The Southernmost House: A Key West Story Built to Last
A husband, a wife, a stack of bricks — and more than a century of Key West history.
At the quiet end of Duval Street, where the road meets the Atlantic, sits one of Key West’s most recognizable homes: The Southernmost House.
You can admire it simply for what it is — a grand Victorian mansion overlooking the ocean. But once you know the stories behind it, you start looking at it differently.
Built in 1897 by Judge Jeptha Vining Harris and his wife, Florida Curry Harris, the home was extraordinary from the beginning. Florida was the youngest daughter of William Curry, one of Key West’s wealthiest and most influential early residents.
The Queen Anne Victorian mansion was designed with sweeping balconies, stained glass, open-water views — and, remarkably, just one bedroom.
It was also ahead of its time. Thomas Edison oversaw the home’s original electrical installation, back when electricity in a private residence was still a novelty.
But my favorite part of the story has nothing to do with Edison.
It has to do with the bricks.
The Story That Won’t Die
As the story has been told in Key West for generations, the mansion was originally finished in dark red brick.
Florida Harris returned from a trip, saw the completed house — and apparently hated it.
Not let’s repaint something hated it.
She wanted the brick changed.
So Judge Harris reportedly had the mansion re-bricked using the lighter cream-colored bricks brought from New Orleans — creating the distinctive exterior we recognize today.
Whether every detail has been embellished through more than a century of Key West storytelling is almost beside the point.
The story has survived because it feels so perfectly Key West: ambitious, extravagant, stubborn and just eccentric enough to be believable.
What I love about this story is that someone cared enough about this house to get it exactly the way she wanted it — and more than a hundred years later, we’re still talking about her decision.
If These Walls Could Talk
And those walls have seen quite a bit since then.
Residence of Judge Vining Harris, circa 1900
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory
During Prohibition, the mansion operated as a speakeasy, with a restaurant downstairs, gambling upstairs and plenty of stories in between.
In the 1940s it became Café Cayo Hueso, attracting some of the era’s best-known writers, entertainers and personalities.
Over the years, the house has also welcomed five U.S. presidents, along with other dignitaries and notable guests.
Yet through all those chapters — hurricanes, changing owners, changing uses and more than a century beside the sea — the mansion itself has endured.
Built for Key West
That may be the part of the story I appreciate most, especially working in Key West real estate.
Historic homes here aren’t just beautiful. The best of them tell you something about how people learned to build on a small island surrounded by saltwater, wind and storms.
Materials mattered. Craftsmanship mattered. And maintaining these homes mattered.
The Southernmost House has survived long enough to become part of the landscape of Key West — one of those buildings you can pass a hundred times and almost take for granted.
Until you learn the story.
You don’t have to know its history for the house to do its job. But once you know it, you can’t really look at the place the same way again.
— Allison Findlay, Key West Real Estate Advisor
Photo Source: https://southernmosthouse.com/
