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Great Houses of Florida by Beth
Dunlop, Joanna Lombard, and Steven Brooke
(Rizzoli, 2008 Hardcover,
illustrated, 256 pages, $55)
Reviewed by Molly
McGreevy
Eighty years ago the New York Times
reported that, although Florida’s real estate had been able to make many people “fabulously rich overnight,”
by 1927 “hundreds of persons who bought property during the boom…were unwilling to make further payments when
the slump came and chose rather to write off their deficits and let the investment drop.”
Sound
familiar? You don’t need to look at the foreclosure signs across the street or the newly erected but empty condominiums
in your downtown area to know the same thing could be written about our housing market today.
The
Times quote begins the introductory discussion in Great
Houses of Florida, an informative photography book showcasing the state of Florida’s most treasured houses.
According to authors Beth Dunlop and Joanna Lombard, Florida’s “boom and bust” past, which is destined to
keep repeating itself, provides the contemporary visitor with one (of many) lenses through which one can view its historical
architecture. In spite of hardscrabble living conditions and plenty of swamp water, dreamers back then—just like
they do now—insist on taking a chance in La Florida, the “Land of Flowers.”
The
book offers an array of Florida homes and styles. Beginning in Key West with the Audubon and Hemingway houses and then
traveling north, the book’s handsome photography gives intimate glimpses of well-known attractions such as the Deering’s
Vizcaya in Miami and the Ringling’s Ca d’Zan in Sarasota. Readers can also peek into a St Augustine coquina-rock
home complete with furnishings c. 1770. Other homesteads, such as those belonging to Marjorie Rawlings, author of The Yearling, and La Casita, a preserved cigar maker’s house in Tampa, are more modest
but provide a window on Florida’s past. Continuing west in the Florida Panhandle, one can walk through Historic
Pensacola Village, where over twenty homes have been listed.
The text gives a detailed explanation
of the historical and stylistic influences, if any, on each house. Enthusiasts will be satisfied the authors have done
extensive research. Dunlop is editor-in-chief of HOME Miami and HOME Fort Lauderdale magazines and an architecture critic of the Miami Herald, and Lombard is a professor at
the University of Miami School of Architecture.
And Steven Brooke’s photography is lush and
colorful, much like the paradisaical gardens growing around these estates.
In fact, the plants here
attracted many famous scientists and naturalists, whose houses are included in the book. Charles Deering was one of
these. A visit to his 144-acre estate at Cutler reveals a breathtaking view of a shoreline vista, its rows of palms
preserved against the advice of his architect. David Fairchild bought his Kampong estate in Coconut Grove and used the
grounds to study his collection of rare plants and trees. And in Fort Myers, Thomas Edison erected a winter home that
also included a laboratory for his work with rubber plants, his gardens used for both “pleasure and science.”
Even then, these botanists were deeply concerned about the rapid development on Florida’s natural resources and urged
others to stop the destruction of our mangroves and hammocks.
But, as is remarked in the book’s
introduction, the “bust” part of the housing cycle is what preserves Florida’s natural wild and plant life.
During a time of economic fear, at least we can take comfort in the fact that the downturn will force the slowing of development.
It may be what saves some of our dwindling resources.
Great Houses of Florida is an excellent coffee table book, but it’s also an interesting
read for the architecture or design buff. For those wishing to visit any of these homes, an index lists all addresses
and contact information.
Molly McGreevy lives in a modest Floridian home in the
city of Miami.
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Jazz From Row Six, Photographs 1981-2007
by Jean Germain, forward by Dick Hyman
(New Chapter Publishers,
Hardcover, 96 pp., $45)
Reviewed by Louis K.
Lowy
Visualize sitting in the sixth row of a concert hall listening to the architects
of America’s most revered music performing with the velvety, belly-warming heat of a twenty-year-old Scotch. Savor
the joy in the musician’s eyes, the way their fingers ripple from key to key, valve to valve, drum skin to drum skin.
Imagine what it was like for them, ages ago, to be standing on an oak plank stage in a smoke waffled speakeasy with Jelly
Roll Morton, Louie Armstrong, and Count Basie, creating rhythms and melodies that would influence virtually all music from
that moment forward. These pioneers, many no longer with us, were photographed by Jean Germain from 1981 to 2007. Her work
fills Jazz From Row Six.
Germain, a retired school teacher,
moved from New York to Sarasota, Florida in 1979. Shortly afterward at Pelican Cove community tennis courts she had a chance
encounter with Hal Davis, big band icon Benny Goodman’s publicist for thirty-five years. Germain and Davis struck up
a friendship over their mutual love of jazz. An amateur photographer, Germain was asked to become the official photographer
for the Jazz Club of Sarasota’s monthly concerts and the annual festival, both run by Davis. “Not feeling up
to the task,” Germain writes, “I told him that I was not the person for the job—I didn’t know an f-stop
from a truck stop . . . But Hal could be as persuasive as he was charming . . . And so, with his—and my husband’s—encouragement,
I began my second career, and it has certainly changed my life!”
Germain took photography
classes and attended workshops to improve her skills. She was given the choice of choosing her viewpoint at the Van Wezel
Performing Arts Hall, where the jazz greats performed. As she put it, “I picked (row six) because I didn’t want
to be so close that I would have to shoot everything looking up at an angle, nor so far away that I couldn’t capture
the faces of the musicians in close-ups.” While she had an unprecedented access point she also had unique problems.
“I was not only handicapped by being confined to one seat. I could not use a tri-pod to steady my camera. Stage lighting
was my only illumination, as no flash was allowed.” Germain overcame the lighting obstacles by utilizing fast speed
film, slower shutter speeds, and special filters. Most of the photographs are in black and white. The results create an
impressionistic feel that evokes an earlier era and adds to the elegant grace of the aging musicians. “I liked the
soft, blurry edges. I felt that in many cases they were just right for what jazz was all about.”
Beyond the technical aspects, Germain has an eye for the emotional. She presses the shutter at exactly the right moment.
It’s striking to view a 1992 photograph of eighty-six-year-old trumpet legend Doc Cheatham, his eyes serenely closed,
his trumpet reverently angled toward heaven as if he was heralding his own arrival, which occurred five years later. Germain’s
1992 photo of vibraphone virtuoso Lionel Hampton, eighty-two and having difficulty walking, captures a man overtaken with
delight, standing behind his ever present vibes, snapping his fingers like a jitterbug jiving teen to what must have been
a rousing chorus of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” or “Hey BaBa Ree Rop.”
With each
shot Germain captures the essence of the artist: eighty-year-old Hootie McShann—the last of the great pianists who
embodied the Kansas City sound—quietly reflecting while his hands smooth over the ivories, octogenarian Eartha Kitt’s
playful sexiness as she croons from a chaise lounge, and seventy-two-year-old Latin percussion icon Tito Puente, tongue sticking
out, banging his timbales with the glee of a third grader pounding away at a game of Whac-A-Mole.
Strikingly, Germain’s collection gives us not only the ecstasy of these musicians when they were
performing, but the pleasure she felt snapping these photos. Germain was right when she said this has changed her life.
Fortunately for us, in Jazz From Row Six, we get to share that jubilance with her. Louis K. Lowy resides in Miami Lakes. He is the recipient of a State of Florida
Individual Artist Fellowship. His work has appeared in Coral Living Magazine, Cartier Street Review, and Merge. His poem "Poetry Workshop (Mary Had A Little Lamb)"
was the second place winner of the 2009 Winning Writers Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest. He is currently enrolled in Florida
International University's Creative Writing Program.
The New Deal in South Florida:
Design, Policy, and Community Building 1933-1940, edited by John A. Stuart and John F. Stack, Jr. (University Presses of Florida, Hardcover, 288 pp., $29.95) Reviewed by Antolin Garcia Carbonell
Recently awarded the Florida Book Awards Silver Medal for Florida Nonfiction, the six, well researched and unexpectedly timely
essays in this beautifully illustrated book revisit how specific New Deal projects and initiatives addressed the social and
economic difficulties confronting South Florida’s needs during the Great Depression.
“The
New Deal in South Florida” by John F. Stack, Jr. and John A. Stuart describes the big picture economic and social issues
the New Deal initiatives faced in Florida and how administrators maneuvered around the Deep South’s distrust of the
Federal government and congenital racism. Many of these efforts broke new ground in social relations that later paved
the way for the much needed changes brought about by the civil rights movement.
“Constructing
Identity: Building and Place in New Deal South Florida” by John A. Stuart traces the Federal government’s contribution
to the creation of a distinct South Florida architecture through the buildings created under its auspices. These spare,
even austere, buildings meant to leave no doubt that money had not been wasted on frivolous decorative elements were in accord
with developing modernist architectural ideas and while not meant to be cutting edge design, still managed to convey an image
of an elegant, yet efficient and up to date city.
“Migrants, Millionaires, and Tourists: Marion
Post Wolcott’s Photographs of a Changing Miami and South Florida” by Mary N. Woods takes a look at the South Florida
society recorded in the photographs taken under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration. Images of struggling
urban workers and destitute farm laborers alternated with those of sleek Art-Deco hotels and the idle rich at play by the
sea. Yet, in documenting the contradiction, the F.S.A. also documented part of the solution to the problems of the poor,
since ultimately the renascent tourist and construction industries provided one of the means for many of the destitute to
a better life.
“Whose History Is It Anyway? New Deal Post Office Murals in South Florida”
by Marianne Lamonaca analyzes one of the most beloved and long-lasting legacies of the New Deal, the historical murals that
grace the lobbies of our Art-Deco Post offices. Intended to complement the spare architecture of the period, the subject
matter of these murals reflect the mindset and priorities of the era’s decision makers as well as their biases and conceptions
of social and racial hierarchies.
“The Civilian Conservation Corps in South Florida” by
Ted Baker documents how a program driven by the need to provide employment for young unemployed men built some of South Florida’s
greatest parks, among them Greynolds and Matheson Hammock, while “improving” the natural landscape. This
legacy of the WPA paid off during South Florida’s post-war expansion and remains a key component of our recreational
infrastructure.
“Liberty Square: Florida’s First Public Housing Project” by John
A. Stuart explores the many contradictory issues that resulted in the creation of this architectural landmark: providing improved
housing for the poor while using racist justifications to increase the physical segregation of the Black community.
This project also broke new ground in social as well as physical engineering. Tenants were selected to ensure that they
were responsible individuals and management provided social support for struggling families. The units themselves came with
indoor plumbing, electricity and running water, basic amenities not always available in the rental shotgun houses of Overtown.
This timely essay gives a much-needed boost to on-going community efforts to revitalize this once ideal neighborhood that
became mired in crime, drugs and social problems.
As, once again, South Florida finds itself the recipient
of Federal largess to stimulate a moribund economy, The New Deal in South Florida
arrives just in time to serve as an invaluable guide for evaluating our options by showing us what worked in the past.
A forty-seven year resident of North East Miami, Antolín García Carbonell,
a registered architect with professional degrees from the University of Florida and the University of Miami spent 30 years
managing design and construction projects for the Miami-Dade Aviation Department. Read his FBR piece In Search of Florida’s Forgotten Poet Laureate Vivian Laramore Rader.
Key West in Black and White by Tom Concoran with an introduction by Randy Wayne White (The
Ketch and Yawl Press, Marathon, Florida. Paperback, 189 pages, $19.95) Reviewed by Harry Calhoun
Tom Corcoran has produced a lovingly done book of black-and-white photos, one that truly captures the Key West that
I know and love. What makes this more impressive is that a lot of Key West’s charm is in its colors:
pink bougainvillea, multicolored verbena and lantana, the pink and white houses and orange terra cotta roofs.
But Corcoran’s monochrome shots capture the quirky spirit and the beauty of the island.
Aside from providing great shots of buildings, the water, Corcoran also gives us short, well-written commentaries on
each photo. Almost every one is a gem in its own right. Some of them, like the shot
of Elgin Lane on page 39, send chills down my spine with memory of my days there. Corcoran describes the
lane as “The essential quiet of the Old Island, a few blocks off the tourist track.” And indeed,
I remember riding my bike with friends down lanes like this, off to hear a poetry reading or to have a few beers in the evenings.
Corcoran’s photo is so perfect I can almost smell the night-blooming jasmine.
The photos vary in mood and spirit. A shot of three shrimp boats with a squall outside the reef
behind them is brooding and eerie. So is the photo of what remains of the old Seven Mile Bridge jutting
out into the water like an unfinished sentence. Others are more whimsical and fun, bright photos that captures
the nearly constant sunniness of the island. He even manages to find an interesting and unusual angle for
a photo of the Southernmost House, surely the most overly photographed building in Key West.
There are surprisingly few people shots in Key West in Black and White. Corcoran
works his magic mostly by letting the island tell its own tale of ramshackle, rundown seediness in the midst of great natural
and architectural beauty. The shots were taken from the 1970s through the nineties and are in no chronological
order. I also liked the whimsical introduction by Randy Wayne White, who displays some conch pride while
introducing us to Corcoran. He ends his introduction by saying, “Welcome to Tom Corcoran’s
Key West — the real Key West.” Having lived there,
and having fallen permanently in love with the little island, I would have to agree. Tom Corcoran
can imbue photos of drugstores, restaurants and fishing boats with a sense of romance and the idyllic beauty of Key West.
Harry Calhoun is a widely-published writer of articles, literary essays, and poems. He
has recent publications in Chiron Review and poetry forthcoming in Abbey, Word Catalyst
and LiteraryMary, and writes a wine column, Ten Dollar Tastings. |
