap Storms" St. Petersburg Times 9/9/07

"Post Office Loves Being Stuck in Past" Orlando Sentinel 9/9/07

"Getting a Gauge on the Gators" News Press 9/14/07

"Bill Would Designate the Cracker Horse as the Official State Horse" WPTV.com 9/14/07

"Florida Panther Cub Comes to Lowry Park Zoo" St. Petersburg Times 9/14/07

"Voices of Lake Okeechobee" Florida Trend 9/1/07

"Hearing History's Echoes" Tampa Tribune 9/16/07

"Last Officer Class Leaving Pensacola; 7 Decade Tradition Ends" St. Petersburg Times 9/15/07

Storm Preparation for Historic Homes

Just because an old house has withstood a storm or two in its day, don't assume that it will survive another. The State of Florida has a program called My Safe Florida Home, designed to help homeowners make their houses better able to withstand natural disasters such as hurricanes. The Florida Division of Historic Resources has made available online its Guidelines for Retrofit Improvements to Historic Properties Assisted by the My Safe Florida Home Matching Grant Program. The purpose is to minimize negative impacts to the character of historic houses being retrofitted. The Guidelines include specific recommendations for roofing, walls, porches, doors, and windows.

The Division of Historical Resources also offers General Guidelines for Historic Properties in Recovery after a natural disaster, and Disaster Planning for Historic Resources.