The Modern Key West Tropical Pool-Garden Retreat: A Far-Cry from an Old Island Back-Yard
The tropical pool garden has become such an integral part of the modern-day outdoor Key West life-style, it’s challenging to find a renovated 1900’s Victorian cottage or house in Old Town that doesn’t have one in the back-yard. But this is a relatively new trend. I remember 20 years ago when many Key West houses didn’t have private pools or gardens in their yards. Sometimes it feels like only yesterday I was visiting friends who still had dirt back-yards with simple paver pathways at their island homes. When we wanted to swim and lay in the sun we would get together and ride bikes to the beach.
Of course, in those days real estate was still relatively inexpensive and interiors were more-likely-than not-furnished with garage sale finds, and decorated with lace and tie-dye. Some of us actually rented entire houses in Old Town for a few hundred dollars a month. Not everyone had a/c in their houses either. Even if they did electricity would brown-out frequently throughout the day, and the best way to cool off in the heat-of-the-day was to sit in the shallow water at the beach.
The original design of the historic Key West houses didn’t include the quintessential French doors that open up to a deck and a pool that we’ve come to expect in elegant modern tropical makeovers. When these houses were first built, many of the back doors lead straight away to a separate out-building kitchen for cooking to keep the house cooler when the stove was cranked up. There were no inside bathrooms either, and beyond the kitchen further into the yard, was the ‘little house with the half-moons carved on it.’ Some folks are surprised to learn that many of the old sheds that have been renovated to be Key West pool houses, guest rooms, or writers studios where originally outhouses! Some cistern tanks that once held precious drinking water on the property have long since been turned into plunge pools with lounge decks.
The modern interpretation of the Key West back-yard has reached such incredible standards of elegance with pools, fountains, and exotic gardens, it’s sometimes hard to imagine that at one time they were once places with a different purpose and composition. But architectural history reminds us that the first outdoor opulence was measured more by the design of the back-yard kitchen and even the comfort and size of the outhouse.
