The Golden Gate Building, built in 1925, is an historic real estate and land development office building located on Florida State Road A1A at 3225 South East Dixie Highway (corner of South East Delmar Street) in the unincorporated community of Golden Gate south of Stuart in Martin County, Florida. It was built by the Golden Gate Development Company to serve as the sales office for its 200 block subdivision called Golden Gate. which was a re-subdivision of a part of the 1911 subdivision called Port Sewall. The Florida Land Boom, however, collapsed before it could be used as such. In 1926, it became the Port Sewall Post Office and it was later used as a church and then as an art studio, before being abandoned and falling into disrepair.
In 1989, the Golden Gate Building was listed in A Guide to Florida's Historic Architecture, published by the University of Florida Press.
In 2002, the Board of County Commissioners of Martin County bought it in order to prevent its destruction. Renovations which began in 2005 were directed first to shoring up the four walls which were in serious danger of collapse. Exterior renovations were completed in 2008 with a $48,000 grant from the state and it is anticipated that the interior will be restored by 2010. The Friends of the Historic Golden Gate Community is spearheading the renovation efforts. Plans call for the 2-story 2,200-square-foot (200 m2) building to be increased to 4,000 square feet (370 m2) with the new space to be used to provide amenities such as the bathrooms necessary for a public community center.
Famous quotes containing the words building, golden and/or gate:
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“This is mere madness,
And thus a while the fit will work on him.
Anon, as patient as the female dove
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A young child is no longer simply a child; he or she is a preschooler, poised at the starting gate in the race of life.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)