Part 1: The History of Dearborn Street                                                 In the Village of Olde Englewood, Florida

1878 -- Englewood's First Family arrives

The year 1878 saw William and Mary Goff become our area's first settlers -- that is, after the original native Americans. They bought 60 acres of land in what would soon be a tiny, platted town called Englewood. Their parcel of land bordered on Lemon Bay, and today would include Dearborn Street, West Green Street and Cherokee. William paid $90 for the parcel of land, a very fair price at that time.

1896 -- Nichols Bros. file plat of town

Eighteen years later, the first plat of Englewood was recorded by the Nichols Brothers. When they laid out the plan of the town, Dearborn Street was to play an important role -- it was to become the business heart of Englewood. At that time, of course, it was unnamed. It had originally been a foot path worn through the slash pines and the palmettos by William Goff and his family. Later, when the Goffs acquired oxen and a wagon, the foot path was enlarged to a wagon trail. The Goffs must be credited with hand-carving Dearborn Street out of the wilderness, and the Nichols Brothers must be credited with naming it.

Showing a lack of imagination, the Nichols Brothers bestowed on their new town and real estate development the same name as their home in Illinois -- Englewood. They even went so far as to copy the names of the streets in the northern town, and to lay them out in the same order. This included Dearborn Street.

1896 -- Oldest structure on Mainland Englewood built

Located on the corner of Dearborn Street and Old Englewood Road stands a fine old building. Soon after it was built, it became a guest home -- "Mrs. Quinby's Boarding House for Ladies and Gentlemen." It was, in later years, owned by Andrew Jergens of Jergens Lotion and Woodbury Soap fame, and called the Jergens Mansion. It eventually reverted back to being a lodge and was the Rinkard Guest Home for years.

Photo circa 1926 courtesy Jack Tate. Buchan's Landing was built in 1916 by Pete Buchan. Store facilities were on the first floor, living quarters for the family on the second floor and a 250-foot dock ran out into Lemon Bay to accept the sailboats that brought in the town's supplies.

1916 -- Buchan's Landing is built on Dearborn

No one was more important in the development of the Dearborn Street area than Pete Buchan. The Buchans first came to Englewood in 1902. Ten years later, Florence and Pete bought the only supply store in town. It included the post office, and the price they paid was a hefty $315. The store was located on Lemon Bay at the foot of Yale Street, the then commercial street of Englewood. They also had to pay an additional $10 monthly rental fee. Buchan decided it would be cheaper to buy some property, build his own store and stop paying that ridiculously high rent. He had constructed a large two-story building directly on the bay at the end of Dearborn. The new store and the post office were on the first floor, and his family's living quarters above. Buchan also built a dock that extended 250 feet into the bay.

As there were no roads into Englewood then, all his merchandise arrived by sailboat. Almost immediately, the property became known as Buchan's Landing, and with its store, dock and post office, it soon became the social hub of the small town. As the town started to grow and slowly expand, other tradespeople followed Buchan's lead to Dearborn.

1924 -- A bit of short-lived glamour on Dearborn Street

The Royal Casino was originally built a short distance offshore on high stilted legs in Lemon Bay. A long pier connected it to land. It was located at the end of Dearborn Street next to Buchan's Landing. The builder and designer, Harry Chapin, constructed it in 1924. It is remembered to have been a very lively place where you could have a good dinner, and on weekends dance to a live orchestra. Whisky was served and slot machines were available for the customers' entertainment. People came from all around, especially from Boca Grande.

When the land boom ended, so did the gaiety at the casino. After sitting empty for a couple of years, it was rented in 1929 by Stuart Anderson, who used it as a fish house for several years. But for a short period in time, what a glamorous sight the Royal Casino must have been at night with fashionably dressed ladies, electric lights shimmering on the water and laughter and music wafting across Lemon Bay.

1926 -- Englewood's first convenient store built

Dearborn Street and Old Englewood Road is the location on which Mr. and Mrs. Walter Green had an ice cream stand built for their son, Hayward. Coca-Cola was sold, and sometimes ice cream when ice was available. When Mr. Green would bring prospective land buyers to town in his 21-passenger Studebaker bus, he would stop at his son's stand coming and going. When the stock market crash ended the arrival of real estate investors, Haywood's ice cream career also ended.

1928 -- Dearborn Street promised place on Tamiami Trail

The year 1923 is an important date in Florida history because the building of the Tamiami Trail started. When completed, it would go from Tampa to Miami, blazing across Florida's last frontier, the Everglades. All towns along the way wanted to be included on "the Trail."

Coming through town via Old Englewood Road, Dearborn Street would exit on River Road -- there, meeting U.S. 41. Englewood decided to call those six miles Tamiami Boulevard. It would be 100 feet wide and marked in three locations with twin stone pillars, inscribed with important features of Englewood, and beautified with tropical plantings.

In 1928, the Tamiami Trail became reality. To mark its opening, the governor of Florida, with a large entourage, motored the length of the the Trail, stopping often to make speeches. In Englewood, the speech-giving was done on the front porch of Zieglers Store on Dearborn Street, which is now Englewood Hardware. It was promised that day that the Trail would always go through Englewood.

Then came the sudden black days of the stock market crash, abruptly ending the great Florida land boom and the endless flow of tourists. The route of the Trail was soon changed back to U.S. 41. It wasn't economically smart for the highway to make a lazy loop through Englewood. Our town lost its prominent spot on the Trail, never to be regained.

Sun Herald photo by Diana Harris Today Lemon Bay Funeral Home is located on the corner of Dearborn Street and Old Englewood Road. If you look beyond it toward the bay, you will find Buchan's Landing with a large historical marker in front of it.

1933 -- Tates Market opens next to Buchan's Landing

Several years after the store at Buchan's Landing was closed, Pete Buchan backed his new son-in-law, J. D. "Jack" Tate, in the grocery business, and in 1933, they built next to Buchan's Landing what was to be another landmark in Englewood for many, many years to come -- Tate's Market, now Lemon Bay Funeral Home.

1956 -- Dr. John Flower, town's first dentist, arrives

Dearborn Street has been in a constant state of flux since its beginning, business coming, going and changing. Two important categories of commerce arrived on Dearborn at about the same time in 1956. 

Photo circa mid-1930s courtesy Jack Tate Jack Tate stands in front of his store by the gas pumps. Buchan's Landing is in the background. Once an out-of-fuel sea plane landed on Lemon Bay, and Tate waded out with fuel for the plane.

A young dentist, Englewood's first, lured by the Chamber of Commerce, opened up a practice at 359 W. Dearborn St. Dr. John Flower was to help care for Englewood's dental health until his retirement in August 1999.

Almost at the same time, at 349 Dearborn St., Bob Scott opened Scott's Outboard Repair. A large percentage of the town at that time was dependent on the commercial fishing industry; therefore, on boats. Fort Myers or Sarasota, however, were the closest places you could get a boat motor repaired, or for that matter, see a dentist. Scott's was the only shop in town that could repair an air-cooled motor or an outboard, which were affectionately called "hotheads" and "stink pots."

Part 2: Post-revitalization, whence goes Dearborn Street
First order of the new millennium, rebirth of Dearborn as commerce center

In the late 1920s, the Van Norman Grocery Store -- which had previously been the Chapin Grocery Store -- was operating on the corner of Dearborn Street and McCall Road. You could stop in for a Coca-Cola.

During the 1920s, residents strolling along the hardened-sand Yale Street conducting their daily business was a common occurrence in Englewood. Twenty years later, that scene had shifted to Dearborn Street as it became the commercial center of the town.

Twenty years from now, county planners and concerned residents hope to witness the rebirth of Dearborn Street as a commercial center of Englewood.

Vivian Roe, a long-range planner with the Sarasota County Growth Management Business Center and primary architect of the Englewood Town Center Sector Plan and the Englewood Redevelopment Plan, is one of those visionaries.

"I think what we've developed is great," Roe said. "The plan will allow Dearborn Street to maintain its small-town image. The challenge was to draw people to its attractions, yet maintain that quaint 'Main Street' image."

What Roe visualizes is a scene straight from a Charles Wysocki painting with a Florida twist: Homes with picket fences and porches co-existing with restaurants, offices, small businesses, bed and breakfast establishments -- all using a Florida Cracker style of architecture -- and an arts enclave linked by sidewalks. Landscaping provides the Florida twist in Roe's vision as palm trees and perennials line the street.

The beginning of Roe's vision is already taking place as Sarasota County implements a streetscaping project that will change the way Dearborn Street looked in the 1980s and 1990s. When completed, the street will look like a traditional downtown

The Sally Mihle Gallery today occupies one of the older buildings on Dearborn Street.

with angled parking, benches and trash receptacles, brick paving and brick crosswalks. Decorative streetlights will cast a warm, welcoming glow at night.

A new business overlay district will encourage property owners to build closer to the sidewalks, fostered by the reversal of parking and sidewalks that previously existed.

Businesses such as the tin-roofed Bootleggers Brewery are the leading edge of what will come for Dearborn Street.

"It will be to a large degree unrecognizable," said John Fellin, vice chairman of the Englewood Community Redevelopment Agency advisory board, who drives down Dearborn Street daily and envisions the possibilities. Recognizing that Sarasota County's old setback line requirements have created geographical problems, he advocates planning to mega-facade existing structures.

For example, Fellin said he could see the Blue Pagoda, which was built to the requirements of the old regulations, as the rear portion of another structure built to the street under the new guidelines.

Razing and restructuring will be the order of the day, said Fellin, with a good dose of preservation mixed in for buildings such as Englewood Hardware and Flynn Chiropractic to maintain the street's local character and heritage.

"If you left Englewood today and came back in 10 years, you'd remember how it used to be and how things were," Fellin said. "Those of us who experience the change won't have that memory."