The West Grove:  A Tropical Frontier

In search of hotel employees, Charles Peacock traveled to Key West where he hired Mariah Brown, a native of the Bahamian island of Eleuthera. Maria Brown initially lived in a building on the grounds of the Peacock Inn and later moved to a nearby settlement located on a back road that linked Coconut Grove with the more remote farming community of Cutler towards the south. This road through the Peacock, Frow and Munroe homesteads was first called Evangelist street due to its abundance of churches and was later renamed Charles Avenue by Joseph Frow who sold its subdivided lots to a growing population of Bahamian immigrants of African descent who came to work at the Peacock Inn. Charles Avenue was the first African-American settlement in south Florida.

Teaching easterners how to live in the tropics, the Bahamian pioneers of African descent made an enormous contribution to life on the Florida frontier. They supplied labor for development, introduced many early species of edible fruits and vegetables, explained how to cultivate agriculture in the rocky soil, and demonstrated how to build durable wood-framed structures constructed out of the impervious Dade County Pine capable of withstanding hurricanes. Their durable dwellings on Charles Avenue perpetuated the vernacular architectural tradition of the Bahamas.

Ebenezer Woodberry Frank Stirrup was among the most influential early residents of Charles Avenue. He arrived in Key West from the Bahamas in 1888 at the age of fifteen. After working as a carpenter’s apprentice, Stirrup moved north to Cutler where he labored on pineapple plantations by day and cleared land by night. Honoring a deep personal conviction that every man should possess a home and a garden, Stirrup invested his savings in land on Charles Avenue where he built over one-hundred dwellings including his own in 1897. Through the sale and rental of homes at a modest cost, Stirrup established an important precedent of African-American property ownership that directly contributed to the stability and survival of the Charles Avenue neighborhood. In the historic Charlotte Jane Memorial Cemetery on Charles Avenue, Bahamian style gravesites commemorate the many contributions of generations of African-American residents to the cultural life of Coconut Grove.

 By David Burnett (M. Arch.), “Coconut Grove Tropical Frontier, “ (2000).

 The following images are part of a series documented between 1999-2011 of the historic Bahamian homesteads and their current residents in and around the Charles Avenue neighbourhood. As mentioned, the neighbourhood is extremely significant in that it is the first African-American settlement in South Florida.