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Discover Mid-America — April 2009

Searching for ‘Old Florida’

For the past couple of years, my wife and I have spent part of the winter months in Southwest Florida. So far, we’ve avoided the high-rise condos that have replaced many of the state’s mangroves and salt marshes, opting for more frugal digs on Pine Island, lying below Charlotte Harbor just off Cape Coral.

This year we picked Englewood, an unincorporated community of 20,000 or so on the shore of Lemon Bay south of Venice. We’re staying in Old Englewood, a community that’s comparatively laid-back and rich in history. At its heart is Dearborn Street, developed from an oxen trail and footpath used to haul supplies from sailing vessels at Buchan’s Landing in the late 1800s.

In those days, the only way the area’s few residents got goods (and news) from the outside world was from the occasional boat that sailed up Lemon Bay (then called Mangrove Bay) and docked at the landing.

William and Mary Goff had become the area’s first non-Native American residents when they settled on Lemon Bay in 1878, buying 60 acres for $90. Six years later, three Nichols brothers arrived from Englewood, IL, and bought more than 1,000 acres (including the Goff property) and parceled it out in 10-acre plots for growing lemons. A major freeze in the 1890s wiped out the lemon trees, forcing the Nichols brothers to turn their lemon tree enterprise into Englewood’s first real estate development.

1950s postcard from writer’s collection

In 1896, the Quimby family built a large frame house just off Dearborn Street. The privately owned house has been restored and is considered to be Englewood’s oldest building.

Today, Dearborn Street is home to more than 50 businesses, including antique stores, specialty shops and bistros. Several buildings date to the 1920s, including Kelly’s Tavern, that began life as a horse stable, and the Englewood Hardware Store, built in 1920, that still retains its original wood floor and outside staircase. The original Buchan’s Landing, built in 1916, boasted a 250-foot dock and general store, and was the hub of the area’s business activity for many years.

The house we rented is at Buchan’s Landing Resort, located next to the old landing. It is a homey complex of several guesthouses and efficiency apartments with a boat basin and docks next to the bay. Taylor and Cindy Meals, formerly from Cleveland, bought the property 11 years ago when it was called Bayview Apartments & Marina. They refurbished the place, converting the office buildings to guesthouses, and added palm trees and other plantings.

“Everything came together at once,” Cindy said. “It was like it was meant to be. By the time we moved to Englewood, we had bought the resort, a convenience store and a house. We’ve been constantly busy ever since.”

Dearborn Street has its share of antique and collectible stores. I visited a pair of shops on each side of the street both called “Antiques on West Dearborn.” The one on the north side caught my attention with a collection of paper ephemera, which included old Florida maps and a sizeable collection of Florida postcards. One of the most interesting cards showed a Flanders “20” automobile plowing through the deep sand and muck of northern Florida during the 1911 Glidden Tour from New York to Jacksonville, FL, sponsored by the American Automobile Association. The card is an advertising piece for the Flanders Company.

Ken Kocab, local historian and antiquer, displays a 1950s souvenir tablecloth and mako shark skull at a shop in Englewood. (photo by Ken Weyand)

“The slippery red clay of the Carolinas was only surpassed in cussedness by the deep, shifting sands of Florida,” states the text, and goes on to state that “no car at any price and of any power could have done better. ” The Flanders Company went out of business in 1912.

Al Bernick, the north store’s proprietor, said he has been involved in the antique trade for only a couple of years, but has lived in Englewood for the last 30, when he moved to Florida from Massachusetts.

“Englewood has retained its old Florida charm because it’s off the beaten path,” he said. “In southwest Florida, the larger developments have been built along Hwy. 41 and I-75.”

Al’s fiancé, Betty Lovenberg, owns both shops, and manages the location on the south side of the street. Both Al and Betty suggested I talk to one of their dealers, Ken Kocab, a former teacher and Englewood historian.

Kocab taught English and history in Cleveland for many years and retired to Englewood three years ago. Antiques and history are his main interests, and he writes a twice-monthly history column for the Englewood Review. He showed me a Florida map from 1897 that pictured southwest Florida as a mostly roadless wilderness with occasional settlements on the coastline. Then he picked up a colorful tablecloth with Florida attractions from the 1950s, along with part of a mako shark skull. Both items were typical of the Florida merchandise sold after World War II when northerners began making Florida a tourist destination.

“Englewood had its first economic boom in the 1920s,” Kocab said. “Developers were selling land at astronomical prices, and people were buying lots in what had been a lazy fishing town.”

Kocab said three things happened, beginning in 1928 that took Englewood from boom to bust. “That was the year Abner Silkey, president of the Englewood bank embezzled every cent and left town,” Kocab said. “With that the land boom fizzled out, and then the Depression finished it off.”

With no money coming in Englewood’s population faced disaster. “What saved the people was a man named Stuart Anderson, who organized everyone into a fishing cooperative,” Kocab said. “The fish were frozen, taken outside the area and traded for things the people needed. The people were saved by the barter system.”

Kocab said the town was made up of people who help each other and give generously to charities and causes. “The population is older than most,” he said. “They’re not flashy or touristy.”

I had been searching for “old Florida.” In Englewood, I think I found it.

Ken Weyand can be reached at kweyand1@kc.rr.com

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