In a downtown core lorded over by glass-and-steel high-rises racing to see who can have the loftiest penthouse, the most significant building in Fort Lauderdale is a humble two-story Dade County pine home wedged among the towers in near anonymity.
But nearly 125 years after it was built, the historic Stranahan House is getting ready to reintroduce itself to modern society just off energetic Las Olas Boulevard with a new face and a more outgoing attitude.
With a ceremonial groundbreaking this week, work began on a $3 million campuswide transformation of the property, formally known as the Historic Stranahan House Museum. The project will focus on new features surrounding the house itself, adding a state-of-the-art education center for field trips, an event pavilion and catering kitchen, and a new welcome center with a ticket window and gift shop.
The welcome center will be part of a reoriented entrance to the property that now will face Las Olas, with a nostalgic iron gate and signage designed to beckon passers-by. The Stranahan House is currently nearly invisible from the busy tourist thoroughfare, obscured by a wall of plants and fencing, as well as the 455-foot Icon tower looming next door.
A rendering of the new welcome center that will face Las Olas Boulevard as part of a $3 million expansion of the Historic Stranahan House Museum. (Historic Stranahan House Museum/Courtesy)
The project’s gesture toward the community is not merely metaphorical, says the museum’s executive director, Jennifer Belt.
“It’s really designed to increase our capacity to be a part of the community. We are going to have more space for events, whether it be weddings or business meetings or networking,” she says. “And we’re going to have this nice, beautiful welcome center, where people can walk up, when they’re new to Las Olas, and ask questions. We want to become an informational hub on Las Olas.”
A rendering of a new event pavilion that will be part of the $3 million expansion. (Historic Stranahan House Museum/Courtesy)
The updates, which will include an archival storage area and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)-compliant facilities, including restrooms, continue a series of improvements over the last several years, following the addition of a new seawall and the New River Patio, and repairs to the museum’s porches.
Construction is expected to begin at the end of October and be completed by the end of 2026. The Stranahan House will remain open during the process.
“We’re doing something very special, creating a new sense of community, a new center of community,” says Fort Lauderdale District 2 City Commissioner Steve Glassman, a noted history buff.
Love and tragedy
The Stranahan House opened as a history museum in 1984, and generations of local students have made the pilgrimage to the property — most can probably still describe learning to make butter on a field trip — where they learned of the building’s remarkable, and tragic, history as the epicenter of the city’s entrepreneurial spirit and cultural ambitions.
Considered Fort Lauderdale’s oldest structure, it was built on a mangrove-lined clearing in 1901 by young businessman Frank Stranahan as a trading post, with a community hall on the second floor. Stranahan had formed trading relationships with the Seminole Tribe, who would deliver goods in wooden canoes, and opened a post office and the area’s first bank (there is still a safe in the home).
Archival picture of Fort Lauderdale’s Stranahan House, which was built in 1901. (South Florida Sun Sentinel file)
Stranahan turned the building into a residence for himself and young schoolteacher wife, Ivy, with plumbing and electric wiring added in 1915, four years after the area was incorporated as the City of Fort Lauderdale.
Built out of sturdy Dade County pine, with walls lined in dark wood paneling, the Stranahan House has been preserved much as it was then, with Frank Stranahan’s office, the dining room, parlor and kitchen set up to look as if the family has just stepped out for a walk. A comforting mustiness hangs in the air.
“Once you step inside these doors, wow. You cannot not be impressed by what you see,” Glassman says.
The Stranahans were leaders in business and social activity in the area, Frank as a merchant and landowner, Ivy as a teacher and advocate for the Seminoles. But after the city was ravaged by two hurricanes, with a real-estate collapse and the economy crashing around him, Frank Stranahan took his own life, tying himself to a storm drain and drowning in the New River outside his home on May 22, 1929.
Over the next four decades, Ivy Stranahan would become a civic powerhouse, serving on the city’s planning and zoning committee, traveling to Tallahassee to lobby for the Homestead Exemption law, and to Washington, D.C., seeking federal support for her hurricane-ravaged city and more equitable treatment for the Seminole Indians. She lived in the home until her death on Aug. 30, 1971, at age 90.
The house, which is owned by the nonprofit Stranahan House Inc., was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
One of the most interesting elements of history at the Stranahan House today is John Della-Cerra, 85, who has been caretaker and tour guide at the property since 1989. Della-Cerra met Ivy Stranahan when she visited the nearby school where he taught students with special needs in 1969.
Della-Cerra is a font of first- and second-hand stories about the Stranahans.
“Ivy was no-nonsense right up until she died. She was constantly helping Seminole families, Black families, women’s rights, the ecology and education. Especially education, saying you have every opportunity, no limits, if you’re good with the education,” Della-Cerra says.
John Della-Cerra, 85, of Fort Lauderdale, has been a caretaker and tour guide at the Historic Stranahan House Museum for more than 35 years. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Close neighbors
The Stranahan House sits in its own historic district, designated by the city in 1982, but in recent years has been treated like an inconvenience by developers of towers such as Icon Las Olas. The 45-story residential building, roughly 12 feet from the Stranahan House, pillar to post, opened in 2017 after a 14-year legal battle with preservationists who sought a park next to the home.
The Related Group, co-developer of Icon, is preparing the foundation for a 46-story building, Andare Residences, across Las Olas Boulevard from Icon and the Stranahan House. To the south, luxury residential project Sixth & Rio is rising directly across the New River from the historic property.
Worries that the structural integrity of the Stranahan House might be damaged by these massive construction projects have not panned out so far. Belt says she is unaware of any issues in the three years she has been its executive director.
However, Della-Cerra does say that he arrived at the house one morning, as pilings were being driven into the earth for Icon’s foundation, to find murky water shooting up in the air from under the front deck.
Part of the Historic Stranahan House Museum is surrounded by the 45-story residential tower Icon Las Olas. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Engineers went under the house and found some shifting, but told him they could not determine if it was related to construction next door, Della-Cerra says.
“Obviously there’s old stuff under there and it’s sometimes hard to see. But now you hear some creaks in the floor right about that area. And in the parlor, there’s a light on a little table, and that table is leaning back to the wall, slightly,” Della-Cerra says.
Glassman says the city needs to appreciate the value of its cultural treasures as development takes place.
“Many folks know that we tend to demolish in the city of Fort Lauderdale as we grow, but we do have enough significant structures that have to be preserved for future generations,” Glassman says. “We take historic preservation very seriously. We have a responsibility to do what’s right, and we have a very strong historic preservation ordinance.
“It’s serious business for the City of Fort Lauderdale, and as we continue to grow, places like [the Stranahan House] are even more important.”
Magic moments
Della-Cerra describes moments in the Stranahan House in magical terms: While locking up after a wedding or other late-night event, he will sit on the second-floor balcony, his favorite place in the house, and look out on the river. In the stillness of the night, he is transported back to Old Florida, watching Seminole Indians paddle toward him in dugout canoes.
“I try to envision what it would be like back in her day. It’s so peaceful,” he says.
The Stranahan House inspired time travel of another kind as funding for the expansion project encouraged refreshing examples of old-time nonpartisan conversation and cooperation. The groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday included Republican State Rep. Chip LaMarca and Democratic State Sen. Rosalind Osgood, standing together under a tree.
LaMarca noted that he and Osgood had worked together to usher a funding bill through the State Legislature.
“This is a nonpartisan effort, and I think it’s important to say that,” Osgood says. “It’s always a delight working with Rep. LaMarca, for years, to make sure that we continue to prioritize the people of Broward County and get money through the state process to help with the wonderful and amazing things that are happening here.”
Osgood cited Ivy Stranahan’s work in education, opening the first schools in the area and later playing a major role in integrating local classrooms.
According to the Stranahan House, the state has earmarked $500,000 for the project, with the city down for another $500,000, and the county chipped in $458,000. The Community Foundation of Broward provided $100,000 as part of $350,000 in private donations.
LaMarca compared the Stranahan House to the Paul Revere House in Boston, which gets lost in a cobblestone maze of gift shops and Italian restaurants.
“It’s tricky to find our history, but if you don’t take a moment to go into a place like that, or don’t take a moment to go into a place like this, you will have missed where we came from,” he says. “Obviously markets fight with history. But this survived, and I think we’re all better for it.”
Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at bcrandell@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Instagram @BenCrandell.
