The Koreshan Unity

Tuesday April 10, 2012
Koreshan State Park Site #37

 

Up this morning with the intention of kayaking the Estero river but the tide chart convinced us an afternoon paddle would be better.

 

 

 

So we decided to take the Nature Trail over to the Historic Site of the Koreshan Community.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a lovely trail along the river and through what all the state parks refer to as “the real Florida”. 

 

 

 

 

 

As you approach the community you begin to walk through the Bamboo forest they planted.  I’m talking some HUGE bamboo here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not only big around and thick, but TALL

As you enter the grounds this plaque provides a very brief summary of the movement.  Dr. Teed must have been some charismatic guy to get over 100 people to move from Chicago to the buggy swamps of Florida in 1893.  And how about his theory of the universe?

 

 

The story of the Koreshans is a very interesting one and I would highly recommend a stay at the park to learn about them.  They were quite an egalitarian society in some ways.  Of course Teed was the leader but the group was governed by a counsel of 9 women known as the Planetary Court.  They lived here.

 

 

It’s a lovely Victorian House and I just can’t imagine how they got this
jungle cleared and such a building erected.  Here are a couple of bedrooms of the members of the “court”.  Seems they would all have needed that mosquito netting.

 

They were a very artistic group and one of their first buildings was an Art Hall in which they held musical concerts by their orchestra and presented plays and educational lectures.

 

It contains the original grand piano they brought with them from Chicago to their Florida swampland as well as a model built to explain the Koreshan theory of the universe.

 

 

The community is located right along the Tamiami Trail, Route 41, but originally they came by water up the Estero River.  Used the dock, originally made of bamboo, and entry steps as the main entrance to the community.

 

 

 

The property was to be landscaped with gardens and they accomplished a great deal of this.  There are trees from all over the world.  A very nice booklet enables you to walk the grounds and know what the plantings are and from where they originate.

These lovely bridges connect various sections of the property.

 

 

 

I had thought we would spend an hour or so seeing the “history” part of the park but it was so interesting that we found the morning had gone by and we were ready for lunch.   So we walked the Nature Trail back to Winnona,

had lunch and decided to forego the kayaking in favor of seeing the rest of the historic area.   We biked over this time.

 

We began our afternoon visit at the Founder’s House in the middle of the grounds where Teed lived with his “right hand woman” in this celibate society.  There was a nice introductory video on Teed and the community which I would suggest you see first before touring the grounds.  The house was built in 1896.

 

 

 

The drawings of the geometry of the property as designed by Teed show that this house was to be the centerpiece and done in Gold.  Guess they never got around to that part.

 

 

Dr. Teed died in 1908 and that’s a very interesting story for you to learn when you get here.  When he didn’t raise from the dead as he had said he would, his followers became disillusioned and the community began to decline. 

Unfortunately many of the buildings also began to deteriorate and were taken down in the late 40’s.  By 1961 only 4 members remained and they deeded the property to the state which has done an excellent job of restoring most of the properties and reacquiring the equipment that was used in the many businesses the community ran.  General store, Publishing company and printing press, bakery among others. 

The Koreshans provided for all their needs with a community laundry, machine shops, and a power plant.  Both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford visited the art programs and the Koreshan Community was one of the first, if not the first in the area, to adopt his “electricity”.  Most buildings had their own cisterns for water supply.

 

 

 

 

I’m not a great lover of machines but David is and I know lots of you are as well.  So here are the Large machine shop, the small machine shop and the electric generator building.

 

 

 

 

 

Originally the members lived in men’s and women’s dormitories over the no longer standing Dining Hall and the no longer open General Store but there are a few individual homes.  As an aside:  I’ve always wondered why the Shakers and then the Koreshans’ beliefs included celibacy.  Was it to eliminate the strife that comes along?  By doing so, they eliminated themselves as well.  The Mormons, originally another similar group in my opinion, had polar opposite beliefs and their large families have made them one of the country’s major religions.

The original home which was on the property is named for Gustav Damkohler who built it in 1882 and then donated over 300 acres of land and the house to the Unity for its colony.  It is where Dr. Teed and 3 members of his community lived when they arrived in January of 1894.
These folks clearly could have been full timers.  4 people living and eating in a one room cabin with a loft.

 

The Vesta Newcomb Cottage was moved in 1937 to the community from a nearby location where it had been a home and barbershop, thus the two doors.  The furnishings are as they were in the 1960’s when Vesta Newcomb was the last resident to live there.

 

 

This was my favorite. The Conrad Schlender Cottage was built in 1903 in the Florida Wood Frame Vernacular architectural style.  The style grew out of the specific needs of South Florida’s high humidity, heavy rains and searing sun.  The roof was steeply pitched to shed rain quickly and the siding vertical board and batten to allow for run-off.  The ceilings were open beam allowing the summer heat to rise, and doors and windows were placed across from one another to allow for cross ventilation.  Schlender was one of the last Koreshans living within the settlement.   It is the least preserved of all the standing buildings and I do hope the state will not let it rot.

 

 

I like this house particularly because my great uncle Ed and his wife Josie lived in one beginning in the 30’s and I have pictures of my mother and them sitting on the front porch, just like this.

 

We finished off our afternoon with another stroll around the lovely grounds.  The fill from the creation of the sunken gardens was used to create several mounds.  This one was appropriated as a home by a wise tortoise.

 

 

It was a very interesting day which started out as a one hour tour and ended up taking the entire day.  I was not sorry and would love to come back on a full moonlit night to see the shell paths glowing.