Over the holidays, the Fort Myers Mural Society installed murals on the obelisks flanking Edwards Avenue that recognize two early female pioneers, Tootie McGregor Terry and Dr. Ella Mae Piper.
Tootie McGregor Terry left the greatest imprint of anyone on the early development of Fort Myers. She changed the topography of the town by convincing property owners to install a seawall along the riverfront and convinced the city to pave its weed-strewn shell and sand roads. A hotelier, she created luxury accommodations that enticed numerous millionaires, celebrities and businessmen to the area who, in turn, made significant contributions to the town’s identity, economy and culture.
Dr. Ella Mae Piper was one of Dunbar’s most influential civic activists, philanthropists and community organizers. She helped finance the construction of Williams Academy, the first school in Southwest Florida where children of color could receive a high school education, and helped fund the Jones-Walker Hospital, the area’s first hospital for people of color.
The new murals are among 57 that make up a walkable outdoor museum depicting Fort Myers’ early relationship to the Caloosahatchee River.
MORE INFORMATION:
The Fort Myers River Basin Mural Project was a collaboration between the Fort Myers Mural Society and the city of Fort Myers Community Redevelopment Agency and Public Art Committee.
Painted on specially manufactured mural cloth by 38 area artists, the murals are installed on the concrete pillars or stanchions and four obelisks that encircle the retention basin adjacent to the Luminary Hotel.
The project launched in September 2022 and progressed in spite of the damage sustained by a number of the stanchions and obelisks during Hurricane Ian.
Artist bios, photographs – including the historic images the artists referenced in creating their paintings – and audios providing historical context have been uploaded to a free mobile app called Otocast that anyone can download and enjoy. So far, audios for 49 of the 57 murals are live on the app, with the remaining 8 slated for completion this month.
The audios for the murals will give listeners a better feel for what makes Fort Myers so special as well as an appreciation of the trials that our early pioneers weathered as they transformed Fort Myers from a dusty cow town into an epicenter of commerce and tourism in the first half of the 20th century.
Tootie McGregor Terry
Prior to McGregor Terry’s purchase of the Royal Palm Hotel in 1907, the bank of the river meandered along present-day Bay Street. While she persuaded property owners to move the bank some 200 feet into the river, she was unable to convince them to create a 75-foot-wide river walk along the new riverbank, a measure that would have created a scenic walk and provided protection from storm surge during hurricanes and tropical storms.
Many are surprised to learn that McGregor and her first husband, Ambrose McGregor, lived for more than a decade in the west half of Thomas Edison’s home (Seminole Lodge). People are even more astonished when they discover that Tootie McGregor was responsible for paving the road that connected downtown Fort Myers to the cattle pens and Tarpon House hotel at Punta Rassa.
Early in 1912, she famously offered to construct a 50-foot-wide macadam boulevard from Whiskey Creek to the cattle pens and Tarpon House Hotel on Punta Rassa provided the city and county pave the road from Whiskey Creek to downtown Fort Myers and name the completed roadway McGregor Boulevard in honor of her deceased husband.
McGregor Terry didn’t just pave the road; she also included all necessary bridges and culverts and set up a reserve to pay the costs of maintaining the 20-mile stretch for the next five years.
She also brought golf to Fort Myers and created the predicate for attracting Major League Baseball to the area for spring training.
What’s so remarkable about McGregor Terry’s largesse was that as the wealthiest woman in the United States, she could have lived anywhere in the world. Instead, she chose Fort Myers and took an active role in the town’s development. She did more to that point in time than any of Fort Myers’ early pioneers. Her efforts would be eclipsed only by her and Ambrose’s protégé, Harvie Heitman, who’s the subject of one of the other three obelisks that flank Edwards Avenue outside the entrance to the Luminary Hotel.
Tootie McGregor died in 1912. Her life, contributions and achievements are memorialized by three other public artworks, the Tootie McGregor Fountain at the Fort Myers Golf Course and Country Club on McGregor Boulevard; mural No. 21 at the river basin, which is based on a photograph of McGregor driving a piling into the form boards for the previously mentioned seawall; and a bust created by the late D.J. Wilkins that now resides in the Langford-Kingston Home on First Street across from the Burroughs Home.
Dr. Ella Mae Piper
Dr. Ella Mae Piper first came to the attention of the community when she took over running the annual Christmas party for Dunbar’s needy children, a tradition that continues to this day and which celebrated its centennial in 2015. In addition to playing a pivotal role in establishing Williams Academy, she played an instrumental role in helping young people obtain scholarships to attend Tuskegee College, sometimes using her personal funds for that purpose. When the Works Progress Administration or WPA funded the city’s first black public high school in 1937, Dr. Ella Mae Piper and Mina Edison dedicated Dunbar High. And on top of helping fund the Jones-Walker Hospital, she also established a Black chapter of the American Red Cross.
While she worked assiduously behind the scenes to support these and many other causes, Piper took a hands-on role in mentoring the community’s children, taking some around the state to attend conferences and other meetings where they could develop and hone skills in oration and community activism.
Her personal philanthropy extended to not only giving food and clothing to needy neighbors, but also to providing housing to Negro League baseball players and traveling Chitlin’ Circuit troubadours and musicians who were denied rooms at area hotels and boarding houses.
Piper also sponsored some musical events of her own, bringing in Black entertainers, some nationally known, for performances at Mount Olive African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she was a founding member.
Ella Mae Piper died at the age of 69 in 1954. Taking a page from the philanthropy play book of dear friend and mentor Mina Edison, Piper willed her home to the city of Fort Myers for “the benefit of the children, the poor and the elderly in the black community.” It took the city of Fort Myers 22 years to take full advantage of the gift, but in June 1976, the Dr. Ella Mae Piper Center for Social Services was dedicated. Today, the center sponsors a foster grandparent program, a senior companion program and a senior employment program, along with various special events.
In her personal affairs, Dr. Piper was an astute businesswoman. Following studies at Atlanta’s Spelman College and the renowned Rohrer Institute of Beauty Culture in New York City, she established Fort Myers’ first beauty salon. By dint of her education, training and business acumen coupled with her elegant and fashionable bearing, she quickly built the Fort Myers Beauty Salon into an unqualified success, attracting the town’s elite, including Mina Edison and Clara Ford, as loyal patrons. She was so skilled on clearing up hard-to-treat skin and nail cases that her clients affectionately called her “doctor,” and she has been known as Dr. Ella Mae Piper ever since.
Piper was not content to merely own and operate a highly successful business. She also purchased the land and building in which she operated her beauty salon. That was quite a feat since married women were not allowed at that time to own real property or their own businesses without their husband’s joinder. Independent-minded, Dr. Piper petitioned the state of Florida and obtained permission to buy and sell real estate and transact business on her own.
Ever the entrepreneur, Piper established another business enterprise during the booming ‘20s. With a group of investors, she formed the Big Four Bottling Company. The plant was located on her property at Mango Street and Evans Avenue. This business, too, was a huge success, and it afforded Piper not only with a comfortable lifestyle, but the means to travel widely and summer in New York.
Two panels (Nos. 15 and 16) of the Buck’s Backyard Mural at McCollum Hall also celebrate Piper’s life, contributions and achievements.
The Artists
Erik Schlake
Fort Myers Mural Society artist Erik Schlake painted the mural of Tootie McGregor Terry.
A mural and decorative artist, Schlake has been influenced over the years by traditional decorative art as well as contemporary street art. He combines various styles in his work, infusing classic painting with elements of trompe l’oeil, grisaille, and other traditional decorative art in an effort to engage and interact with the viewer in a less formal mode of communication. It’s a style he often refers to as “modern traditionalist.”
“I didn’t want to simply paint on canvas,” Schlake explained. “There is something powerful about changing an entire environment through murals or decorative arts. In creating a new environment, you are not only able to transform the space, but how people view themselves in that space.”
Schlake has been invited to participate in the 2017, 2018 and 2019 Salon, a worldwide gathering of artists from different countries who exhibit their work, teach master classes and discuss old and new techniques.
A New York native, Erik did not begin painting until he moved to St Louis at the age of 23. But it wasn’t until he was introduced to various forms of decorative arts, particularly the work of European decorative painters, that he settled on a direction for his fine art.
After moving to Englewood, Florida, Schlake was involved in several artistic endeavors. As a resident artist at Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood, he coordinated a project that brought together nine mural artists from around the country to collaborate and educate. That experience fostered an inner calling that has prompted Schlake to work on small community murals and art projects, including the creation of a mural with six high school-age participants that commemorates the work of Ken Mitchell, a local artist whose work is in the Florida State collection.
Schlake has gone on to participate in street art painting festivals such as Sarasota Chalk Festival, Safety Harbor Bloom N Chalkfest, ArtFest Fort Myers , Lake Worth Street Painting Festival and Marietta Chalktoberfest, as well as participating in Naples Italy’s Corsico di Internazionalle de Madonnari. “People want to connect with art and through art,” Schlake observed. “It’s not enough to just paint a pretty picture. People are looking to engage. There was a time when art was primarily about the artist and their ideas, but that time is passing. Art is now becoming more about finding ways for people to connect, not only with the art but each other. It’s our job as artists to become facilitators of those moments.”
Schlake works under the name Erik Schlake Murals LLC, a licensed and insured company in Florida. He recently suffered an injury to both eyes during a mural project which has required him to change his painting style. For more read/hear: “Mural artist Erik Schlake changes painting technique after losing vision in a fall.” Also of interest, “Bad Ass Coffee on Fort Myers Beach dedicates mural that pays homage to local landmark.”
Roland Ruocco
The mural of Dr. Ella Mae Piper was painted by Fort Myers Mural Society artist Roland Ruocco.
Ruocco is a realist painter whose work has been influenced by comic book illustration, graffiti and old masters from the Romantic period. Since relocating to Southwest Florida in 2018, Ruocco has participated in mural projects in Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach, Cape Coral, Bokeelia, Pine Island and Estero.
A Brooklyn native, Ruocco attended The High School of Art and Design in Manhattan followed by the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. After moving to South Florida, Roland established a working studio in Lauderdale by the Sea in 2001 and an open studio in Miami’s Wynwood Art District in 2010. At Wynwood, Ruocco took an active role in the vibrant neighborhood art scene, which included Art Basel each December.
On the east coast of Florida, Ruocco has exhibited at The Box Gallery in West Palm Beach (2022, 2018), Art Fest in West Palm Beach, RW Art Gallery in Miami (2015 & 2016) and LED-illuminated wall sculptures at Art Palm Beach at the Palm Beach Convention Center in both 2013 and 2015 as well as the biennial International Kinetic Art Exhibition in Boynton Beach (where he displayed his LED, audio/video driven machines Digital Deity and Silicone Oracle. In addition, Roland received a Broward County Cultural Division grant in 2013 to fund his Earth Counterpart Exhibition, an interactive exploration of a virtual Earth-like planet visualized through highly detailed digitally rendered terrain and weather maps with theoretical scientific data, together with large paintings depicting planetary conditions of various locations.
In Southwest Florida, Ruocco has exhibited at the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center (2019, 2018). In addition, his Southwest Florida studio serves as home for the New Light Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization where Ruocco and his wife, artist Wendy White, conduct grant-driven art-based community outreach programs.
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.
