Gamble Plantation Historic State Park, also known as the Gamble Mansion is a Florida State Park located in Ellenton, Florida on the Manatee River and US 301. It consists of the antebellum mansion developed by its first owner, Major Robert Gamble; a 40,000-gallon cistern to provide the household with fresh water; and 16 acres (65,000 m2) of the sugar plantation. At its peak, the plantation occupied 3500 acres in south Florida, and Gamble likely held more than 600 slaves to work the property and process the sugar cane. The park also includes the restored wood-frame, two-story, Victorian-style Patten House, built in 1872 for owner George Patten.
The mansion, the only surviving antebellum plantation house in South Florida, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Robert Gamble House on August 12, 1970. Its columns and two-foot-thick walls are constructed of tabby, a regional material developed as a substitute for brick.
In 1925 the mansion and grounds were bought by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and donated to the state as a memorial to Judah P. Benjamin, who served in three Cabinet positions under Confederate President Jefferson Davis during the American Civil War. He stayed at the plantation in May 1865 before escaping Federal forces, and sailing to England, where he had a second career. In 1937 the UDC installed a memorial plaque to Benjamin at the mansion. In 2002 the state acquired the property which holds the ruins of the plantation's sugar mill, one of the South's largest, and added it to the historic park complex.
On April 18, 2012, the AIA's Florida Chapter placed the Gamble Mansion on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places.
Read more about Gamble Plantation Historic State Park: History, Recreational Activities, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words gamble, plantation, historic, state and/or park:
“If, during his daily walk, he met any children flying kites, playing marbles, or whirling peg tops, he would buy the toys from them and exhort them not to gamble or indulge in vain sport.”
—For the State of Rhode Island, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)
“We are becoming like cats, slyly parasitic, enjoying an indifferent domesticity. Nice and snug in “the social” our historic passions have withdrawn into the glow of an artificial cosiness, and our half-closed eyes now seek little other than the peaceful parade of television pictures.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)