1001 Eaton Street, Key West, FL
This very popular Classical Revival house was built in 1890 and bought by Benito Alfonso, a Cuban-born cigar manufacturer and a patriot to the Cuban revolutionary cause, on January 27, 1891 for $2,000. His Newton Street cigar factory once employed fifty people. The house was leased at the turn of the century to David Walker, a Georgia building contractor. Alfonso died in March 1906 at age 73 and the home was willed to this daughter Felicia. One of three witnesses to his will was Cuban Consul Antonio Diaz y Carrasco. The property was sold in 1906 (four years after Cuba won its independence) to Carrasco, while he was the first Cuban consul to the United States. These men were both Cuban émigrés who were loyal to the Cuban revolutionary cause and figured importantly in Key West affairs.
The land had been included in the original Pardon C. Greene quarter of John Whitehead’s property. It was subsequently purchased in April 1875 by James P. Curry. Curry owned all of Lot 2 in Square 19 for 15 years. No significant buildings were erected during Curry’s ownership and in September 1890 it was sold to John Lowe, Jr. for $3,200 (one of the prominent Key West names that seemed to be involved in most real estate transactions in the city).
John Lowe, Jr. was a pioneer Key West merchant who was born in the Bahamas in 1833. His family moved to Key West shortly after his birth where Lowe grew up to parlay his entrepreneurial skills to establish extensive business interests in the Florida Keys. Lowe secured a clerkship in 1848 with the Brown & Curry firm (later became William Curry’s Sons), the largest mercantile house on the island. In 1878 he severed his connection with Curry to emerge as principal agent for his own business that focused on lumber trading and sponge fishing. Lowe later operated the largest lumber dealership in Key West and his schooner line brought supplies from Pascagoula and Pensacola. He also operated the only electric sawmill in Key West.
Following Lowe’s acquisition of Lot 2 Square 19 the property was subdivided into smaller sections and sold to individual buyers. Conch houses were built along the Eaton Street block. The 1001 Eaton Street at Grinnell large two-story dwelling dwarfed its neighboring frame cottages and first appears on the 1892 Sanborn Insurance Map as a rectangular Classic Revival piece of architecture. A two-story porch lines the Eaton Street façade; the tin roof helped reflect the tropical sun’s intensity; the rain gutter along the roof provided a pathway to the cistern to the rear of the house into which rainwater was collected for use. The three-bay balconied residence exhibited a clapboard exterior; sash windows were enhanced by pediments over the openings and wooden shutters helped to screen the brightness yet secured breezes. The sculpted wood posts which lined the façade were complemented by a circular pattern of scroll cut gingerbread.
Between 1906-1915 Carrasco remodeled the home by extending the porches into verandas and adding extra millwork. From the second floor corner bulge on the porch Carrasco addressed immense crowds of Cuban patriots from this, his home, official consulate office and magnificent setting for receptions. Havana born Carrasco moved to Key West at age five in 1869 with his father and attended schools in Key West and Havana. Later Carrasco was hired as a primary school teacher at the San Carlos School in Key West (that he had attended) that was a unique institution. It was the only school in the US maintained by a foreign government to teach Americans and others a foreign language. It was also the first public school in Key West. Carrasco, a prominent leader in Cuban affairs, was named Cuban Consul in 1903 and served in that official capacity until his death in 1915. As Consul he headed a government office at San Carlos that oversaw relations with Cuba and kept records of Cuban émigrés to Key West, also helping them resettle to Key West. Carrasco married Anna Corrales in Key West in 1885 and they had five children. The family resided at 1001 Eaton Street after purchasing the home from Alfonso’s heirs in 1906. Carrasco died in Havana at age 50 at the height of his career and was buried in the Cuban Martyr’s Plot in the Key West Cemetery.
In 1925 Carrasco’s heirs sold the home to Archie Thompson who lived there for thirty years. As recently as the 1930’s this house was no more than 100 feet from the water’s edge. One story has it that Thompson, an infamous rum-runner of the day, owned the Eaton Street house and built a second home in the rear to house storage tanks for hiding the rum being unloaded at the nearby docks.
For fifty-two years (1925-1977) the Alfonso/Carrasco House had only three owners, including Sloppy Joe Russell, Hemingway’s buddy, who started the famous saloon downtown. It was then bought by Senator Bill Neblett and his wife Doris, who lived there until 1977. The house was subsequently subdivided into several apartments together with the adjoining Grinnell Street house in the rear, and was owned by Cindy and Gary Blum, once proprietors of Cavanaugh’s home décor shop on Front Street.
The stately, two-story, rectangular, temple-style Classical Revival structure built shortly after 1890 is in contrast to its neighbors, mostly rather modest frame vernacular and shotgun houses. Originally the Carrasco house had a porch and gallery facing Eaton Street with sculptured wood posts and decorative scroll-cut gingerbread. In about 1912 the porches were continued around the corner to form an open Queen Anne style tower, and then all the way down the side to create large verandas, upstairs and down. As described above the upper level of the tower was used for speechmaking to crowds gathered below during political events involving Cuba, such as the 1964 missile crisis.
The stained glass panel in the front door is of the type seen in a number of Key West Key houses. The friezes vary from plain square-cut millwork downstairs to the very decorative one upstairs. The brackets look homemade. It is another example of a house which has borrowed features from a number of styles, adapted for Key West, ending up, after modifications, additions, and decorations, as a one-of-a-kind tropical charmer.
Today the property has been extensively renovated and is a featured talking point on the tourist patronized “Conch Train” of Key West. The sensitivity to Key West architecture remains in its feeling of openness, spacious rooms, white picket fence and tropical foliage.