Bonnet House: An Artistic Retreat in Florida
/
The former home of artists Frederic and Evelyn Bartlett provides a wonderful immersion in art, architecture, international folk art, and gardens. You will find an eclectic house with an art studio, courtyard garden, shell house, and art gallery situated on 35 acres of Old Florida habitat.
Frederic Bartlett was born in 1874 in Chicago, the son of a prosperous businessman. The World’s Columbian Exposition inspired him to pursue a career in art. He studied under James Whistler and Pierre Purvis Charannes in Europe, attended the prestigious Royal Academy in Munich, and became a muralist and collector of Post-Impressionist art. Many of the masterpieces he collected by van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne, and Toulouse-Lautrec were later donated to the Art Institute of Chicago.
Frederic built Bonnet House with his second wife, poet Helen Louise Birch, in 1921, when Fort Lauderdale was a small outpost on the New River. He designed the main residence to resemble a Caribbean plantation house, with a central courtyard and a hallway with brightly painted doors, window frames, and ornate railings.
Helen died in 1925, and it wasn’t until Frederic’s marriage to Evelyn Fortune Lilly in the 1930s that a renaissance of collecting and embellishing the house occurred. Frederic encouraged Evelyn to pursue her interest in art, and Evelyn became a painter in her own right. The creative couple transformed Bonnet House into a jewel box of color, pattern, and ornamentation, with paintings, antiques, and folk art collected abroad, mural-adorned ceilings, faux marbled floors, and walls inlaid with seashells.
The Bonnet House grounds are bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Intracoastal Waterway on the other. It encompass one of the last examples of a native barrier island habitat in South Florida. Several different ecosystems can be found on the property including the Atlantic Ocean beachfront, sand dunes, a fresh water slough, mangrove wetlands, and a maritime forest. The land is a haven for fish and wildlife, migratory and indigenous birds, and for manatees that occasionally visit the canal. With acres of buffer on all sides, the house is situated in a very private peaceful oasis in the midst of a busy city.
The gardens and grounds display a blend of native and exotic flora. When you enter the property, a long allée of stately paperbark tea trees (Melaleuca quinquenervia) lines the drive. These trees sport white bottlebrush flowers and are native to Australia. The Bartletts built their boathouse in the center of the property at the end of their private canal off the Intracoastal Waterway. East of the boathouse is the fruit grove consisting of mango, sapodilla, guava, Surinam, cherry, avocado, mulberry, calabash, and citrus trees. The grove was carefully cultivated by the Bartletts and the fruits were favorite household delicacies.
The Bartletts enjoyed collecting seeds during their travels abroad and planting these exotics in their Florida garden. The Desert Garden at the front entrance of the house features yuccas, century plants, silver palms, saw palmetto, and other unusual plants from arid parts of the world. The freshwater slough east of the house is lined with two rows of Australian pines. Gumbo-limbo trees, sabal palms, and paradise trees shade masses of wild coffee, silver palm, and coonties. The bonnet lily, a native water lily with yellow flowers and the property’s namesake, still blooms in the slough.
The courtyard sports a formal garden of coquina walkways and parterres built around a central fountain. Various palms, hibiscus, gingers, and other lush tropical plants thrive in this protected space.
Evelyn loved birds and animals, and the whimsical blue and yellow aviary was built by Frederic to house her macaws, monkeys, and other pets. Today, the Brazilian squirrel monkeys still live in the wild on the estate.
Evelyn was also passionate about orchids, and her collection featured 3,000 plants. Blooming varieties are rotated regularly through the bright yellow Orchid Display House.
evelyn’s shell house
Frederic died in 1953, but Evelyn continued to return each winter. In 1983 she gave Bonnet House to the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation to ensure that the site would be preserved for the enjoyment and education of future generations.
Bonnet House Museum & Gardens 900 N. Birch Rd., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304 954-563-5393. bonnethouse.org
You Might Also Like
