This asymmetrical stucco house incorporates a number of elements from Mediterranean-Revival architecture: the bell tower, the archway, the red tile awning over the doorway and the elaborate ironwork gate and fencing.
Let’s take a time-travel trip back to Vero Beach in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Where the city is located today, there existed in the 1880s a rough, frontier town, inundated with swamps and mosquitoes, accessed by crude dirt roads and lacking electricity and running water. An early settler recalled rags soaked with kerosene hanging in the open windows of the houses to ward off mosquitoes.
In reality, the settlement was a handful of homesteaders and a post office manned by Henry Gifford. Rumor has it that his wife, Sarah, named the town Vero for the Latin phrase “in truth.” The census listed 102 people in Vero in 1910. Three years later, Vero was recognized as the official name of the town. Citrus groves stretched for miles in all directions; commercial fishing was an important secondary industry.
In 1919, just after World War I ended, Vero was incorporated. A wooden bridge over the Indian River from the mainland to the barrier island was erected in 1920, finally connecting the two pieces of land. The citrus industry flourished and crates of oranges and grapefruit, sometimes called “pomelos,” after the Dutch word, “pomplemoes,” were shipped to the Northeast. A local company, Vero Top Brand, was a leader in this field and commanded up to $10 per wooden container.
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