I bought the Cracker shack about twenty years ago from a woman whose husband was one of the six children who grew up in this 550 square foot house when their father brought them to Fort Lauderdale from Ohio after their mother died about 1909, to keep them from being shipped off to households where there was an adult woman. It was what they did then in Ohio.
His brother had come earlier in response to Florida land boom marketing seen all over the Midwest then. The pitch was that if you bought a 25 ft. town lot in Progresso, you got a farm in the Everglades thrown in the deal. A disillusioned Midwest family could have a farm that produced a living for free, by purchasing a lot in town. Not dissimilar to pitches still being made about the transformative powers of the great State of Florida’s real estate.
The New York Times interviewed the five living siblings for an article on the survivors of the hurricane of 1926. They sat on the front porch with their well-prepared stories at the ready, to be interviewed. The porch was a feature the original shack didn’t have. In fact, the original shack really had no features, that is unless a roof and 4 walls are features.
After the interview I invited them in to see what I had done. I spent two years working on it, reconfiguring the space, laying a new roof, wiring, plumbing, bath, kitchen, floors, walls, ceilings, everything but the windows which are still there today, held open by sticks.
One of the women said it was a miracle. She said as a child she would stand against any wall and look out to the outdoors between the boards. In 1956 a second higher pitched roof was added over the old low tarpaper roof. A carport, a makeshift circular drive of gravel and an indoor bathroom was added that same year. Signs of post war prosperity! It was on that driveway that Mr. Sutton was found dead.
The house had blown down in that 1926 hurricane, and Olive Sutton, Mr. Suttons widow, told me when I bought it how the family ran into the woods and got in their father’s model A, parked between two pines and sat out the storm. When morning finally came the house was gone. The coming days they wandered around, picking up boards, and the father and his brother and the kids rebuilt the house and lived there until the children were in adulthood and moved away. The young Mr. Sutton married Olive and moved in. I am really the second owner of what is probably the oldest house in Fort Lauderdale.
The Cracker Shack is an open plan cottage with living, dining, and work spaces, a queen size ships bunk, a walk-in closet with washer and dryer, a full bath with whirlpool tub and shower combo, a full kitchen with dual stainless sink, dishwasher, refrigerator, microwave convection oven, toaster oven and coffee maker, and quality cookware and dishware.
Furnished with my grandparents North Carolina porch wicker, my mother’s Welsh Pine armoire, a narrow desk with an antique rolling chair from the S and O railroad office in Chicago, my step-brothers antique cedar chest found in the attic of a 1930’s house he bought in Delray, a queen size bed built into an alcove like a ships bunk with a back yard view and hidden storage underneath, and some painted pine pieces to fill in.
Outside there is vintage wrought iron furniture on the back deck; a round table with umbrella and four chairs, and a cast aluminum chair and footstool that came from the Hollywood Beach Resort Hotel from 1926, and two lounge chairs .Today you can hear tennis rackets whacking balls at the Jimmy Evert Tennis Center in Holiday Park, or a concert in the Park on Friday nights in Summer, not the lions roar Olive remembered remembered when it was home to the Clyde Beatty Lion Farm.
When you are in this house you feel like you are in the country in a different, gentler age, but it is in the heart of downtown Fort Lauderdale. Two rusted but serviceable beach cruisers are available for guest use. A Smart TV with Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime accounts and an antenna for broadcast tv which can be spotty in bad weather, wi-fi, Panasonic sounds system with Bluetooth and Amazon dot deliver music, news and entertainment. Experience living in a tiny house, you may find its all you need! Yes, it really is a miracle.
What is a Florida Cracker? According to Wikipedia, “Among some Floridians, the term is used as a proud or jocular self-description. Since the huge influx of new residents into Florida in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, from the northern parts of the United States and from Mexico and Latin America, the term "Florida Cracker" is used informally by some Floridians to indicate that their families have lived in the state for many generations. It is considered a source of pride to be descended from "frontier people who did not just live but flourished in a time before air conditioning, mosquito repellent, and screens” I’d say that’s about right. Poor tough pioneers living in the harsh conditions of Florida. Air conditioning changed the trajectory of the State, and the rest, they say, is history.
Available for periods of 30 days or more, and it is air conditioned.
