Eagle Point District

Eagle Point Camp is a unique piece of Florida history. In the early Twentieth Century, “close-to-nature” camps and rustic inns were popular in Florida which was considered a rather exotic place unknown to much of the rest of the country. These “back-to-nature” experiences were popular with the new capitalist class that had time for leisure and a desire to get away from it all.

Many well known northern industrialists were frequent visitors at these rustic camps. Some would return year after year and stay in the same cottage. Fishing, hunting and boating were popular with visitors, some guests would spend the entire winter.

Coconut Grove had its “Camp Biscayne,” Henry Flagler built the Long Key Fishing Camp on Long Key and Miami Beach developer Carl Fisher had Cocolobo Lodge on Elliott’s Key. These famous retreats are long gone but Eagle Point Camp remains with much of its original ambience.

The historic architectural complex occupies the south east portion of the site and originally contained 19 buildings, a water tower, and tennis courts. The buildings included a clubhouse, ten guest cabins, a caretaker’s house, servants’ quarters, two garages, a laundry building, coal house, pump house and boat house.

The two-story clubhouse, surrounding one-story cabins, and service buildings were designed in the frame vernacular style, common to the rural areas of Florida throughout the early 20th century. This style also emphasized the rustic feeling desired at Eagle Point, a fishing and hunting retreat. Ben Youmans, a local builder and farmer, used heart-of-pine for the framing, flooring, and siding. The clubhouse was the location for a dining room and upstairs bachelors’ quarters, whereas the surrounding guest cabins provided space for families as well as individual guests. Cabins #7, #8, and #9 were designed with four suites, each containing a bedroom, bathroom closet, and partially enclosed entrance porch. Although several are similar in design, most of the cabins display unique variations on a basic theme: a rectangular plan set on piers, with a gable-on-hip roof and partially enclosed entrance porches. Originally each of the buildings was painted barn red with white board trim, adding to the rustic feeling. Cabin #1, was painted entirely white. This cabin was built for the third owner F. Kingsbury Curtis and is the largest cabin in the compound. (Refer to the district map for the location of the numbered cabins and other structures.)

A pre-annexation agreement between the City of Venice and the developer of the property established protections for most of the structures within the district. The maintenance of these protections now is the responsibility of the homeowners association. The two-story clubhouse, cottage #5, and the water tower are owned by the homeowners association and are to be preserved in perpetuity. In addition, three of the cabins labeled #1 through #4 and two of the cabins labeled #6 through #10 are to be retained by private owners and any modifications to them completed according to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Preservation. Cabin #4 has been demolished, but cabins #1, #2, #3 and #6 through #10 are preserved and modifications completed according to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Preservation. The service buildings have either been demolished or moved to other locations.