The Remains of Historic Safety Harbor

By Dominic B.

It all started when, “Odet Philippe supposedly brought grapefruits to Safety Harbor,” said Robert Anderson, Safety Harbor Museum Curator. Safety Harbor, which was called Green Springs at the time, was where Philippe set ashore. Most of the town's history was burned in the 1917 fire. The surviving history is still waiting to be discovered. Out of the whole city, some buildings survived the fire. The Chamber of Commerce is one of them. The building was renovated so well that most of the history inside was destroyed. Today, the building looks completely different inside from how it originally looked. In fact most original buildings were renovated. Houses are the only structures to really be considered historical monuments. The oldest house is the log cabin on 6th street. It was built approximately in the 1870s. The fire burned most records that told when buildings were built. Most remaining houses were built around the 1920s. The few houses that survived the fire spark the interest of most historians. We can only guess now what history remains in the original buildings.