Heart and Soul of Florida: Sacred Sites and Historic Architecture by Elsbeth Gordon (review)

In commemoration of Florida’s quincentennial (1513–2013), Elsbeth Gordon has produced Heart and Soul of Florida, a captivating tour of the sunshine state’s architectural landscape from the pre-colonial period to the post–WWII era. The work, which features one hundred and seventy carefully chosen illustrations (including sixty that are in color), is divided into three sections: Indian Florida, from 6000 BCE to the early colonial period; colonial period, from 1565 to 1821; and American Florida, from 1821 to 1950. Herschel Shepard provides a foreword in which architectural symbolism is briefly explained while he informs the reader that though many of the events and beliefs of the past are in certain cases irrevocable, their legacies nonetheless endure in the archaeological sites, landscapes, or structures that continue to exist. Such heritage, whether connected with formal religion or not, is sacred.

For a state that was largely undeveloped until the Gilded Age—when oil executive Henry Flagler built resort hotels in St. Augustine and Palm Beach and linked them to the Northeast with an East Coast railway so that the well-to-do could be transported back and forth—Florida has a surprising amount of historic architecture to take note of. Gordon emphasizes that the 1821–1950 period is when “the outstanding religious and public buildings that make up a substantial period of today’s built landscape” came into existence (135). Flagler’s palatial Ponce de Leon Hotel (now the main building of Flagler College in St. Augustine) is given its due, just as Flagler is given credit for reviving Florida’s Spanish architectural heritage. However, much older are the Indian burial mounds with remnants dating to 6000 BCE. Florida is also the home of the nation’s longest lived Spanish mission (Nuestra Señora de la Leche of St. Augustine) as well as the largest coastal brick fort in the Western Hemisphere (Fort Jefferson on Garden Key, south of Key West). An artifact of the Cold War era is the Miami Daily News Building, commonly referred to as Freedom Tower because it was a beacon to those who escaped Cuba by boat.

This volume is a labor of love and a work of art. But it is much too informative to be classified as a coffee table book. Each chapter has endnotes and there is a separate detailed bibliography. The prose is almost poetic in places. For instance, one sentence reads, “Along the darkly beautiful, north-flowing St. Johns River, small board-and-batten Carpenter Gothic churches illustrate the story of the many post–Civil War Episcopal river missions” (168). Two appendices explain the rudiments of landmark designation, the National Register of Historic Places, the Historic American Buildings Survey, and Florida’s master site file and conservation and recreation lands program. Although the narrative notes what sites have been designated, a list would have been useful. There should have also been a list of all the sites discussed in the book as well as a map of the state. Minor criticism aside, Heart and Soul of Florida serves as a model for what anyone would want in a survey of architectural history for a state.