The Fort Lauderdale Woman’s Club, a small, concrete-and-stucco community center in the heart of downtown, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
For more than 100 years, the club has served as a meeting place for social, political and educational change, led originally by “mother of Fort Lauderdale” Ivy Julia Cromartie Stranahan, the application for historic status says.
“The seemingly ever-evolving city has a modern theme, with few surviving historic buildings,” the application says.
Yet it’s not the Mediterranean Revival architecture or artistry that qualifies it for the National Park Service designation, the application said, nor the fact that it was the city’s first architecturally designed building. Rather, its main significance was its role in the social evolution of the city, and its association with Stranahan, one of the city’s standout pioneer women.
According to the Florida Department of State, the nomination for the Woman’s Club, at 20 S. Andrews Ave., was approved Feb. 4, joining more than 1,700 Florida listings.
The 1917 building is still in use by the Woman’s Club and others. Fort Lauderdale city commissioners held a two-day goal-setting session there in January. The Woman’s Club markets the property as a botanical garden and rents it out for events.
The club was nominated by Gillian White, a historic preservation graduate student at Savannah College of Art & Design. White interviewed a friend of the late Ivy Stranahan, Ashley Brizendine, who explained the club’s name: “Each and every individual woman … together is important to make everything unified. So, every woman has something to contribute. That’s why it’s not ‘Women,’ it’s ‘Woman.’ So, any time that you come here you know that you always will be important.”
A few months before the city’s incorporation in 1911, 18 women formed the club’s first membership.
Six years later, the building was constructed by architect/builder August Geiger on the southeast corner of Andrews Avenue and Broward Boulevard, about a half mile from the Stranahan House/trading post. It still has the original Dade County Pine flooring.
“During the period of significance from 1917-1968, women were not seen as equal citizens compared to men,” White’s historic application reads. “The [Fort Lauderdale Woman’s Club] was a vital addition to the community during this time because it was a safe place for women to speak their minds, voice their concerns, talk about women’s issues and social issues and learn invaluable skills such as quilting, sewing, first-aid, hygiene and nutrition.”
Stranahan and her husband, early Fort Lauderdale businessman Frank Stranahan, donated the lot for the clubhouse’s construction. It is surrounded by what’s now named Stranahan Park.
“[Ivy] Stranahan played an instrumental role in the progression of the city regarding educational rights, women’s rights, African-American rights, and Native American Rights,” White wrote in the application. Stranahan was the city’s first schoolteacher, and the woman’s club’s first president. She was a “strong community activist and environmentalist,” the application says.
The clubhouse served as Fort Lauderdale’s first library. The women of the club donated the funds to create the city’s first volunteer fire department, after a fire destroyed much of the downtown in 1912. They helped create the city’s first Girl Scout Troop and helped establish the first Red Cross headquarters in Fort Lauderdale. They helped create the first city park and worked on a law to “keep livestock off the streets,” the application says.
In more recent years, Woman’s Club members bemoaned the presence of a homeless camp that became entrenched in Stranahan Park near the building. Women going to the club complained they were badgered by homeless people, and one homeless person reportedly used the club steps as a toilet, a city commissioner complained in 2008. The camp was recently dismantled.
To view the nomination, go to SunSentinel.com/womansclub.
Brittany Wallman can be reached at bwallman@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4541. Find her on Twitter @BrittanyWallman.