A 200-Year Journey

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For those seeking a colorful, well-rounded journey into the past, Tallahassee and the Leon County area boast numerous historic landmarks and museums for all ages. In honor of our bicentennial, consider visiting some of these sites to learn about the events and lives that shaped our community, from early Native American occupation to the antebellum period and the Civil Rights Movement.

Living History

Tallahassee Museum

The Tallahassee Museum was chartered in 1957 by a group of educators, civic groups and other interested people. The museum’s historical mission focuses on Tallahassee and surrounding counties and includes a historic 1880s farm and the modest plantation home of Princess Catherine Murat, great-grandniece of George Washington and widow of Prince Achille Murat of France.

The museum also offers educational programming related to early Paleo-Indians, mastodons and mammoths. Plus, it has an array of wildlife to enjoy.

Stroll along the museum’s elevated boardwalks to observe animals such as Florida panthers, red foxes, black bears and others in their natural environments. Or, climb, zip and maneuver through the trees on a Tree-to-Tree Adventure course.

The Tallahassee Museum is located near the airport on the southwest side of Tallahassee.
Address: 3945 Museum Drive, Tallahassee

John G. Riley Center/Museum of African American History and Culture

It was rare for Black business owners to flourish during the Jim Crow era, but John Riley managed to do so. His house on Jefferson Street was modest for a millionaire — no white columns, no grand vista from the porch or long approach drive. It is a simple two-story wood frame home near the intersection of Jefferson Street and South Meridian.

Born into slavery, Riley was Florida’s first African American to earn a teacher’s certificate and became the first principal of Lincoln High School, the first public high school for African Americans in Tallahassee. He also worked as secretary of the Florida NAACP.

With his modest teacher’s salary, Riley invested in downtown real estate. He eventually owned and rented several homes in Smokey Hollow, an African American community of shotgun houses and Black-owned businesses spanning several blocks just east of the Capitol. His house served as a social center for the community because it was large enough to entertain. Now, it’s a museum.

Take a tour or visit the reproduction Smokey Hollow barber shop nearby, one of the mainstays of community activities featuring a checkerboard with bottle caps for pieces as though the players will return any moment to finish the game.

Address: 419 E. Jefferson St., Tallahassee; (850) 891-3560

The Grove Museum

Surrounded by stately live oaks, The Grove, built by enslaved people in the 1840s, was home to several generations of the Call and Collins families. The last occupants were Gov. LeRoy Collins and his wife, Mary Call Collins. The museum interprets this family history but also covers civil rights. LeRoy Collins switched from being pro-segregation to anti-segregation while serving as governor from 1955 to 1961. He was the first Southern governor to do so. His office in The Grove appears as though he just stepped away from his desk.

Address: 902 N. Monroe St., Tallahassee; (850) 245-6100

Goodwood Museum & Gardens

While the vast farmlands of Goodwood Plantation were sold long ago, one can view the original plantation buildings, including the main house, servants’ quarters, carriage house and water tower. Hardy Croom purchased 2,400 acres of Lafayette’s original land grant in 1834 to establish the plantation. Subsequent owners are part of a who’s who of Tallahassee history, including Arvah Hopkins, a powerful antebellum merchant in Tallahassee. One of his descendants, Arvah B. Hopkins, served as Tallahassee’s city manager from 1952 to 1974, and the current Tallahassee power plant bears his name.

A permanent outdoor memorial site is being planned at Goodwood to honor the more than 200 enslaved people who once worked and lived on the property.

Address: 1600 Miccosukee Road, Tallahassee; (850) 877-4202

Mission San Luis De Apalachee

At Mission San Luis, step back to 1680 when a thriving community existed. Interact with living history interpreters at Florida’s only reconstructed Spanish mission site. The site includes a Spanish church, Apalachee council house, fort, Spanish dwelling, friary home and blacksmith shop, plus a visitor’s center and museum.

Address: 2100 W. Tennessee St., Tallahassee (just west of Florida State University); (850) 245-6406

Capitol Art Displays

Florida’s Capitol has several permanent and temporary art displays open to the public, including a collection of governors portraits dating back to Gov. Francis Fleming, who served from 1889–1893, in the Historic Capitol Museum. And James Rosenquist’s Sunshine State murals can be found in the Capitol’s west plaza. Commissioned by the Florida Legislature in the 1970s, the left mural uses various imagery to represent space, aquatic activities and North Florida’s lumber, pulp and paper industries. The right mural represents Florida’s flora and fauna.

Address: 400 S. Monroe St., Tallahassee

Union Bank Museum

First opened as a planters bank in 1841, the stately Union Bank is considered Florida’s oldest surviving bank building. After emancipation, the bank served former enslaved people, becoming the National Freedman Savings and Trust Company. Over time, it has been used for several different businesses and was donated to the state of Florida in 1971. The bank was then moved from its location on South Adams Street to its current location on Apalachee Parkway only a block from the Florida Capitol, where it serves as a museum.

Address: 219 Apalachee Parkway, Tallahassee

Florida Historic Capitol Museum

Three floors of exhibits await visitors at the Florida Historic Capitol Museum. The first floor showcases the restored 1902 reception room to the governor’s suite and private office. There is a cabinet meeting room, stenographer’s office, Supreme Court chamber, chronological exhibits of state history and memorabilia of political campaigns. The second-floor rotunda is where visitors can view the art glass sub-dome of the Capitol, along with its grand staircase.

The restored 1902 House of Representatives chamber stands opposite the Senate Chamber, with exhibits about each chamber’s history in between. A special bicentennial exhibit about the founding of Tallahassee will run through 2024.

Address: 400 S. Monroe St., Tallahassee; (850) 487-1902

The Civil Rights Heritage Walk

Unveiled in 2013, the 16 terrazzo sidewalk panels honor 58 civil rights activists who took part in Tallahassee’s efforts to gain equal rights.

Located on the corner of Jefferson and Monroe streets in downtown Tallahassee.

The Civil Rights Memorial at Cascades Memorial Plaza

Sitting on the site of the former Leon County Jail, the outdoor historical exhibits cover local Civil Rights history and honor the men and women who led many of the efforts in the 1950s and ’60s.

Located at the intersection of East Gaines and South Gadsden streets near Cascades Park.

Tallahassee Automobile Museum

The automobile has transformed American transportation for over a century, allowing millions of visitors to access Tallahassee-Leon County and the rest of Florida each year. The Tallahassee Automobile Museum features more than 160 historic and unique vehicles from throughout the world, including three Batmobiles and a 1931 Duesenberg. The museum also features rare boats, boat motors, knives, fishing lures, sports memorabilia, pedal cars and more.

Address: 6800 Mahan Drive, Tallahassee; (850) 942-0137

Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park

Since the early 1800s, Wakulla Springs has long been a source of pride and pleasure for area residents. Being one of the deepest and largest springs in the world, it’s certainly a site to behold.

Remains of prehistoric animals have been found from the spring’s depths and the many caves that feed it. One underwater room has even been labeled “the megafauna mausoleum” by the handful of authorized cave divers who map its depths. Bones inside Wakulla’s caves likely include those of giant lions and jaguars; tiger-sized saber-toothed cats; beavers as big as black bears; ground sloths 16 feet in length; 10-foot-tall, sharp-beaked flightless birds; and other fearsome creatures. Complete mastodon skeletons have also been found — one of which greets visitors at the Museum of Florida History in downtown Tallahassee — along with stone tools and spear points used by Florida’s earliest humans.

In 1934, millionaire Edward Ball bought the spring and the 4,000 acres surrounding it. He viewed the spring as a personal retreat and built an ornate Mediterranean-style lodge overlooking it. Today, the lodge remains much like it did when Ball built it in the 1930s, complete with a vintage elevator, period furniture, marble checkerboards and no television in the rooms. Iron bars still adorn the windows of Ball’s formerly private room.

Address: 465 Wakulla Park Drive, Wakulla Springs; (850) 561-7276

The Carrie Meek and James N. Eaton Sr., Southeastern Regional Black Archives Research Center and Museum

Located on the FAMU campus, the Black Archives preserves source material on and about African Americans from ancient to present times.

Its roots date back to 1905 when a fire destroyed Duval Hall, FAMU’s first library. The school’s second president, Nathan B. Young, requested help from Andrew Carnegie, who in 1906, happily donated $10,000 for the construction of a new library. In 1976, five years after the Florida Legislature mandated the creation of a repository to “serve the state by collecting and preserving source material on and about African Americans,” that library became the founding home of the Black Archives.

Exhibits cover local African American leaders and the Civil Rights Movement.

Address: 1601 S. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Tallahassee; (850) 599-3000

Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park

Florida is known for its gardens. After all, the Spanish name for the state means “Land of Flowers,” and on Tallahassee’s northside is one of the Sunshine State’s premier gardens, Maclay Gardens State Park. First known as Killearn Gardens, the once private estate of Alfred and Louise Maclay was opened to the public in 1946 by Louise Maclay after her husband’s death.

Today, the park covers nearly 1,200 acres, and the 28-acre ornamental gardens are well-maintained and certainly just as spectacular during the peak blooming season of January through April. Italian cypresses and “Aunt Jenny” camellias populate the park, along with the rare native Chapman’s Rhododendron and Torreya tree from the Apalachicola River bluffs and ravines region.

Trails through the gardens are arranged a bit like a labyrinth since they wind and curve around pools and ponds and through a vine-covered brick enclosure — the Secret Garden. A brick drive canopied by stately live oaks leads one down to the Maclay house museum, which is only open when camellias are in bloom, per Louise Maclay’s wishes.

Address: 3540 Thomasville Road, Tallahassee; (850) 487-4556

Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park

Six of seven earthen temple mounds built by Apalachee Native Americans along Lake Jackson before European contact are protected in this state park. The largest mound is about 36 feet high, providing a commanding view. Interpretive panels share the story of the early inhabitants and the elaborate artifacts found in a mound excavated on adjacent private land.

Address: 3600 Indian Mounds Road, Tallahassee; (850) 487-7989 (look for signs on North Monroe Street at the corner of Crowder Road north of I-10)

Letchworth-Love Mounds Archaeological State Park

This park boasts Florida’s tallest Native American ceremonial mound at nearly 50 feet in height. Built between 1,100 and 1,800 years ago, the Great Mound had a pyramid-like peak, earthen ramp and lower platforms. It took several million baskets of soil and several years to build. A winding interpretive trail along with a large display in a pavilion provides information about how the main mound was built and for what purpose.

Address: 4500 Sunray Road S., Tallahassee (along U.S. 90 about halfway to Monticello); (850) 487-7989 

Hernando de Soto Winter Encampment Site and Gov. John Martin House

Replicas of artifacts from Hernando de Soto’s 1539–1540 winter encampment in Tallahassee are on display in the former house of Florida Gov. John Martin, who served from 1925 to 1929. The site showcases a series of panels with maps depicting de Soto’s ruthless expedition through the Southeast.

Address: 1001 De Soto Park Drive, Tallahassee (just off East Lafayette Street); (850) 245-6444 

Historic Eats!

Bradley’s Country Store

Bradley’s Country Store on Centerville Road in northern Leon County is a thriving business, selling everything from packaged and canned goods to local produce, honey, cane syrup and coarse ground grits. But the store is renowned for its pork sausage made on-site. (Sometimes the line at the meat counter is out the door on a Saturday.)

“A lot of the attraction for people is that it is unique to find something built in 1927 still in operation,” said owner and manager Jan Bradley Parker, granddaughter of founder Lawrence Edward Bradley. “There’s a certain ambiance with that. It takes people back in time. There’s no glitz and glamour. Just a basic business that sells really good sausage.”

The sausage making began in 1910, and the finished product was sold out of the kitchen window of the Bradley house that once stood behind the current store.

“We use the same recipe that my great grandma used in 1910,” said Parker. “We have a more modern building now to make the sausage, but it is still the same basic process and ingredients.”

Parker smiles when she adds that the recipe is a trade secret along with the average amount of sausage sold in a year. “It’s a lot,” she said.

Address: 10655 Centerville Road, Tallahassee; (850) 893-4742

The Sweet Shop

Several businesses in and around Florida State University have long served students and faculty. The oldest is The Sweet Shop on West Jefferson Street. It has been feeding students and catering to their sweet tooths for more than a century.

The Sweet Shop was originally constructed by Moses Demetree as a family home in 1921, but it was leased the next year to T.J. Hawes for use as The Wisteria Tea Room, catering to students attending the then Florida State College for Women. But tea wasn’t as popular as sweets, so the business was taken over by the Frain family in 1924 and renamed The Sweet Shop. The name stuck, and the current building still retains a classic marquee sign circa 1950. Various owners have taken over since.

The single-story restaurant, now dwarfed on two sides by CollegeTown apartments, sells classic milkshakes, frappes, lattes, smoothies, paninis, wraps and more. Not surprisingly, college students are its main clientele, and many appreciate its historical significance since it predates most buildings on campus, including Landis and Dodd halls. Over the years, students have described dining at The Sweet Shop as similar to eating at home.

Address: 701 W. Jefferson St., Tallahassee; (850) 329-6466

The Edison

Few Tallahassee historic buildings are more noticeable than The Edison, perched on the southern border of Cascades Park. Opened in 2015 in the city’s historic electric building, originally built more than a century ago, the restaurant’s interior offers high ceilings and industrial designs while the outside patio dining provides sweeping views of scenic Cascades Park. Some have called dining there “an electrifying experience!”

Address: 470 Suwannee St., Tallahassee; (850) 765-9771

Bar 1903

Housed in the former Walker Library built in 1903, Bar 1903 features a robust cocktail menu that spans 160 years. The menu is conveniently divided by era beginning in “Pre-1880” and continuing to modern times, making for a spirited journey through history. Sandwiches and desserts can also be ordered. The antique-style wood decor and lighting alone are worthy of a visit.

Address: 209 E. Park Ave., Tallahassee; (850) 354-9739

Amicus Brewing Ventures

The city’s newest brewery takes on a historical flavor by occupying the 1904 Tallahassee Waterworks Building across from Cascades Park. The building, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, has been carefully restored to keep its historic appearance. Four families “with a love of fellowship, adventure and beer” came together to create the brewery.

Address: 717 S. Gadsden St., Tallahassee; (850) 772-0228

Hayward House Bistro

Occupying the space vacated by the long-renowned Andrew’s Restaurant on historic Adams Street is a bold move, but the Hayward House Bistro has managed to pull it off. The popular menu, put together by owner Ashley Chaney from family recipes and inspired visits abroad, ranges from buttermilk fried chicken to eggplant katsu. The restaurant’s name honors Dr. Thomas Hayward and his family, who occupied the site in the 1920s. Read more about the restaurant online at tallahasseemagazine.com/a-new-legacy.

Address: 228 S. Adams St., Tallahassee; (850) 825-7081

Olean’s Café

Home cooking is what brings FAMU students, nearby residents and visitors to Olean’s Café on South Adams Street. Olean McCaskill has been serving up full breakfasts and lunches of fried chicken, catfish, chitterlings and fixins since 1997.

“I’ve always loved the restaurant business,” said the gray-haired McCaskill, sporting her classic pigtails. “I’ve been doing it since I was 14 years old and am still going. I ain’t gonna stop. Everybody says, ‘When you gonna retire?’ I say I’m still moving. You’ve got to keep moving. It’s something I’ve always loved doing — serving the customers.”   

Address: 1605 S. Adams St., Tallahassee; (850) 521-0259

Self-Guided Tours

The Tallahassee-Leon County Geographic Information System (GIS) team has put together a bicentennial gallery of historical resources and self-guided tours accessible by computer or cell phone. One can learn about subjects ranging from early aviation to women’s history, stroll through historic Frenchtown, Fort Braden and other local neighborhoods, or tour the county to view state historical signs and way markers.

Begin your journey by logging onto tlcgis.org/history/Gallery/Gallery-Collection.

Doug Alderson

Doug Alderson is a Tallahassee-Leon County bicentennial content provider for Visit Tallahassee and chair of the Bicentennial History Task Force. He is also the author of several award-winning books about Florida history and natural history. Learn more about Tallahassee-Leon County’s bicentennial at tallahasseeleoncounty200.com.