I’ve probably been to Key West a hundred times and have a serious love-hate relationship with the island.
Thirty years ago, when I first started going to the Keys, we always went to Key West for at least a day. It was for the usual tourist stuff: T-shirts and drinks. There were a few nights of drunken debauchery mixed in as well. Ten years ago I started taking my daughter diving and we always spent a day there doing the family thing.
Then we bought a vacation rental in Marathon. At about the same time my daughter turned 21 and my visits to Key West changed again. At least one trip to the Half Shell Oyster Bar and some shopping became a mandatory excursion.
We started to spend more and more time in the Keys. Friends came down and we’d usually head down to Key West. This was when we discovered the city on bicycles, by far the best way to see it. We visited some of the tourist spots like Fort Zachary Taylor but also found some hidden gems like the West Martello Tower, an old fort turned into a garden.
Several years ago we sold the vacation rental and bought a place in Big Pine. Key West was closer and Home Depot runs and trips to the sewing store for my better half became the new Key West outings. Along the way, we found some other hidden gems.
One which I featured in Wood’s Reward is the Audubon House. Located in the shadow of Duval Street, the quiet property is unique and worth seeing. My interest came from my research of John Geiger, a famed wrecker from the mid-nineteenth century featured in the book.
The house and adjacent gardens were never Audubon’s though they were made famous by his stay there during the 1830s when he worked on his Birds of America book. The tour as I described it in the book highlights some of the architectural details as well as Audubon’s works. As a contractor the construction techniques were interesting. Built by a shipbuilder named Alfred Evans who used a special shipbuilding technique of gradually bending the wood for circular archways and stairways.
Though I enjoyed the house and property, what I wanted to see was the replica of Geiger’s study where Wood finds the chart he used to try and locate a lost wreck. The study is also featured in the book.
Captain Geiger raised many children in the house, and planted beautiful tropical vegetation on the property. It was the beautiful plants which drew Audubon to it during his visit in 1832. Audubon took cuttings from the plants growing on the property, and used them as backgrounds in many works, including the White crowned Pigeon, which has the "Geiger tree" in the background.
This was the first restoration project in Key West and is still considered the gem of the island's restoration movement. Antique enthusiasts who tour the house appreciate the unique quality of the furnishings, which were typically found in a prosperous Key West home in the 1800s.