Friday night, a 19-year-old allegedly sprayed the numbers 2, 5 and an “x” surrounded by a rectangle in black paint on three of the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center’s Ionic columns.
Removing that graffiti will not be easy because the columns are made of coquina limestone, which consists of thousands of tiny, fossilized shells.
“Given the porous and delicate nature of the stone, it can be easy to drive the paint deeper into the pores if the work is not handled carefully,” wrote architectural conservator Kelly Ciociolo in a text on Sunday.
Ciociola, who served as conservator for Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami prior to starting her own firm, became familiar with the Davis Art Center while she was in town in 2024 repairing the damage Rachel at the Well sustained during Hurricane Ian.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, the Davis Art Center stated that it is consulting with professionals to determine the best methods to clean and restore the damages.
Twenty-nine years ago to the day, vandals severely damaged another Fort Myers landmark — “Lorelei,” a white marble sculpture carved in Italy in 1880 by Emma Elisabeth Phinney. On the night of October 29, 1997, someone knocked off her head along with a piece of one arm and some toes. The culprit was never identified and the parts were never recovered. The headless sculpture of a German siren is now on view at the Fort Myers Garden Council.
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Arrest made
Fort Myers Police report that they arrested a 19-year-old man in connection with the case after reviewing surveillance footage of the building.
According to the Fort Myers Police Department, Rolando Velasquez-Castro of Fort Myers was arrested Monday and charged with criminal mischief involving historic property under section 806.13(3) of the Florida Statutes. The third degree felony is punishable under Florida law by a term of imprisonment not to exceed five years and a fine of up to $5,000.
He remains in Lee County Jail on a $2,500 bond and is scheduled for a court hearing Dec. 7. His only other contact with law enforcement was several traffic infractions, one in August this year and two in 2025.
Coquina limestone
Thousands of years ago, the tiny coquina clam donax variabilis lived in the shallow waters of coastal Florida. Coquinas are the small pink, lavender, yellow, or white shells found at the waterline on most Florida beaches.
The shells accumulated in layers for thousands of years forming submerged deposits several feet thick. During the last ice age, sea levels dropped, exposing these shell layers to air and rain. Eventually, the shell became covered with soil, then trees and other vegetation. Rainwater percolating through the dead vegetation and soil picked up carbon dioxide and became carbonic acid, the same ingredient that makes soda fizz.
As this weak acid soaked downward, it dissolved some of the calcium in the shells, producing calcium carbonate, which solidified in lower layers, much like how flowstone and stalactites are formed in caves. This material bound the shell fragments together into a porous type of limestone we now call coquina, which is Spanish for "tiny shell".
Today, mining deposits of coquina limestone is either banned or heavily regulated. In the 1930s, coquina was quarried from formations found in coastal areas from St. Johns to Monroe counties.
Conservation challenging
Successful graffiti removal from coquina limestone depends on breaking the bond between the graffiti and the stone surface without damaging or disfiguring the masonry.
Although a number of solvents and paint strippers are capable of dissolving or breaking down paint, most will permanently discolor or stain the limestone’s surface if not cause permanent damage to the stone substrate that may be worse than the graffiti. For this reason, the Florida Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties with Guidelines for Preserving, Rehabilitating, Restoring & Reconstructing Historic Buildings (revised by Anne E. Grimmer) advises conservators to apply specialized, highly viscous poultices (absorbent clay or paste mixtures) that draw the dissolved paint outward into the paste, preventing the stone from absorbing the pigment.
The precise course of treatment depends on the type of paint involved as well as the condition of the underlying limestone.
About Ciociola Conservation
Ciociola Conservation, LLC is a woman-owned and managed firm founded by Kelly Ciociola, a conservator with over 16 years’ experience.
Prior to starting her own company in Nashville TN, Ciociola was conservator for Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami, FL and was responsible for the conservation of the building and all collection items, including decorative objects, outdoor sculptures, lanterns, fountains, and other architectural elements.
Prior to her work at Vizcaya, she was principal conservator for RLA Conservation where she led all major projects east of the Mississippi River and in the Caribbean. Her career also includes time at Kreilick Conservation, LLC in Philadelphia, PA, where she worked on the Independence Hall Weathervane, the Merchant’s Exchange Building, and the Jeanne D’ Arc Memorial in Meridian Hill Park.
Ciociola is a professional associate of the AIC and holds an M.S. in Historic Preservation from the joint Clemson University/ College of Charleston program. Kelly has been based, in Charleston, S.C., Philadelphia, Pa., and Miami, Fl. and has traveled extensively. These different environments have allowed her to experience first-hand how materials respond in different environments.
As a company, Ciociola Conservation provides a range of conservation services, including but not limited to, condition assessments, building and collection surveys, museum consultation, conservation oversight, emergency services and planning, and conservation treatments. The firm’s expertise covers a wide variety of materials and applications with experience in museum settings, public art installations, and construction sites. Its specialties include outdoor sculpture and monuments, mosaics and tiled murals, twentieth century buildings, building materials, architectural elements, moving large integrated artworks, and modern and contemporary art.
“Our work adheres to the Code of Ethics and Guidelines for Practice of the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC), the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, and other applicable international charters,” the firm’s website states.
Nat Gaillard Walker’s stone of choice
Although many sources state that the post office was a WPA project, the building was designed and complete prior President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidential order creating the Works Progress Administration on May 6, 1935.
After purchasing the land at the northeast corner of First and Lee Streets from the estate of Harvie Heitman, the federal government hired Nat Gaillard Walker to design the facility. A native South Carolinian, Walker was president of the state chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Having recently established a firm in Fort Myers, Walker was widely regarded as an architectural wunderkind.
Walker was a fan of neoclassical architecture. He especially admired 19th Century British architect Sir John Sloan and Thomas Jefferson, who took time away from his duties as our third president to design not only his neoclassical residence at Monticello but the trademark columns and south portico of the White House.
However, the elegant, if not flamboyant, architecture of Sloan and Jefferson had been replaced during the 1920s by the spare, functional style of Frank Lloyd Wright and the German Bauhaus. Both roundly rejected the use of embellishments such as columns, false moldings, scrolls and pilasters. Undeterred, Walker pioneered a new architectural movement: neoclassical revival, which would ultimately culminate four years later in the Jefferson Memorial, completed under the stewardship of John Russell Pope.
Walker’s design included a number of unusual features. For example, the two-story structure has a basement. Shiny brass boxes along the front loggia granted 24-hour access to the post. Inside, Walker included marble elements in the lobby and staircase. Masons put numerous master touches throughout the interior. Artists added such whimsical details as cherubs on the interior ceiling.
And Walker clad the building’s eight-columned façade in native Florida limestone etched with coral formations that was mined in Key West.
The building’s history
The building that is the home today of the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center got its start as the local post office.
There are conflicting reports about how Fort Myers got such an incredibly beautiful post office. Karl H. Grismer states in “The Story of Fort Myers” that the building was secured largely through the efforts of B.C. Foxworthy, who had been active for years in Republican politics. During the Hoover administration, he kept bombarding Washington with requests until Congress finally gave in and approved the necessary appropriation.
Late Fort Myers benefactor and “First Lady,” But Berne Davis, offered a different account. According to Davis, Thomas invited President Herbert Hoover to Fort Myers in 1929 to help him celebrate his 82nd birthday at the Pleasure Palace. After Hoover returned, Congress suddenly found the money needed to build the new post office.
The post office opened on October 30, 1933. Sidney Ellison purchased the first stamp. Ella Biglow mailed the first letter.
Hundreds crowded the steps for the dedication on December 9, 1933, where Walker was also granted the title of honorary postmaster.
The federal government built a new post office on Monroe Street in 1965. The building was converted into a federal courthouse upon completion of the new post office in 1967. In furtherance of the building’s transformation into a federal courthouse, many of the unique architectural features that Nat Gaillard Walker had included in the interior were covered over or removed in an effort to provide the building with central cooling and heating.
When the federal judiciary also moved to another location in 1998, the people in charge of the building turned off the power and locked the doors. Water found its way inside and dripped down the walls. Woodwork split. Plaster fell. Drop ceilings sagged. Mold grew unchecked in the non-ventilated interior. And Nat Gaillard Walker’s stately building fell into seemingly hopeless disrepair.
But two years later, the City of Fort Myers purchased the building from the federal government for $185,000 ($15,000 less than what the building cost in 1933) and leased it in late 2003 for 99 years to Florida Arts, Inc. with a mandate that Florida Arts restore the building and convert it into a cultural arts center.
“When the federal courthouse building became available,” recalled former SBDAC Chairman and CEO Jim Griffith, “it just said ‘art center’ all over it. I paid the rent for the entire 99-year term in advance.”
Notwithstanding the economic downturn that began in 2007 and continued through 2011, Griffith and Florida Arts, Inc. raised approximately $3.2 million of the estimated $6 million needed for the massive rehabilitation project, completing most of the restoration required on the first floor of the 23,000 square-foot building.
On April 20, 2012, Florida Arts announced that the Art Center had received a $650,000 Cultural Facilities Grant from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs which translated into $1.2 million in capital improvements with matching funds and additional support from the community. The funds enabled the Art Center to complete its second and third story renovations and create a permanent home for art and theater classes, workshops and working studios.
Florida Arts continues to make renovations and provide funds for the building’s ongoing care and maintenance.
History of the site
The Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center sits on the site of a former settlement of Calusa Indians.
In 1841, the federal government built a fort on the banks of the Caloosahatchee River, and the officers’ quarters were located where the SBDAC now stands. When the fort was rebuilt and renamed Fort Myers in 1850, the commanding officer’s quarters were built on the site. If legend is correct, those quarters were where Fort Myers’ first daughter was born to Captain and Mrs. Winfield Scott Hancock.
After the fort was abandoned in June of 1865, the town’s first settler Manuel A. Gonzalez made the commanding officer’s quarters home for his wife Evalina and their eight children.
The home was subsequently remodeled and occupied by the families of Louis Lanier, James E. Hendry Sr. and R.I.O Travers before being purchased by Harvie Heitman.
In 1926, the Heitman Estate planned to build a 10-story 250-room hotel on the site and moved the residence to Bay Street. But with the bust of the Big Boom that summer and fall, the hotel plans were abandoned and the residence was converted into Fort Myers’ first library. The log cabin was demolished in 1937 after it became unsafe and was condemned.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
