Arcadia Historic District in DeSoto County, Florida

Photograph: Desoto Courthouse.jpg by Fl295 at English Wikipedia · Public domain · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

DeSoto County attraction

Arcadia Historic District

DeSoto County · Central Florida

Downtown Arcadia was rebuilt in brick after a Thanksgiving Day fire in 1905, and 293 of those buildings still stand.

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ABOUT THIS PLACE

The Arcadia Historic District takes in roughly 3,400 acres and 293 historic buildings, bounded by Lee and Mills Avenues and Imogene, Cypress, Pine and Magnolia Streets. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 10, 1984. The reason it looks the way it does is a fire. On Thanksgiving Day 1905 the business district burned, and the town rebuilt in brick and concrete rather than wood, which is why the storefronts along Oak Street are solid and of a piece rather than a patchwork of different decades. The commercial core runs about eighteen blocks, with a residential section behind it. Landmarks include the Classical Revival county courthouse of 1912, the Opera House of 1906 and the live oak planted in 1938 that people call the Tree of Knowledge. The architecture is described as Late Victorian and Classical Revival. What fills those buildings now is antiques: Arcadia has more antique dealers than a town this size normally holds, and a monthly antique fair draws over a hundred vendors and buyers from across Florida. There is no admission and no gate. A self-guided walk of the commercial and residential blocks takes one to two hours

GETTING THERE

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