Historical Significance of

the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society

The Fort Lauderdale Historical Society is an important cultural resource for the residents of Southeast Florida. The historical significance of the village and museum is three-fold. Bustling downtown, 1927 First, it illustrates the evolution of a typical south Florida community from the late 1890s through the 1920s that developed as a result of the growth of transportation, tourism and real estate development. Real estate speculation and land development were important factors in the beginning of the town when fewer than 50 people settled along the banks of the New River at the turn of the last century.

Railroad bridge on New River opens, 1896

Second, the Historical Society’s library and archives contain, at the intersection of the New River and Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway, incorporates four turn of the last century historic buildings: the 1905 New River Inn, the 1905 Philemon Bryan House, the 1907 King-Cromartie House, (which was relocated from a nearby site on the south side of the river) and a reconstruction of the settlement’s first schoolhouse (1899). Extending south from Jacksonville, Flagler’s railway reached Fort Lauderdale in 1896, thereby connecting Fort Lauderdale for the first time to northern commerce and tourists traveling south along Florida’s Atlantic coast.

New River steamboat docked in heart of commerical district, 1919

In 1912, the New River became the state’s first waterway connection between the Atlantic and Gulf coasts via Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee River, serving as an important means of shipping fruits and vegetables as well as transporting tourists and residents to and from Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers. Trade soon built up on the large vegetable docks on the New River, while commercial fishermen hauled their catches from Lake Okeechobee to the numerous fish houses lining the waterway. Many early residents spent their first night at the New River Inn after getting off a Flagler train or a New River Steamboat. Early residents like Philemon Bryan (Flagler’s right-of-way contractor) (Ed) Edwin T. King (the area’s first building contractor and boat-builder) and Bloxham Cromartie (an early merchant and brother of Ivy Cromartie Stranahan) built homes along the river to house their families while pursuing tomato farming, citrus grove operations and other endeavors of the early years.

Third, The Old Fort Lauderdale Museum contains one of Florida’s most important collections of state and local history, including the Stranahan Manuscript Collection, important documents, photographs and audio-taped oral histories illustrating pioneer life in southeast Florida. The Museum therefore offers a significant educational resource for research about the development of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County in the twentieth century.