Florida Literary
Landmarks
Woody
Guthrie
10
Randolph
Caldecott
Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings
75
Stephen Crane
Zora Neale Hurston
4
275
Laura (Riding)
Jackson
75
Ernest Lyons
Walter Farley
75
95
75
John D.
MacDonald
Elizabeth
Bishop
Robert
Frost
John Hersey
Isaac
Bashevis
Singer
José Martí
Wallace
Stevens
Harry S.
Truman
Tennessee
Williams
Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Literary Landmark Sites
Woody Guthrie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Randolph Caldecott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Stephen Crane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Zora Neale Hurston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Laura (Riding) Jackson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Ernest Lyons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
John D. MacDonald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Isaac Bashevis Singer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Elizabeth Bishop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Robert Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
John Hersey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
José Martí . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Wallace Stevens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Harry S. Truman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Tennessee Williams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Walter Farley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
iii
Florida’s Literary
Landmarks
Fruit Cove
Woody Guthrie
10
95
St. Augustine
Randolph Caldecott
Cross Creek
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Daytona Beach
Stephen Crane
75
Eatonville
Zora Neale
Hurston
4
95
275
75
Wabasso
Laura (Riding)
Jackson
Stuart
Ernest
Lyons
95
75
Venice
Walter Farley
Fort Lauderdale
John D. MacDonald
75
Key West
Elizabeth Bishop
Robert Frost
John Hersey
José Martí
Wallace Stevens
Harry S. Truman
Tennessee Williams
Surfside
Isaac
Bashevis
Singer
Introduction
lorida’s literary landscape includes the homes, offices,
and destinations of many of America’s greatest novelists, biographers, and poets. These are Florida’s Literary
Landmarks, so designated by Friends of Libraries U.S.A.
(FOLUSA). Florida Center for the Book now invites you
to visit these unique literary sites, many of which are
open to the public.
F
This guide to Florida’s Literary Landmarks is arranged as
a journey, beginning in the northeast Florida. Your journey may begin just south of Jacksonville, in the town
of Fruit Cove, where, in the 1940s and 1950s Woody
Guthrie stayed at Beluthahatchee, home of Florida author Stetson Kennedy. It was there that Guthrie wrote
numerous folksongs and completed his autobiography,
The Seeds of Man. A jog to the southeast will take you
to St. Augustine, where you may visit Evergreen Cemetery and the grave of famed English illustrator Randolph
Caldecott, who died here in 1886.
As you continue south and inland, you may visit Cross
Creek, near Gainesville, the home of Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings, author of The Yearling and Cross Creek.
Continuing southeast to the coast, you soon come to
Daytona Beach and Lilian Place, where Stephen Crane
stayed after surviving a disastrous shipwreck off the
nearby coast. His book, The Open Boat, is a fictional
account of his ordeal. Moving southwest, just outside
Orlando, is the town of Eatonville, where Zora Neale
Hurston lived and wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Returning to the coast, you may visit poet Laura (Riding)
Jackson’s cottage in Wabasso; then move on to Stuart,
the town where journalist Ernest Lyons lived and
worked. Continuing south, you will soon arrive in Fort
Lauderdale, where John D. MacDonald’s fictional hero
v
Travis McGee kept his houseboat, the Busted Flush at
what is now the Bahia Mar Yachting Center at the
Radisson Bahia Mar Beach Resort. Then drive through
Surfside where Isaac Bashevis Singer lived and worked
in his later years.
Florida’s world-famous Key West was the home or winter home of Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, John Hersey,
José Martí, Wallace Stevens, former President Harry S.
Truman, and Tennessee Williams.
Your literary journey may now take you to Florida’s
southwest Gulf coast and the city of Venice, where
Walter Farley, author of the Black Stallion series, lived
and worked. A plaque and a permanent display of his
work are at the Venice Area Public Library.
•
The Literary Landmarks Association was founded in
1986 by Frederick G. Ruffner, former president of
Friends of Libraries U.S.A. (FOLUSA), to encourage the
dedication of historic literary sites. In June 1989, the
Literary Landmarks Association became affiliated with
FOLUSA as an official committee of the organization.
FOLUSA accepts applications for Literary Landmark designation of sites that are tied to a deceased literary figure, author or his or her work. For information about
FOLUSA Literary Landmarks, visit www.folusa.org.
Dedications outside Florida include the homes of famous
writers, library and museum collections; literary scenes
such as John’s Grill in San Francisco, immortalized by
Dashiell Hammett; and even the raven, Grip, once the
pet of Charles Dickens and later Edgar Allen Poe’s inspiration. (Grip now presides — stuffed — in the Rare
Books Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia.)
To date, FOLUSA has dedicated 85 Literary Landmarks
nationwide, seventeen of them in Florida. Florida Center
for the Book is pleased to present this guide to Florida
literary sites, with the hope that those who visit them
gain new perspectives on the places where these important literary figures lived and worked.
vi
Photo courtesy of Carol Fitzgerald
Woody Guthrie — Beluthahatchee
1523 State Road 13 • Fruit Cove, Florida
Private residence
www.woodyguthrie.org
Dedicated on March 13, 2003.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. •
Literary Landmarks Register • Beluthahatchee •
site where • Woody Guthrie • wrote the final draft
of his autobiographical • Seeds of Man and the
ballad • “Beluthahatchee Bill” • is designated a
Literary Landmark • by Friends of Libraries U.S.A.
• Florida Center for the Book • The Council for
Florida Libraries March 13, 2003
•
oodrow “Woody” Wilson
Guthrie was born on July
14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma,
the son of Charles Edward and Nora
Belle (Tanner) Guthrie. His mother
died of Huntington’s chorea when
he was a child, a disease that would
eventually take his life as well.
W
Photo courtesy of the
Woody Guthrie Foundation
and Archives
Guthrie attended Brooklyn College,
and served in the U.S. Merchant
1
Marine from 1942 to1945. His three marriages, which
all ended in divorce, produced seven children, including
a son, Arlo, who like his father is a folksinger, and a
daughter, Nora, who is president of the Woody Guthrie
Foundation in New York.
Guthrie’s impoverished childhood years in dust bowlOklahoma influenced the rest of his life and led him to
champion America’s poor and downtrodden; his work
to raise social consciousness is reflected in his books
and his songs. His early musical performances ranged
from impromptu sessions at various skid rows to Madison Square Garden. One of Guthrie’s best-known songs,
“This Land Is Your Land,” originally contained such radical verses that it was not until they were removed that
the song became popular.
Woody Guthrie died in Queens, New York, on October 3,
1967. His papers are held by the Woody Guthrie Foundation in New York City.
•
The site is the home of Florida author Stetson Kennedy,
a close friend of Woody Guthrie. Located on Lake Beluthahatchee in Fruit Cove, Florida, just south of Jacksonville, the home was a favorite of Guthrie’s during the late
1940s and early 1950s. It was there that he completed
the final draft of his autobiographical Seeds of Man
(1976) and wrote the ballad “Beluthahatchee Bill” (about
Kennedy), and some 57 other songs including his bestknown ballad, “This Land is Your Land.” Facsimiles of
some of these songs, in Guthrie’s handwriting, have
been brought home to Florida and are displayed in the
Guthrie Room of the house.
Beluthatchee Bill, Beluthatchee Bill,
Freedom lovin’, freedom huntin, eazy ridin Bill
Ya’ve hung me, ya’ve swung me, ya beat me to y’r gill,
But y’ dident slack my speed, not Beluthatchee Bill.1
______________
1
BELUTHATCHEE BILL by Woody Guthrie.
© Copyright 1994 by WOODY GUTHRIE PUBLICATIONS, INC.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
2
Photo courtesy of Allan C. Reichert
Randolph Caldecott — Burial Site
Evergreen Cemetery
505 N. Rodriquez Street
St. Augustine, Florida 32084
www.rcsamerica.com
Dedicated on March 20, 2005
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • Evergreen Cemetery St.
Augustine, Florida • Randolph Caldecott 1846 1886 • The Caldecott Medal, commissioned in 1938,
was named • in honor of English illustrator, artist,
and sculptor • Randolph Caldecott. It is awarded
annually by the • Association for Library Service to
Children, • American Library Association, to the
artist of the • “most distinguished” American picture
book for children • published during the preceding
year. As a tribute to his • life and art, this burial site
is designated a • Literary Landmark by Friends of
Libraries U.S.A. • Friends of the Library of St. Johns
County, Inc. • Randolph Caldecott Society of America
March 20, 2005
3
•
andolph Caldecott was born
on March 22, 1846, in Chester,
England, the son of John Caldecott,
a businessman and accountant, and
Mary Dinah (Brookes) Caldecott.
R
Caldecott’s artistic talent emerged
when he was a young child as he
Photo courtesy of
Allan C. Reichert
sketched, created models of animals in clay and wood, and painted. He left school in 1861, at age fifteen, and took a
job at the Whitchurch & Ellesmere Bank in Wirswall, a
small village near Chester. His walks in the nearby countryside are reflected in many of his later illustrations.
While working at the bank, he studied in the evenings
at the Manchester School of Art. By 1870, several of
his drawings had been published and he was able to
leave his bank job, move to London, and support himself as a successful magazine illustrator. In 1880
Caldecott married Marian Brind.
Although he is considered a major mid-19th century
artist, Caldecott is best known for his illustrations of
children’s literature. Among his first and most successful works are the illustrations for The House that Jack
Built and The Diverting History of John Gilpin, both
prepared for the 1877 Christmas season. The books
were so successful that he produced illustrations for
two more such books each year until his death. By
1882, he had achieved international fame with his
Nursery Rhymes, which sold 867,000 copies.
Ill health dating to Caldecott’s childhood caused him to
seek warm climates during the harsh England winters
and he spent many winters in the Mediterranean and
other warm climates. Traveling in the United States,
the Caldecotts arrived in St. Augustine, Florida, in the
fall of 1885. During an especially cold February, Caldecott became ill. He died on February 13, 1886, and
is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in St. Augustine. (The
date on the grave marker is incorrect. The original
certificate of death, kept in a box and forgotten for
almost a century, is held by the St. Augustine Historical Society.)
4
Randolph J. Caldecott’s contribution to children’s literature is recognized each year with the Caldecott Medal,
given to the artist who has created the most distinguished picture book of the year. The Caldecott Medal is
presented by the Association for Library Service to
Children, a division of the American Library Association.
In 1991, the St. Johns County Public Library dedicated
the Randolph Caldecott Children’s Room, which is located in the Main Library. The Randolph Caldecott Society
of America maintains a cooperative partnership with
the library and makes an annual donation of the Caldecott Medal winning books to the Caldecott Children’s
Room.
Some of Caldecott’s papers are held by the University of
Southern Mississippi and Harvard University.
•
The Randolph Caldecott burial site at Evergreen Cemetery was designated a Literary Landmark on March 20,
2005. Nomination of this Literary Landmark site was a
joint effort of Friends of the Library of St. Johns County,
Inc. and the Randolph Caldecott Society of America,
which was founded in St. Augustine in 1983. The marker honors the memory of Randolph Caldecott and his
career as an English illustrator, artist, and sculptor.
An Artist whose sweet and dainty grace has not in its
time been surpassed, whose humour was as quaint
as it was inexhaustible.
— From the eulogy for Randolph Caldecott
by Sir Frederick Leighton, President of the Royal
Academy, on May 1, 1886. These words are recorded on the Breton Peasant child memorial in St. Paul’s
Cathedral in London, England.
5
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Historic Site
18700 S. CR 325 • Cross Creek, Florida
352-466-3672
www.floridastateparks.org/marjoriekinnanrawlings
Designated a Literary Landmark in 1988;
plaque presented on August 8,1996.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • Cross Creek • Beloved home
of • Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings • From 1928 to
1953 • Designated by the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
• Society and the Florida Center for the Book • On
the occasion of her 100th birthday • August 8, 1996
•
arjorie Kinnan Rawlings
was born on August 8, 1896,
in Washington, D.C., the daughter
of Frank R. and Ida May (Traphagen) Kinnan. She received her
A.B. from the University of Wisconsin in 1918.
M
Photo courtesy of
University of Florida George
A. Smathers Libraries,
Archives & Manuscripts.
In 1919, she married Charles A.
Rawlings, a writer, and in 1928, after a career as a
reporter in Kentucky and New York, she settled at Cross
Creek, Florida. Following her divorce from Rawlings in
1933, she remained at Cross Creek. She married Norton
Sanford Baskin, a hotelier, in 1941; the couple had a
6
home in St. Augustine, but Rawlings maintained Cross
Creek as a retreat. She is best known for The Yearling
(1938), for which she won a Pulitzer Prize, and Cross
Creek (1942). Between 1939 and 1953 she produced
nine books, most of which described her friends and
neighbors and the natural beauty of her rural community.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings died of a cerebral hemorrhage
in St. Augustine on December 14, 1953. She is buried
at Island Grove, Florida, not far from her beloved Cross
Creek. Her papers are held by the University of Florida,
Gainesville.
•
Friends of Libraries U.S.A. announced their designation
of the Cross Creek home as a Literary Landmark during
the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society’s Golden Anniversary celebration of Rawlings’s most successful novel,
The Yearling. The celebration was held April 7-9, 1988,
at Cross Creek and at Gainesville, Florida.
In August, 1996, after a year of renovation, the house,
now known as the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Historic Site, was opened to the public with an ice cream
social celebrating the 100th anniversary of her birth. The
Literary Landmark plaque was presented to the Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings Society on this occasion, and is mounted on an informational sign at the walk-through entrance
to the site.
The eight-room house is located about four miles west
of Island Grove off U.S. Highway 301. About eighty percent of the author’s furniture and china remains in the
house. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park is
open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. every day, and is
located between Ocala and Gainesville in Cross Creek.
It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not
bought. It may be used but not owned. It gives itself in
response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors,
lovers and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind
and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic
secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.
— Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Cross Creek
7
Photo courtesy of Suzanne Riccitiello
Stephen Crane
Lilian Place
111 Silver Beach Avenue
Daytona Beach, Florida 32118
877-893-7579
Dedicated in May 1990.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • May 1990 • Designates • this
site where • Stephen Crane • stayed following his shipwreck • and was inspired to write • “The Open Boat”
•
tephen Crane was born on
November 1, 1871, in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Jonathan Townley and Mary Helen
(Peck) Crane. His father was a
minister. He attended Lafayette
College in 1890, and Syracuse
University in 1891, but never
finished college.
S
Crane published his first book,
Maggie, under a pseudonym in
1893, after it was refused by several publishers because
they felt Crane depicted the slums with too much realism. His second book, a Civil War novel, The Red Badge
of Courage, published in 1895, brought him international recognition. The Open Boat, The Blue Hotel, and
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky are some of Crane’s
best-known short stories.
8
Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis on June 5, 1900, in
Badenweiler, Germany; he is buried at Hillside, New
Jersey.
Stephen Crane’s papers are held by Columbia University,
New York.
•
As noted on the plaque, Stephen Crane stayed at Lilian
Place after his shipwreck in Ponce Inlet in 1897. There,
the author, most famous for his book The Red Badge of
Courage, was inspired to write the short story The Open
Boat, a fictional account based on the harrowing episode
Crane and four other men experienced when they were
shipwrecked off the coast of Daytona Beach, spending
thirty hours in a dingy before they found their way to
shore.
Lilian Place was built in 1894 by Lawrence Thompson of
Cincinnati, Ohio, owner of a general store on Beach
Street in Daytona. Lilian Place is the oldest home on the
beach side of Daytona Beach. When it was built, there
were no bridges to the mainland and, in order to cross
the Halifax River, residents and visitors to the home had
to row, sail, or take a ferry. The Thompson family owned
the home for 101 years, but it has changed hands twice
since the family sold it in 1985. The “Lilian” of Lilian
Place was the sister of Lawrence Thompson. Her cousin,
Alice Dalton, named the house in Lilian’s honor as the
longest lived member of the original family. Lilian Place,
also listed on the United States Department of
Interior’s Register of Historic Places, is now a bed and
breakfast hotel.
It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No
one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it
dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him.
They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends, friends in a more
curiously iron-bound degree than may be common.
— Stephen Crane
The Open Boat
9
Photo by Ted Hollins; courtesy Preserve Eatonville Community
•
Zora Neale Hurston — Eatonville
Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts
222 East Kennedy Boulevard
Eatonville, Florida 32751
407-647-3307 • www.zoranealehurston.cc
Dedicated on June 28, 2004.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • Matilda Moseley Home •
Eatonville • site of the home of the childhood best
friend of • Zora Neale Hurston • who, throughout
her writings, celebrates the • rich culture of
Eatonville as representative of • rural, southern
African-descended folks • is designated a Literary
Landmark • by Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Friends
of Libraries U.S.A. • June 28, 2004 • Black Caucus
of the American Library Association – BCALA
•
ora Neale Hurston
was born on January
7, 1891, in Notasulga,
Alabama, the daughter of
John and Lucy (Potts)
Hurston. Her father was
© USPS. All rights reserved.
a preacher and her mother a seamstress. Hurston attended Howard University
from 1923 to 1924, and received her B.A. from Barnard
Z
10
College in 1928. Her two marriages, to Herbert Sheen
(1927) and Albert Price III (1939), ended in divorce.
Hurston was a writer and folklorist. She collected folklore in the South, Jamaica, Haiti, and Bermuda. From
1938 to 1939 she collected Florida folklore for the
Depression-era Works Progress Administration. Her first
novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, was published in 1934.
During her lifetime she wrote seven books and many
short stories, plays, and magazine articles. Hurston’s
1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and her
autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), are
among her most famous works.
Hurston’s contributions to literature are significant – she
combined literary style and first-hand folklore research
to produce literary pictures of a South that otherwise
might not have survived. Zora Neale Hurston died in
Fort Pierce, Florida, on January 28, 1960.
In 1990, the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of
Fine Arts was established in Eatonville to provide a place
in the heart of the community where the public can view
the work of artists of African descent.
A commemorative stamp honoring Zora Neale Hurston
was issued by the United States Postal Service on January 24, 2003, and is pictured above.
Zora Neale Hurston’s manuscripts, letters, and other
materials are held by several libraries, including the University of Florida Library; the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library at Yale University; the Schomburg
Collection at the New York Public Library; Howard
University; Fisk University; and the University of South
Florida.
•
The Matilda Moseley home in Eatonville was dedicated on
June 28, 2004 as a Literary Landmark by the Friends of
Libraries U.S.A. during an American Library Association
tour of the historic community. The site was dedicated in
honor of Zora Neale Hurston, who, throughout her writings, celebrates the rich culture of Eatonville as representative of rural, southern African descendants.
In March 2004, Governor Jeb Bush selected Their
Eyes Were Watching God as the State of Florida’s first
11
annual Read Together Florida! book to promote reading
statewide.
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
For some they come in with the tide. For others they
sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight,
never landing until the Watcher turns his away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That
is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things
they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the
truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
— Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Photo courtesy of Laura (Riding) Jackson Preservation Foundation
Laura (Riding) Jackson
Laura (Riding) Jackson Cottage
Located on the grounds of the
Environmental Learning Center
255 Live Oak Drive • Wabasso, Florida 32963
772-589-6711
Dedicated on January 22, 1995.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • Designated A Literary
Landmark • by the Friends of Libraries U.S.A. •
January 22, 1995 • Home of • Laura (Riding)
Jackson • from 1943-1991. • “The most consistently good • woman poet of all time.” • Who’s Who in
20th Century Literature.
12
•
L
aura (Riding) Jackson was
born in New York City on
January 16, 1901, the daughter of
Nathaniel Reichenthal and Sadie
Edersheim Reichenthal. As Laura Riding, she was a widely known poet
of the 1920s and 1930s, and was a
member of The Fugitives, a group
Photo courtesy of
of poets associated with Vanderbilt
Ward Hutchinson
University in the 1920s. Members
of the group included Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe
Ransom and Allen Tate. She lived and collaborated with
the English poet and writer Robert Graves in the 1920s
and 1930s. Together they operated a small literary publishing press in Majorca, Spain, publishing such writers as
Gertrude Stein. Riding renounced poetry about 1940,
married Time magazine critic and poetry editor Schuyler
B. Jackson, and moved to this small frame home in Wabasso, Florida. The couple grew citrus, lived very simply,
and worked on a comprehensive study of language until
he died in 1968. She continued working on this project
after his death, completing it with the assistance of a
Guggenheim fellowship. The book was posthumously
published in 1997 by the University Press of Virginia as
A New Foundation for the Definition of Words and
Supplementary Essays. She was awarded the prestigious
Bollingen Prize for poetry in 1991.
Laura (Riding) Jackson died in Wabasso, Florida, on September 2, 1991. Her papers are held by Cornell University, the New York Public Library, and several other
university libraries.
•
L aura (Riding) Jackson’s home was originally located in
Wabasso, off County Road 510. It was constructed of
locally milled Florida pine in about 1910, when Indian
River County was still a wilderness. The two-story,
1,400-square-foot home has been described as a fine
example of Florida’s historic “cracker” style of vernacular architecture. The home is furnished with Jackson’s
belongings at the time of her death.
Toward the end of her life, Laura sold her property to
commercial interests, but retained ownership of the
13
house and resided there until her death in 1991. The
Laura (Riding) Jackson Board of Literary Management
transferred ownership of the house to the Laura Riding
Jackson Preservation Foundation. Following her death,
the house faced demolition but, in August, 1994, it was
moved to its present site just north of Vero Beach, on
the grounds of the Environmental Learning Center, on
an island in the Indian River Lagoon on land leased from
Indian River County. The house has become a focal point
for the study of literature, philosophy, and history, and
is an example of a vanishing architectural style and the
symbol of an older, environmentally-sensitive way of life.
With the face goes a mirror
As with the mind a world.
Likeness tells the doubting eye
That strangeness is not strange.
At an early hour and knowledge
Identity not yet familiar
Looks back upon itself from later,
And seems itself.
— Laura Riding,With the Face
Ernest Lyons
Ernest Lyons House
315 Seminole Street • Stuart, Florida
Private Residence
Dedicated on May 23, 1992 .
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • Ernest F. Lyons • This site is
designated a • Literary Landmark where • Ernest F.
Lyons lived and wrote • “The Last Cracker Barrel” &
“My Florida” • (1937-1990) • by • The Martin
County Library Association, Inc.,
Stuart Heritage, Inc. • & Florida
Center for the Book
•
rnest Lyons was born on
March 4, 1905, in Laurel,
Mississippi. His family moved to
Stuart, Florida, in 1915. He and his
wife, Ezelle, had two sons.
E
Reprinted by permission of
Scripps Treasure Coast
Newspapers
14
Photo courtesy of Sally Glassburn
Although Lyons joined The Stuart News in 1931, at age
ten he wrote for the paper as his school’s correspondent
for the fourth grade. He was president and editor of The
Stuart News; his editorial page column won several
Florida Press Association awards, including “First Place
for Best Column” in 1967. He was a staunch environmentalist and the founding president of Florida Outdoor
Writers Association. He retired in 1975, but continued
to write columns for the News for several years.
Ernest Lyons, “Ernie” to his friends, was remembered
for his honest portrayal of people. Long-time Stuart resident Mabel Witham, who coordinated the dedication of
the house, noted, “He saw the uniqueness in everyone.”
In a column headlined, “What shines for you? What do
you love?” Lyons wrote, “I feel an abiding appreciation
15
that, for all my failings and all the things I could have
been, I have been blessed to be a country newspaper editor in a place just growing out of being a small town.”
His two books, My Florida (1969) and The Last Cracker
Barrel (1975), are compilations of his columns from The
Stuart News.
Ernest Lyons died at his home on Seminole Street in
Stuart, Florida, on April 6, 1990.
The Stuart Heritage Museum, 161 SW Flagler Avenue, Stuart, Florida, holds materials related to the
dedication of the Ernest Lyons Home. Call 772-2204600 for more information.
•
The Ernest Lyons House was built in 1890 on the south
bank of the St. Lucie River by Otto Stypmann, one of the
founding fathers of Potsdam, Florida, now Stuart. In
1891, the house served as the community’s first schoolhouse with two rooms — one for the upper grades, the
other for the lower grades, all taught by Miss Kate
Hamilton. The house, which was also used as a community center, was the site of the town’s first formal church
service, and its first wedding in 1892.
In 1895, Morris Johns bought the house and moved it
from the banks of the St. Lucie River to its present location at 315 Seminole Street, adding a kitchen, a dining
room, and a porch to the house. In 1897, Stuart’s first
baby was born in the home, to the Johns family.
Michael G. Littman, an attorney, purchased the house in
1910. In the 1920s, Walter Moore owned the property, selling it in 1937 to Ernest Lyons and his wife, Ezelle.
The Lyons family added a Florida room and a front
porch.
Let’s say that the columns turned into a labor of love,
the editor vicariously enjoying the outdoors through
his typewriter when he couldn’t get there any other
way, or recalling when his town — now a bright little
city casting a glow in the sky — was a place where the
Seminoles used to come in and trade at Uncle Walter
Kitching’s store.
— Ernest Lyons
From My Florida
16
John D. MacDonald
Slip F-18, Bahia Mar,
Berth of Travis McGee’s Busted Flush
Radisson Bahia Mar Beach Resort
801 Seabreeze Blvd. • Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33316
954-764-2233
Dedicated on February 21, 1987.
Rededicated on October 2, 2004.
Plaque reads: Slip F-18 • Bahia Mar Marina •
Dedicated to the “Busted Flush” • Home of Travis
McGee • Fictional Hero & Salvage Consultant • Created
by • John D. MacDonald, Author • 1916-1986 •
Designated A Literary Landmark • February 21, 1987
•
ohn D. MacDonald was born on July 24, 1916, in
Sharon, Pennsylvania, the son of Eugene Andrew and
Marguerite Grace (Dann) MacDonald. He attended the
University of Pennsylvania from 1934 to 1935, and
J
17
received his B.S. in 1938 from Syracuse University, and his M.B.A. from
Harvard University in 1939. He
married Dorothy Mary Prentiss on
July 3, 1937; they had one child, a
son.
MacDonald began writing mysteries
for pulp magazines in the 1940s and
John D. MacDonald.
Photo courtesy of
1950s, then moved on to paperback
University of Florida,
novels. While best known for his
George A. Smathers
Libraries Archives and
mysteries, especially the Travis McManuscripts.
Gee series, MacDonald wrote several
works of science fiction. A number of his books were
made into films, most notably Cape Fear, based on his
book The Executioners. He once said that he wrote “to
please myself rather than other literary writers and professors of English and critics in learned journals.” But he
pleased many millions of others, some as far away as
Japan, where his books were immensely popular.
Shortly before his death, John D. MacDonald wrote an
essay, Reading for Survival, published by Florida Center
for the Book and the Center for the Book in the Library
of Congress. This publication is available in limited quantities from Florida Center for the Book.
John D. MacDonald died on December 28, 1986, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, following complications from heart
surgery. His papers are held by the University of Florida,
Gainesville.
•
The dedication of Slip F-18 on February 21, 1987,
was co-sponsored by Florida Center for the Book; the
Literary Landmarks Association; the Bahia Mar Resort
and Yachting Center; and the City of Fort Lauderdale.
Nearly two hundred McGee fans gathered at Slip F-18
at Bahia Mar, berth of the fictional houseboat the
Busted Flush, home to Travis McGee, to dedicate the
landmark. Fort Lauderdale Mayor Robert Cox unveiled the plaque, and the Bahia Mar and the City of
Fort Lauderdale declared February 21, 1987, “Travis
McGee Day.” Copies of The Deep Blue Good-By, MacDonald’s first Travis McGee novel, were presented to
attendees and hotel guests.
18
At the time, seventy million copies of MacDonald’s
twenty-one Travis McGee novels had been sold. For a
time following the dedication, a sportfisherman boat
owned by Ed Glatz, a Bahia Mar Hotel official, occupied the fictional F-18 slip and bore the Busted Flush
name of McGee’s houseboat. When Glatz’s boat was
out, other boaters asked “Where’s Travis?”
In November 2002 the plaque was removed to prepare the slip and the marina for major renovations of
the Bahia Mar Marina. Slip F-18 was gone — temporarily, but Bahia Mar Hotel had the plaque restored
to its original luster and will again display it on hotel
property. On October 2, 2004, the site was rededicated by Florida Center for the Book.
It was to have been a quiet evening at home.
Home is the Busted Flush, 52-foot barge-type houseboat, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Lauderdale.
— John D. MacDonald
The Deep Blue Good-By
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Surfside Towers Ocean Condominium
9511 Collins Avenue • Surfside, Florida
Private Residence
Dedicated on June 24, 1994.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Registry • Isaac Bashevis Singer •
Nobel Prize Winner in Literature • lived and worked
here • from 1977 - 1991 • Designated a Literary
Landmark • by • Friends of Libraries U.S.A. and
• Florida Center for the Book • June 24, 1994
•
saac Bashevis Singer was born
on July 14, 1904, in Radzymin
(some sources note Leoncin),
Poland, then part of the Russian
Empire, the son of Pinchos Menachem, a rabbi and author, and
Bathsheba (Zylberman) Singer. He
was a student at the Rabbinical
I
Photo courtesy of Special
Collections and Archives,
FAU Libraries.
19
Photo courtesy of Suzanne McGlynn, Surfside Public Library
Seminary in Warsaw but, after completing his studies,
chose not to become a rabbi, becoming instead a journalist for the Yiddish press in Poland.
Singer came to the United States in 1935 and became a
U.S. citizen in 1943. From 1935 to 1991, he was a
member of the staff of the Jewish Daily Forward. Singer
and his first wife, Rachel, divorced; in 1940 he married
Alma Haimann. Most of his work was written in Yiddish,
and then translated into English and scores of other languages. His writing earned him widespread praise and
awards. In 1978, Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Singer was Distinguished Professor at the University of Miami in Coral Gables from 1978 to 1988,
during which time he taught a Fiction Writing course
with Professor Lester Goran.
Isaac Bashevis Singer died on July 24, 1991, in Surfside,
Florida. The majority of his papers are held by the Harry
Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University
of Texas; other papers, as well as furnishings and material from his study, are held by Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.
•
Isaac Bashevis Singer lived and wrote at the Surfside
Towers Ocean Condominium from 1977 until his death
in 1991. The plaque that marks the building as a Literary Landmark was presented to Alma Singer, the author’s
widow, on June 24, 1994, by Florida Center for the
20
Book and Friends of Libraries U.S.A., to coincide with
the American Library Association’s annual meeting in
Miami. The plaque is located at the outside entrance of
the building. At the dedication, Mrs. Singer observed
that her husband’s writing flourished after their move to
the apartment.
We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.
— Isaac Bashevis Singer
Stories for Children
Photo courtesy of Lynn Kaufelt
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop House
624 White Street • Key West, Florida
Private Residence
Dedicated on January 4, 1993.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • Designates the house • (1938
- 1948) of poet • Elizabeth Bishop • “Should we
have stayed at home,/ • wherever that may be?” •
a Literary Landmark
•
lizabeth Bishop was born on February 8, 1911, in
Worcester, Massachusetts, the daughter of William
Thomas and Gertrude (Bulmer) Bishop. Her parents
owned the J. W. Bishop contracting firm. Her father
E
21
Photo by
© Rollie Mc Kenna
died when she was eight months
old and her mother, distraught
over his death, suffered a mental
breakdown, becoming unable to
care for Elizabeth. She was then
raised by her maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia and an aunt in
Boston.
Following her graduation from Vassar College in
1934, Bishop traveled abroad before moving to Key
West, where she lived from 1938 to 1948. Her first
book of poems, North & South, was published in
1946; the book was reprinted with additions in 1955
as North & South: A Cold Spring and won a Pulitzer
Prize. She was awarded a National Book Award in
1967 for Questions of Travel, and in 1970 for The
Complete Poems. Bishop was a painter as well as a
poet, and although she was independently wealthy,
much of her poetry is set in working-class settings.
From 1949 to 1950, Bishop was the Consultant in
Poetry, now known as Poet Laureate, at the Library of
Congress. She spent most of the 1950s and 1960s in
Brazil. In 1966, she took a teaching position at the
University of Washington in Seattle. She returned to
Brazil for a brief period, but spent her last years in
Boston where she wrote and taught poetry at
Harvard.
Elizabeth Bishop died in Boston, Massachusetts, on
October 6, 1979. Her papers are held by Washington
University, St. Louis.
•
On her first visit to Key West, Elizabeth Bishop rented
an apartment at 529 Whitehead Street. From 1938 to
1946, she had a nineteenth-century clapboard eyebrow
house (two-story homes where the second-story windows are partially covered by the roof, thus resembling
eyebrows) at 624 White Street. In 1941, to save money,
Bishop rented her White Street home to U.S. Navy personnel stationed in the area and roomed with Marjorie
Carr Stevens at 623 Margaret Street. In December
1948, she moved to a large apartment at 611 Frances
Street.
22
The Elizabeth Bishop House was dedicated on January
4, 1993.
Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
like a dog looking for a place to sleep in, l
listen to it growling.
Think how they must look now, the mangrove keys
lying out there unresponsive to the lightning
in dark, coarse-fibred families,
Where occasionally a heron may undo his head,
shake up his feathers, make an uncertain comment
when the surrounding water shines.
— Elizabeth Bishop
From Little Exercise in North and South
Photo courtesy of Heritage House Museum, Key West
Robert Frost
Robert Frost Cottage
410 Caroline Street • Key West, Florida 33040
305-296-3573
www.heritagehouse.org
Dedicated on March 25, 1995.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • The Robert Frost Cottage •
site where • the great poet was a welcome visitor •
from 1941 to 1960 • “Earth’s the right place for
love; • I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”
• Florida Center for the Book March 25, 1995
23
•
Photo courtesy of Heritage
House Museum, Key West
Robert Frost was born on March
26, 1874, in San Francisco, California, the son of William Prescott
and Isabel (Moodie) Frost. His
father was a newspaper reporter
and editor, his mother a teacher.
He attended Dartmouth College in
1892 and Harvard University
from 1897 to 1899. On December 19, 1895, he married Elinor
Miriam White; the couple had six
children.
As a poet, Frost held posts as professor and poet-in-residence at many prestigious colleges. In 1920 he was a
co-founder of the Breadloaf School and Conference of
English at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.
He received many prizes and awards, among them four
Pulitzer Prizes for poetry: for New Hampshire in 1924;
for Collected Poems in 1931; for A Further Range in
1931; and for A Witness Tree in 1943.
Frost had a winter home in Miami he called “Pencil
Point.” The home, at 8101 SW 53 Avenue, consists of
twin clapboard cottages built in New England and
shipped to Miami by rail in 1942. While he spent many
winters at the cottage in Key West, he also used the
Miami house from time to time.
Robert Frost died on January 29, 1963, in Boston,
Massachusetts. Major repositories of his papers include
the Library of Congress, Harvard College Library,
University of New Hampshire, University of Virginia,
Dartmouth College Library, and Middlebury College.
•
The Robert Frost Cottage was dedicated as a Literary
Landmark on March 25, 1995, in the garden of the
Heritage House Museum, where Robert Frost stayed in
the garden cottage during frequent winter visits to Key
West. The cottage contains original furnishings, books,
letters, and various mementos pertaining to Frost.
Heritage House Museum was the home of Jessie Porter,
who is credited with encouraging the restoration and
preservation of many of the original homes in Key West
24
— historic Old Town exists largely owing to her efforts
during the 1950s and 1960s. Over time, Heritage House
and its gardens became the epicenter of Key West society. Miss Jessie’s gatherings were legendary, bringing together Frost, philosopher John Dewey, poets Wallace Stevens and Archibald MacLeish, and writer Thornton Wilder.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
— Robert Frost
they have to take you in.
From The Death of the Hired Man
Photo courtesy of Lynn Kaufelt
John Hersey
John Hersey House
719 Windsor Lane • Key West, Florida
Private Residence
Dedicated on January 15, 1995.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • John Hersey • 1914-1993 •
Reporting death, he did not • proclaim it. • To life —
for all its heresy — • he was open and loving.
•
ohn Richard Hersey was born
in Tientsin, China, on June 17,
1914, and lived there until 1925,
when his family returned to the
United States. He worked as a journalist and war correspondent for
Time magazine during World War
II. His first novel, A Bell for Adano,
J
Photo courtesy of
Constance Brewster
25
won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. The next year he wrote
Hiroshima, an account of the devastation and human
suffering resulting from the nuclear attack on the city,
taking a powerful stand against it. He was a vocal and
unremitting critic of the postwar nuclear arms race.
In 1960, after more than a decade of interest and
involvement in American public education, he published
The Child Buyer, which presents a case for individuality,
freedom of thought, integrity, faith in the young, and
above all, a better understanding of human needs in a
darkening world.
From 1965 to 1970, Hersey was Master at Pierson
College at Yale. He spent the following year as Writerin-Residence at the American Academy in Rome. He
was a past president of the Authors League of America
and was elected chancellor by the membership of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. After his
retirement from Yale, he lived in Key West, Florida,
and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. His 26th and
last book, Key West Tales, was published in 1993.
John Hersey died at home in Key West on March 24,
1993. He is buried on Martha’s Vineyard. His papers
are held by Yale University.
•
The John Hersey House was dedicated as a Literary
Landmark on January 15, 1995, during the 13th
Annual Key West Literary Seminar. Poet Richard Wilbur,
Hersey’s neighbor for twenty years, noted, “Of all the
artists I’ve known, John was the most sincerely averse
to publicity. He’d have been very alarmed to see us all
flocked here in front of his house.” Hersey’s wife,
Barbara, added, “He was very shy of publicity. But he
would be honored and overwhelmed by this, as I am.”
“What has kept the world safe from the bomb since
1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of
specific weapons, so much as it’s been memory. The
memory of what happened at Hiroshima.”
— John Hersey
Interview in Writers at Work,
Eighth Series (1988).
26
Photo courtesy of San Carlos Institute
José Martí
San Carlos Institute
516 Duval Street • Key West, Florida 33040
305-294-3887
www.cubanfest.com/sancarlos.htm
Dedicated on January 14, 1994.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • designates the • SAN CARLOS
• INSTITUTE • “La Casa Cuba” • founded in 1871 •
a Literary Landmark • in honor of its tradition of
academic excellence • as a shrine to Cuban heritage
and where • JOSE MARTI • 1853-1895 • Cuban
patriot, poet and scholar • united the exile community
in his campaign • for Cuba’s independence. •
Key West, Florida January 14, 1994
•
osé Martí was born on January
28, 1853, in Havana, Cuba, the
son of Don Mariano Martí y Navarro. He was barely sixteen when he
was sentenced to six years in a military prison for his anti-government,
pro-independence actions. Shortly
J
27
after his release from prison, he was deported to Spain,
where he continued his fight for Cuban independence.
While in Spain, Marti published the essay, El presidio
político en Cuba (The Political Military Prison in Cuba)
(1871), and earned academic degrees in philosophy and
law from the University of Zaragoza. During this time,
he traveled briefly to France and then to Guatemala,
where, in 1875, he met and married Doña Carmen
Zayas Bazón, the daughter of a wealthy Cuban exile. In
1878, the couple returned to Cuba but, once again, his
revolutionary beliefs and actions led to his deportation.
Martí moved to New York and for the next fifteen years
tirelessly campaigned for the liberation of Cuba.
In 1892, after a lifetime devoted to the struggle for
Cuban independence, Martí, by then nearly forty years
old, went to Key West, the heart of the fragmented
Cuban exile community. It was there that he organized
the Cuban Revolutionary Party and the movement
that would lead to the 1898 defeat of the Spanish
army and the establishment of a free Cuba in 1902.
Martí died in this struggle, falling in battle on May 19,
1895, in Dos Rios, Oriente Province, Cuba, during the
Cuban revolution.
•
The San Carlos Institute, founded by Cuban immigrants,
is committed to the preservation of Cuban cultural heritage. The building houses a library and a museum rich
with Key West history, focusing on 19th- and 20th-century Cuban exiles and their work. In 1992, the building,
by then 121 years old, was completely restored. Today,
the building is also the principal venue for the Key West
Literary Seminar, held each January.
Designation of the site as a Literary Landmark recognizes the Institute’s tradition of academic excellence
and its existence as a shrine to Cuban heritage, while
also honoring the achievement of the Cuban patriot,
poet and scholar, José Martí, who united the Cuban
exile community in the fight for Cuban independence.
It is difficult to separate Martí the revolutionary from
Martí the poet and writer. His famous poem, Dos
Patrias, is quoted in part below.
28
Dos Patrias
Dos patrias tengo yo: Cuba y la noche.
¿O son una las dos? No bien retira
su majestad el sol, con largos velos
Y un clavel en la mano, silenciosa
Cuba cual viuda triste me aparece.
English Translation
Two Mother Countries
Two mother countries I have: Cuba and the night.
Or is one the two? It retires not well
its Majesty the sun, with long veils
and clavel in the hand, quiet
Cuba as sad widow appears to me.
— José Martí, From Dos Patrias
Photo courtesy of Wyndham Casa Marina Resort
Wallace Stevens
Wyndham Casa Marina Resort
1500 Reynolds Street • Key West, Florida 33040
305-296-3535
Dedicated on January 14, 1996.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • Designates • Marriott’s •
Casa Marina Resort • where poet Wallace Stevens
(1879-1955) • spent his winters in Key West •
“In my room, the world is beyond my understanding
• But when I walk I see that it consists • of three or
four hills and a cloud” • A Literary Landmark
29
•
allace Stevens was born on
October 2, 1879, in Reading,
Pennsylvania, the son of Garrett Barcalow and Margaretha Catharine
(Zeller) Stevens. His father was a
lawyer and his mother a schoolteacher. He attended Harvard University from 1897 to
1900 and received his LL.B. in 1903 from the New York
Law School. He married Elsie Viola Kachel on September
21, 1909; the couple had one child, a daughter.
W
Although he was best known for his poetry, Stevens
spent much of his working life in the fields of law and
insurance. From 1916 until his death in 1955 he was
vice president of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company of Hartford, Connecticut.
Stevens’s first poems appeared in 1914, in the pages of
Poetry magazine, under the pen name Peter Parasol.
During his lifetime he wrote more than 400 poems and
20 books of poetry, including Notes toward a Supreme
Fiction (1942), The Auroras of Autumn (1950), and
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1954).
Among his many awards for poetry are the Bollingen
Prize in Poetry, 1950, and the National Book Award for
The Auroras of Autumn, 1951, and for The Collected
Poems of Wallace Stevens, 1955. He was also awarded
the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1955 for The Collected
Poems of Wallace Stevens.
Wallace Stevens died on August 2, 1955, in Hartford,
Connecticut. His papers are held by the Harvard College
Library.
•
The plaque was dedicated during the 14th Annual Key
West Literary Seminar.
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
— Wallace Stevens, The Idea of Order at Key West
30
Photo courtesy of the US Navy/Harry S. Truman Library
Harry S. Truman
Little White House
111 Front Street • Key West, Florida 33040
305-294-9911
www.trumanlittlewhitehouse.com
Dedicated on January 14, 1994.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. •
Literary Landmarks Register • Harry S. Truman:
President, Author, and Avid Reader • Vacationed in
Key West Between 1946-1952. • Little White
House • is designated a Literary Landmark •
by Friends of Libraries U.S.A.
•
arry S. Truman was born on
May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri, the son of John Anderson
and Martha Ellen (Young) Truman. His father was a farmer.
Although Truman was an excellent
student, his parents could not
Photo courtesy of the
US Navy/Harry S.
afford to send him to college, and
Truman Library
his poor eyesight prevented him
from attending West Point. In 1917, Truman joined
the Army, rising to the rank of captain and seeing
action in France. When he left the Army he married
Elizabeth “Bess” Virginia Wallace on June 18, 1919;
they had one child, a daughter, Margaret.
H
31
Truman attended Kansas City Law School in Kansas City,
Missouri, from 1923 to 1925. He served as a judge in
Jackson County, Missouri, prior to serving as U.S. Senator from Missouri from 1935 to 1945. In 1944,
President Franklin Roosevelt chose him as his running
mate. After their inauguration in January 1945, Truman
served as Vice President until April, 1945, when President Roosevelt died. Truman became the thirty-third
President of the United States, a position he would hold
until 1953. His Memoirs were published in two volumes:
Decisions, 1955, and Years of Trial and Hope, 1956.
Harry S. Truman died in Kansas City, Missouri on December 26, 1972. Truman’s papers are held by the Truman Presidential Museum & Library in Independence,
Missouri.
•
The Little White House, built in 1890, served as the first
officers’ quarters on the naval station. The house was
built as a duplex with Quarters A for the base commandant and Quarters B for the paymaster. In the early
1900s the house was converted to a single-family
dwelling and used by the base commandant. During
World War I, Thomas Edison lived in the house while
donating his services to the Navy.
From 1946 to 1952, the site was the vacation home
of President Harry S. Truman. During his years in the
White House, President Truman spent a total of 175
days in Key West at the house. Today, as Florida’s only
Presidential museum, the Little White House provides
a personal glimpse of one of America’s Presidents.
David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a
biography of Truman, dedicated the Harry S. Truman
Little White House Museum a Literary Landmark on
January 14, 1994, during the 12th Annual Key West
Literary Seminar.
The Little White House is also listed on the National
Register of Historic Places.
The buck stops here.
Sign on Harry S. Truman’s White House desk
32
Photo courtesy of Lynn Kaufelt
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams House
1431 Duncan Street • Key West, Florida
Private Residence
Dedicated on January 16, 2004.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • Friends of Libraries U.S.A. •
Designates this house • Residence of playwright •
Tennessee Williams • “I have always depended on the
• kindness of strangers” • A Literary Landmark •
Florida Center for the Book • January 16, 2004
•
ennessee Williams was
born on March 26, 1911,
in Columbus, Mississippi, the
son of Cornelius Coffin and
Edwina (Dakin) Williams. His
© USPS. All rights reserved.
father was a traveling salesman. Williams attended the University of Missouri from
1931 to 1933, and Washington University in St. Louis
1936 to 1937; he received his A.B. from the University
of Iowa in 1938.
T
Williams was a playwright, novelist, short story writer,
and poet. He was first published in 1927, when he won
third prize in an essay contest sponsored by Smart Set
magazine. His first published story appeared in Weird
33
Tales in August 1928. He became a full-time writer in
1944. Some of his plays and best-known works include
Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, The
Rose Tattoo, and The Glass Menagerie. He won a
Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for A Streetcar Named Desire,
and in 1955 he won a second Pulitzer Prize for Cat on
a Hot Tin Roof.
Tennessee Williams died on February 24, 1983, in his
suite at Hotel Elysee, in New York City. He is buried in
St. Louis, Missouri. His papers are held by Columbia
University Rare Books & Manuscript Library, New York
City, as well as in other academic institutions.
•
The Tennessee Williams Literary Landmark was sponsored by Florida Center for the Book, and was unveiled
during the 2004 Tennessee Williams Society Conference
in Key West.
Tennessee Williams first came to Key West in l941,
“because” he said, “I liked to swim and because Key
West was the southernmost point in America.” At the
time, he was thirty years old and his masterpieces, A
Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, Suddenly
Last Summer, and Camino Real were just around the
corner. Williams once wrote, “[Key West] was a mecca
for painters and writers in 1941. I met the poet
Elizabeth Bishop and artist Grant Wood there that
winter. There was a genteel boarding house called The
Trade Winds. It was operated by a grand dame from
Georgia. She suddenly remembered that she had a little shack in the back of the house that could be converted into living quarters for me . . . The rent was
seven dollars a week.“
In 1949 Williams bought a white clapboard, a story
and a half, red-shuttered Bahamian cottage which he
moved to the town’s outskirts. Here he fashioned a
compound, which included a spare one-room writing
studio he called Mad House, and a guest cottage with
a swimming pool. (A mosaic rose tattoo was depicted
on the pool’s floor).
You can be young without money but you can’t be old
— Tennessee Williams
without it.
Margaret, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Act 1.
34
Photo courtesy of Venice Area Public Library
Walter Farley
Venice Area Public Library
300 Nokomis Avenue South
Venice, Florida 34285
941-861-1330
www.sclibs.net/ven/venice.html
Dedicated on January 28, 1989.
Plaque reads: Friends of Libraries U.S.A. • Literary
Landmarks Register • January 1989 • Designates •
The Venice Public Library • A Literary Landmark in
honor of • WALTER FARLEY • Author of • THE BLACK
STALLION • for his contribution to the founding of the
• library and to children’s literature worldwide
•
alter Farley was born on
June 26, 1915, in Syracuse,
New York, the son of Walter and
Isabell (Vermilyea) Farley. His father
was assistant manager of a hotel.
As a small boy living in Syracuse,
Farley spent time with his uncle, a
Photo courtesy of
professional horseman and trainer
Venice Area Public Library
of race horses and show horses.
These happy days instilled in him a love of horses and
gave him a good background for the books that would
make him one of the most popular writers in America.
W
35
Farley attended Mercersburg Academy, Mercersburg,
Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. In 1941, he
worked as a copywriter for a New York advertising
agency. The Black Stallion, his first book, was published
in 1941, when Farley was 26. Enthusiastic fans urged
him to write more about Alec Ramsey and the Black
Stallion, but Farley’s World War II military service put
such plans on hold. He served in the Army from 1942
to 1946, occasionally working as a reporter for Yank
magazine. In 1945, he married Rosemary Lutz; they
had four children, who grew up on the family farm in
Pennsylvania and at their beach house in Florida.
Following the war Farley resumed the writing of the
adventures of Alec and the Black Stallion with The Black
Stallion Returns (1945), followed by more than twentyfive other books for juveniles and young adults. In
1979, a movie based on The Black Stallion was released;
a sequel, The Black Stallion Returns, was released in
1983. Mr. Farley served as a consultant for both movies.
On December 25, 2003, the film The Young Black
Stallion, based on Farley’s novel, was released by the
Walt Disney Company.
Walter Farley died on October 16, 1989, in Sarasota,
Florida, shortly before the publication of the twenty-first
book in the Black Stallion series, The Young Black
Stallion, which was written with his son Steve, who continues the series.
•
The plaque was dedicated by the Friends of the Venice
Area Public Library on January 28, 1989, in honor of
Walter and Rosemary Farley. Walter Farley’s interest in
children reached beyond writing for them. He actively
participated in children’s reading programs and made frequent appearances at schools, libraries, and book fairs.
The Walter Farley Wing of the Venice Public Library recognizes his contributions to children’s literature and his
many contributions to the library. A permanent exhibit of
Black Stallion memorabilia is on display there.
He was a giant of a horse, glistening black — too big
to be pure Arabian. His mane was like a crest, mounting, then falling low. His neck was long and slender,
36
and arched to the small, savagely beautiful head. The
head was that of the wildest of all wild creatures — a
stallion born wild — and it was beautiful, savage,
splendid. A stallion with a wonderful physical perfection that matched his savage, ruthless spirit.
— Walter Farley
The Black Stallion
37
Acknowledgments
lorida Center for the Book is grateful to the many
libraries, museums, foundations and individuals who
provided photographs and information about these
Florida Literary Landmarks.
F
Florida Center for the Book extends a special thanks
to Sally Reed, Executive Director, and Beth Nawalinski, Marketing & Public Relations Coordinator, Friends
of Libraries U.S.A. for providing background information about many of the Florida Literary Landmarks.
Florida Literary Landmarks
A publication of
Florida Center for the Book
Compiled by Carol Fitzgerald
with the editorial assistance of
Eileen McNally and Tara Zimmermann.
38
10
A publication of Florida Center for the Book
100 S. Andrews Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
www.browardlibrary.org/web/FCFTB/index.htm
954-357-7401
Florida Center for the Book was established at
Broward County Library in 1984 as the first affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of
Congress. The Center brings readers and writers
together, promotes books, reading and libraries, and celebrates the literary heritage of Florida.
2005