The idea of a kind of governor’s park on the property was once brought into play by then-Governor Rick Scott.
Next week, state officials will announce bids to demolish the last Victorian-style mansions that once lined a mile of North Monroe Street in Tallahassee from the State Capitol to Thomasville Road.
The move comes as some local historians and citizens try to preserve as much as possible of the Gladstone at 716 N. Monroe St., the 1897 family home of a wealthy Tallahassee grocer that was later converted into a 13-room World War II boarding house.
The house is adjacent to the Governor’s Mansion on Adams Street and was purchased by the state this June, ostensibly to expand the security perimeter around the home of Governor Ron DeSantis and the First Family until his term ends in 2027.
Meanwhile, the Tallahassee History account on X has started an online campaign to gather support for preserving the house, urging authorities to either move the house to nearby city or state property or convert it into an office for employees of the governor’s office or the local historical society.
The account also posted a series of photos of the “lost Victorian homes of Monroe Street.”
The Gladstone’s planned demolition has also revived a historic preservation group in Tallahassee. The Florida Heritage Foundation hasn’t met since the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, but is now reconvening to address the Gladstone’s plight.
“Our membership numbers have declined sharply, but I am being inundated with calls to do something,” said foundation president Ann Bidlingmaier.
Bidlingmaier said she has spoken to the Department of Management Services, the state’s real estate agency, about the planned demolition and scheduled the foundation’s first post-COVID meeting in a few weeks to find a way to preserve the last mansions on Monroe Street.
Local philanthropist Grace Dansby once owned the Gladstone
Earlier this summer, Bismilah Frenchtown LLC, a Tallahassee-based company, sold the late Gilded Era mansion to the state for $197,000 more than it paid when it bought the 1,000-square-foot property three years ago. Bismilah, which is tied to the Bardhi family known for its local Italian restaurant, paid $370,000 for The Gladstone to local investor and philanthropist Grace Dansby in 2021, then sold it to the state Division of Land Management for $567,000 in June.
Dansby spent $630,000 in 2007 to buy the ornate mansion with its gazebo-like porch and stained-glass windows. “The Gladstone is a beautiful property,” Dansby said in a telephone interview.
And she thought it would be a good investment because she was convinced that the government would want it at some point.
The Gladstone anchors a corner that extends to the north to The Grove, the family home of Territorial Governor Richard Keith Call and former Governor LeRoy Collins, and to the west to the Governor’s Mansion and a small park with a Sandy Proctor sculpture of children and a dog running across a log, now closed to the public.
Dansby said the property could be used to create a parking lot for the mansion and nearby The Grove, or it could house a museum that would serve as a gateway to the other sites.
“I’m an investor and I was just thinking about how to open up this whole area. It could be beautiful. The Governor’s Mansion, a museum, the Grove. It would open up the whole area,” Dansby said.
Dansby said she met with the state twice after purchasing The Gladstone about redeveloping the property, but broke off talks after the state offered her about half of what she paid for the property – but about what she would get for it if she sold it to Bismilah Frenchtown LLC in 2021.
Although then-Governor Rick Scott floated the idea of a “Governor’s Park,” which Dansby envisioned, she stuck with Gladstone Park during Scott’s term (2011-2018).
Documents previously uncovered by the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau show that Scott’s associates coordinated fundraising efforts for a plan to purchase the block along Monroe Street from Brevard Street north to The Grove. Companies including Florida Power & Light, U.S. Sugar, Florida Crystals and Blue Cross Blue Shield donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the effort.
But the plan came to nothing.
Gladstone was once the anchor point of what is now the beginning of Midtown Tallahassee
The 35,000-square-foot home was built in 1897 for the PT Mickler family as part of banker George W. Saxon’s Long Grove housing development, which now occupies most of Tallahassee’s Midtown neighborhood.
Seven years after Mickler built the Gladstone, Saxon donated land for the governor’s mansion at the heart of his settlement – the two lots formed the southwest corner of the Long Grove settlement. EL White converted the Mickler residence into a 13-room boarding house at the start of World War II, and the rooms were rented for at least another 70 years.
J. Doug Smith is a seventh-generation Tallahassee resident and Mickler’s great-grandnephew. Smith also counts Saxon as a great-great-granduncle. He said family records show Mickler paid Saxon $500 for the property in 1895, the equivalent of about $18,500 today. Records of the cost of building the house have not yet been found.
Smith hates the idea of demolishing the Gladstone building, but has come to terms with it being torn down. On Thursday, he said, he received word from the state’s Division of Historic Resources that he could take possession of the four stained glass windows. The state, the Tallahassee Historical Society and Smith will meet next and consider how to remove the windows.
Smith says he will donate them to the Tallahassee Museum. “That gives me some peace of mind,” he said. “They’re not going to hang on someone’s wall or be put in someone’s house. They’re going to be on display and people can see a little bit of an old Tallahassee house.”
Meanwhile, bids from contractors to demolish the Gladstone will open at 2 p.m. on August 20. According to a legal notice, the Department of Management Services estimates the cost of demolishing the house at $210,000.
As the possible demolition date draws ever closer, monument conservationists are calling on residents to:
James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at [email protected] and on X as @CallTallahassee.
