Those of us who live near Fort Lauderdale are lucky to reside in a tourism mecca where there’s never a lack of things to do. There’s the art scene, the nightlife and the shopping, as well water excursions like scuba diving, diving and fishing. However, hidden in Florida’s common tourist traps are gems of the city’s past and glimpses of the fascinating people who once lived here.
If you want to discover these gems for yourself, follow this itinerary for a Fort Lauderdale day trip through the city’s historical houses. Each offers guided tours that will relieve you of the stress of trying to explore everything you can, so you can focus on learning the fun stuff and reliving history.
Historic Stranahan House Museum
Tour times: 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Ticket price: $7 for students and $12 for adults
Address: 335 Southeast Sixth Ave.
Phone number: 954-524-4736
Website: stranahanhouse.org
The din and grit of the city disappears in the little street just off Last Olas Boulevard where the Stranahan House is located. Though the grand wood house is a stark contrast to the steel and concrete behind it, you’ll feel as if it would be out of place anywhere else — as if it’s always belonged here.
Seven thin columns stretching two stories from the ground to the trapezoid-shaped roof make the green and white house appear longer than it really is. The edges of the porch and balcony extend beyond the house walls and its bay windows stalwartly frame the front door, giving it a regal symmetry most modern houses don’t possess.
During the tour, you’ll learn about Frank Stranahan, an Ohioan who moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1893 and built the house in 1901. He became a ferry conductor, opened a trading post on the New River and was the city’s first postmaster.
Stranahan’s wife Ivy Julia Cromartie was Fort Lauderdale’s first schoolteacher. Her spirit and gumption live on in the guide’s stories and the house itself. After Frank’s death, she rented out rooms and slept in the attic, until she died at the age of 90 in 1971. She left the house to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and in 1975, the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society bought the house and spent $850,000 restoring it. Today, it receives more than 10,000 visitors a year.
During the tour, you’ll learn about the beginnings of the city and what it was like to live in 1900s Fort Lauderdale. With the New River right in front of the house and old artefacts in front of the house, there’s plenty of photo opportunities as well. Don’t forget to take a picture of yourself gazing solemnly at the river from the second floor.
Bonnet House Museum and Gardens
Tour times: 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Ticket price: $20
Address: 900 North Birch Road
Phone number: 954-563-5393
Website: bonnethouse.org
Like Central Park, the grounds of the Bonnet House are a 35-acre rectangle of green felt dropped onto Fort Lauderdale’s stone floor.
If you’ve been to Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, you know of its namesake, who gave 35 acres of his land to his daughter Helen Louise, a musician and poet, as a wedding gift in 1919. It was on this land that her husband, Chicago artist Frederic Clay Bartlett, built the plantation-style Bonnet House in 1920.
After Helen’s death, Frederic married artist Evelyn Fortune Lilly and the couple took up residence in the house, where they created their own art and built their art collection. Evelyn left the house to the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation when Frederic died in 1953. It is now one of the city’s official historic landmarks and its previous owners’ artistic legacy continues in its Young Artist Music Series, art exhibits, and calligraphy, acrylic and watercolor workshops.
You’re adventure begins after a guide tells you the house’s history and leads you to the house. The center of the plantation-style house is an open courtyard, a garden fit for indolent days of reading in the sunlight. A small, concrete fountain stands as the understated centerpiece. It competes for attention with a coral pathway, a mesh-gated gazebo, traveler’s palms, and colorful plants and orchids that look as if they came from a tropical rainforest.
Unlike sleek, modern museums, the house is a living display of art. The Bartletts’ art lines the walls that face the courtyard, sometimes clashing side-by-side with the antiques they collected and contemporary art inspired by them. You’ll see tribal masks and dowry boxes from Cambodia, Java, Burma, and other Pacific countries, and even Frederic Bartlett’s own paints and easels. Be sure to get pictures of the carousel animals: a giraffe, a camel and a lion. They have glass eyes that look straight at you from whichever angle you view them.
Fort Lauderdale History Center
Tour times: 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Ticket price: $10 for adults and $5 for students until 22
Address: 219 SW Second Ave.
Phone number: 954-463-4431
Website: fortlauderdalehistoricalsociety.org
Further west down the New River is your next stop. The Fort Lauderdale History Center feels lonelier than the Stranahan House, not because it is also bereft of tourists, but because it is even more out-of-the-way, located between a nondescript row of small restaurants frequented by people in formal business attire and a tranquil park where locals walk their dogs.
Your tour will begin at the three-story, pale yellow and white New River Inn, the Center’s biggest house. Built in 1905, it is the county’s oldest hotel and first property on the National Register of Historic Places. You’ll also visit the King-Cromartie House, built in 1907, the home of Ivy’s brother and sister-in-law, and a replica of the county’s first schoolhouse.
You’ll find out how people used to live in the early 1900s. Amidst the history and photographs, you’ll probably find the stairs to be the most interesting; they are extremely short and didn’t really aid in safety.
The tour ends at the inn’s second floor, a museum of the city’s history. It features odds and ends, from gas masks used in World War II to the auditorium chairs of Fort Lauderdale High School and pictures of the first graduating class. And if you’re interested in learning more, there’s also a gift shop with books, postcards and trinkets.
Even if history has never been your best subject, you’ll find that it’s fun to discover the stories of coral and people that built Fort Lauderdale. So, pack a camera and an open mind and spend the day discovering it.
