Florida

Florida history trumps the simple narrative of a beach read. St. Augustine’s story doesn’t begin with sixteenth-century Spaniards and Miami history didn’t begin unfolding with Henry Flagler and his railroad. Natives began arriving in the Sunshine State during the last ice age, millennia before snowbirds began migrating down to Mount Dora. From the legend of Hogzilla to the first slice of key lime pie, from Pensacola down to Key West, our catalogue of Florida history books teems with fascinating tales and innovative characters who saw swamp and envisioned paradise. [View all Florida books]
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Historic Lighthouses of the Florida Keys
Historic Lighthouses of the Florida Keys
$23.99
Florida's Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age
Florida's Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age
$24.99
Florida's Historic African American Homes
Florida's Historic African American Homes
$24.99
Florida Lighthouses
Florida Lighthouses
$24.99
US Life-Saving Service
US Life-Saving Service
$24.99
Cape St. George Lighthouse and Apalachicola Bay
Cape St. George Lighthouse and Apalachicola Bay
$24.99
Tampa Bay Hotel
Tampa Bay Hotel
$23.99
Historic Homes of Florida's First Coast
Historic Homes of Florida's First Coast
$21.99
The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College
The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College
$24.99
Tampa's Historic Cemeteries
Tampa's Historic Cemeteries
$24.99
Reclaiming Jacksonville:
Reclaiming Jacksonville:
$24.99
Egmont Key
Egmont Key
$21.99

Historic Lighthouses of the Florida Keys

9781467107822

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The Florida Keys possess a staggering wealth of lighthouses--nine in all, from the remote iron light at Fowey Rocks to classic brick structures at Key West and Loggerhead Key. In the 1820s, the US government began constructing lighthouses to aid mariners navigating the dangerous Florida Reef. While some of the original lights were subsequently destroyed in dramatic circumstances, most that followed, including Carysfort Reef, Alligator Reef, Sombrero Key, Sand Key, and American Shoal, survived intense tropical weather and even major hurricanes. Among the lighthouse keepers were remarkable women who succeeded in a profession usually reserved for men.
Historic Lighthouses of the Florida Keys

Florida's Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age

9780738541822

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Florida in the late 1800s was a paradise waiting to be discovered. During this period, two visionary tycoons of the Gilded Age set out on separate ventures that would transform the Sunshine State from America's last frontier into a destination for the rich and famous. The grand hotels that Henry M. Flagler and Henry B. Plant opened at their planned resort sites offered a fantasy stay surrounded by all the accoutrements expected by sophisticated, Gilded Age patrons. Florida's Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age provides a look at these magnificent structures during their glory years, along with the fashionable entertainment and social and recreational pastimes that engaged their gilded guests.
Florida's Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age

Florida's Historic African American Homes

9781467106559

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African Americans have made rich contributions to Florida throughout its history in all avenues of public and private life, from education, to business, to politics, a keystone of which was the ability to own and sell property. Author Jada Wright-Greene showcases this legacy through historic photographs of black American's homes, detailing the lives of the people who lived in them through engaging narrative.

The state of Florida has a rich history of African Americans who have contributed to the advancement and growth of today. From slaves to millionaires, African Americans from all walks of life resided in cabins, homes, and stately mansions. The lives of millionaires, educators, businessmen, community leaders, and innovators in Florida's history are explored in each residence. Mary McLeod Bethune, A.L. Lewis, and D.A. Dorsey are a few of the prominent African Americans who not only resided in the state of Florida but also created opportunities for other blacks to further their lives in education and ownership of property and to have a better quality of life. One of the most humanistic traits found in history is the home of someone who has added something of value to society. Today, some of these residences serve as house museums, community art galleries, cultural institutions, and monuments that interpret and share the legacy of their owners. Jada Wright-Greene has selected images from archives, libraries, and universities throughout Florida and the nation that tell the story and give a glimpse into the intimate lives of African American Floridians who changed history.
Florida's Historic African American Homes

Florida Lighthouses

9780738503264

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Sporting the second-longest coastline in the United States, Florida has over 8,000 miles of sparkling beaches and waterfront property. This valuable
landscape and the region's position between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico made Florida key in the early expansion of American trade routes, but the state's several capes and dangerous reefs, rocks, and shoals made travel quite perilous to unwary mariners. When commerce and traffic began to grow between ports on the East Coast and along the Gulf of Mexico in the nineteenth century, it became necessary to construct aids to navigation along the state's long and treacherous coast. Lighthouses were the solution. Constructed in a variety of styles and sizes, Florida's lighthouses were erected on what, at the time, were some of the most desolate regions of the southeastern United States and included lonely offshore islands. Manned and inhabited by vigilant keepers and their families, these towers illuminated the dark seas and provided the beacon that guided lost travelers. Large brick structures watched over St. Augustine, Pensacola, and Ponce de Leon Inlet; iron skeletons towered over Crooked River and Hillsboro Inlet; and screwpile lighthouses stood as sentinels in the waters off the Florida Keys.
Florida Lighthouses

US Life-Saving Service

9781467124188

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Ten houses of refuge, unique to Florida's east coast, were constructed by the US Life-Saving Service between 1876 and 1886. When ships traveling along the almost uninhabited coast were grounded or wrecked on reefs, survivors often made it to land but had no way to reach civilization. House of refuge keepers and their families provided food and shelter to victims of shipwrecks. The keepers' lives were monotonous but punctuated with the excitement of an occasional shipwreck. The US Life-Saving Service provided the framework on which the east coast of Florida developed. With the establishment of the US Coast Guard in 1915, the Life-Saving Service houses of refuge became Coast Guard stations.
US Life-Saving Service

Cape St. George Lighthouse and Apalachicola Bay

9781467124973

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The beacon of the historic Cape St. George Lighthouse still guides mariners into Apalachicola Bay. Founded in 1831, the town of Apalachicola took its name from Creek Indians, to whom it signified a land of friendly people. Sheltered from the Gulf of Mexico by a string of barrier islands, the port flourished as the only site in Florida on a river that is navigable for over 300 miles to the fall line at Columbus, Georgia, Apalachicola's sister city. Generations of lighthouse keepers were bound to St. George Island and its great bay by an intense sense of duty to sustain seagoing commerce and a love for a place where they could raise their families in freedom. When the foundation washed away in 2005 after a very active hurricane season and a final surge from Hurricane Wilma, residents took action to salvage and rebuild the historic lighthouse. Visitors may still climb the lighthouse tower, surrounded by bricks that were first laid in 1852.
Cape St. George Lighthouse and Apalachicola Bay

Tampa Bay Hotel

9781467104371

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The Tampa Bay Hotel opened in 1891 and was the jewel of Henry Plant's vast transportation empire. The 511-room winter resort towered above Tampa's scrub pines and rustic streets. Its Moorish Revival architecture with silver minarets, cupolas, and domes glistened under the Florida sun. Its fanciful style reflected Gilded Age opulence and America's fascination with the exotic. Between 1891 and 1932, notable figures such as Anna Pavlova, Sarah Bernhardt, Booker T. Washington, John Philip Sousa, Thomas Edison, Buffalo Bill Cody, John Jacob Astor IV, Frederic Remington, Henry Flagler, Theodore and Edith Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, and Ulysses S. Grant's wife, Julia, visited the hotel. The building has survived well over a century, a testament to superior craftsmanship and community support, to become an architectural icon of the city.
Tampa Bay Hotel

Historic Homes of Florida's First Coast

9781626197268

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Some of the earliest European settlers colonized Northeast Florida when it was little more than a wilderness. Today, the area is rich in multicultural heritage and historic significance, and its historic homes stand as a testament to its intriguing past. Step inside a Second Spanish Period structure that was home to European royalty and visited by iconic film star Greta Garbo. Visit the places that inspired works such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Yearling" and British composer Frederick Delius's masterpiece, "Florida Suite." Author and award-winning photographer Mary Atwood explores the homes of early colonial settlers, wealthy plantation owners, illustrious Florida artists and those responsible for shaping Florida's First Coast."
Historic Homes of Florida's First Coast

The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College

9780738552798

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As small Florida Southern College embarked upon an ambitious building program in the 1930s, the serendipitous arrival of Frank Lloyd Wright transformed the future of the school. Pres. Ludd Myrl Spivey was a leader with limitless imagination, and he realized the virtue in bringing an architect of Wright's renown to Lakeland. Wright's first visit to the lakeside campus was in 1938. He envisioned a grand 18-unit "Child of the Sun" campus, where buildings would grow from the Florida sand into the light. The buildings are especially suited to the landscape and are connected thematically by a series of covered walkways Wright called the Esplanade. Over the next 20 years, 12 of these unique structures were constructed at Florida Southern, and today they comprise the world's largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright's work. The campus attracts thousands of visitors annually, and preservation and restoration projects are ongoing. The Florida Southern College Architectural District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College

Tampa's Historic Cemeteries

9780738598536

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Three years after the 1821 purchase of Florida from Spain, Fort Brooke became the first permanent, modern settlement on the site of present-day Tampa, and a new life began for settlers on Florida's rich gulf coast. By 1855, it was incorporated as the city of Tampa. Continuing its rich, diverse, cultural, and ethnic heritage, Tampa has become the nation's 54th-largest metropolitan community. Its abundant history is uniquely told with a leisurely stroll through the city's historic cemeteries. Oaklawn Cemetery, Tampa's first public burial ground, was created in 1850 when Tampa had only 500 residents. There, one can find governors, senators, mayors, lawyers, doctors, pirates, and thieves--all of whom have a story to tell. By the late 1800s, some of Tampa's most prominent citizens were buried in newly formed cultural and social club burial grounds.
Tampa's Historic Cemeteries

Reclaiming Jacksonville:

9781609496463

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Jacksonville has hundreds of buildings that have withstood the test of time. Enhanced with stunning color photography, Reclaiming Jacksonville is a must-have for every resident.


Jacksonville's lasting landmarks tell only a portion of its history. Dozens of other buildings have been abandoned and left to wither, turning into shadows of their former grandeur. Each place has a rich and storied history that belies modern appearances, like the Annie Lytle Elementary School, now known as the most haunted landmark in the city, and the Jacksonville Brewing Company, which had to come up with a creative way to stay afloat (think ice cream) when Prohibition hit. Join local writers Ennis Davis and Robert Mann as they go behind the scenes of fourteen crumbling but ethereally beautiful structures to reveal their true pasts.

Reclaiming Jacksonville:

Egmont Key

9781609497088

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Quirky, unique, and unexpected, the history of Ermony Key comes to life in rare historic images.

Egmont Key has been a sentinel for ships entering Tampa Bay from the Gulf of Mexico for hundreds of years. Early European explorers recognized the island's strategic location. Its story reflects major events in the history of the United States and Florida, as the island played a role in the Seminole Wars, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II. Its lighthouse, now automated, is still a beacon for ships. For many years, people have enjoyed the beaches of Egmont Key, walked the red brick ""roads to nowhere"" and explored the ruins of Fort Dade. Authors Don and Carol Thompson aim to foster an appreciation of the uniqueness and beauty of Egmont Key, as well as an understanding of its place in history.

Egmont Key