Key West Real Estate Trivia - No 4

 

I posted this photo before and got called out for an incorrect description. That's okay because I wasn't 100% correct. The photo shows a horse drawn tram on Division Street in 1890. Look carefully at the On Wo Laundry sign located on the lower right corner. The words "Frances Street" appear on the top rail. There is a somewhat vacant lot on the opposite side of the street which in prior days and modern times is also Frances Street. Division Street and later Truman Avenue is the main street in Key West and divides the historic district into two parts the most famous being Old Town North of Truman and the other Old Town South of Truman.

The Trivia Question is what is located in the "vacant lot" today? I'll make the answer easy by showing photos in my old shoebox and some master craft detective work gained by watching decades of Perry Mason reruns.I really searched through the old shoebox and could not find an historic building located on the once empty lot. But I did find a photo of a gas station that looks to have been built sometime just before or after World War II. There are no 50s or 60s cars in that photo. The photo shows the location as being a large lot.

Then I found two photos from the 1960s that show a large corner lot with a liquor store on the right side, a bar in the middle, and apartments on the second floor. I was pretty sure I knew the location - the corner of Truman Avenue and Frances Street. I checked the Monroe County Property Appraiser records. The building was built in 1964 which explains the dresses and hairdos of the ladies. What is not explained is the roof-top deck with trees. Was the White Inn Bar something else on the top?

If you look closely at the 1985 photo of a bus kissing the phone pole at the corner of Truman and Frances, you will see the name of the bar was then called Big Daddy's.  I'm kinda guessing here, but I think the establishment became more than a bar by that point.

Today the once empty lot at the corner of Division Street at Frances Street is now a gentleman's club with private rooms and suites and a package liquor store. The company website says date established was 2001. I remember going there a few years earlier when there were two bars side-by-side. One bar was for men interested in wathing ladies dance. The other bar was called "Number"which featured young men doing the same thing and also for men.  I recall some "disagreement "between the two bar operators. I don't really know what happened after that. Except every time I drive past that bar the man in the back seat or riding shotgun next to me knows exactly what goes on.

 

 
 

 

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