E.W.F Stirrup House

Material Information

Subjects / Keywords:: West Grove
Miami
Photograph
Stirrup, E.W.F. (Ebenezer Woodbury Franklin) -- Homes and haunts
Bahamian architecture -- Florida -- Miami
Genre:: Photograph
Spatial Coverage:: Florida--Miami--Coconut Grove--West Grove
Coordinates:: 25.7255727443665 x -80.2454027205583

Abstract:: Street view of the exterior and historical marker for the E.W.F. Stirrup House, Inscription reads: Bahamian immigrants played an integral role in the development of Coconut Grove. African-Bahamian immigrant Ebenezer Woodbury Franklin Stirrup was born in 1873, and emigrated from the Bahamas in 1888. Stirrup worked as a carpenter’s apprentice first in Key West, then moved his family to Coconut Grove to work on James Deering’s pineapple farm. Through his entrepreneurial talent, Stirrup became one of the largest landowners in the area and built this two-story Frame Vernacular house for himself in 1897. Believing homeownership led people to be better citizens, he built more than 100 homes for African Americans in the region, and provided other blacks with opportunities to rent and later purchase their first homes. In addition to real estate, Stirrup owned a grocery store, bicycle repair shop, tailor shop, meat market, and dry goods store. The Bahamas had the same coral rock and climate, so Stirrup and others knew how to use this soil to plant tropical trees, vegetables, and fruits. Furthermore, they knew how to use the local limestone to make lime mortar used in stone foundations for houses. ( en )
Funding:: Support for this project was provided by the Mellon funded Race, Risk, and Resilience: Building a Local-to-Global “Commons for Justice” Grant.