Over the Christmas holiday, the Fort Myers Mural Society installed murals on the obelisks flanking Edwards Avenue outside the Luminary Hotel. One recognizes Manuel A. Gonzalez; the other, Harvie Heitman.
Gonzalez was Fort Myers’ first settler. He set foot on the bank of the Caloosahatchee River on the outskirts of the Seminole and Civil War fort on Feb. 21, 1866, with his 5-year-old son, Manuel, brother-in-law, John A. Weatherford, and close friend, Joe Vivas. His family served as the nucleus of the settlement that would become Fort Myers.
In January of 1915, the Fort Myers Press conferred on Harvie Heitman the nickname of “The Builder.” Between 1897 and 1915, Heitman changed the makeup of the business district, erecting a grocery store on the northwest corner of Jackson and First, the Bank of Fort Myers across the s'treet, the Bradford Hotel, the Arcade and the Heitman-Evans Hardware Store along with the 193-foot-long Earnhardt Building. All of these buildings still exist, celebrating their centenaries 12 years ago.
He described himself in advertising as a live-wire grocer, awake to the needs and desires of his customers. He was equally attentive to the needs of the town during the period of modernization that preceded World War I. He helped pioneer the citrus industry in Lee County, was a local captain of commerce and a confidant and financial advisor to Thomas Edison, Tootie McGregor Terry and a coterie of millionaires who flocked to the town at the turn of the 20th century. Aside from Edison, no one did more to put Fort Myers on the national and world map.
The new murals are part of a walkable outdoor art and history museum that features 57 murals that depict 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 detention 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, obelisks and participating artists 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 eight 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 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.
Manuel A. Gonzalez
Manual A. Gonzalez was born in Madrid.
The ship that brought him to America from Spain wrecked off the coast of Florida in a storm and he nearly drowned.
In spite of that experience, he became a sea captain based in Key West.
He was familiar with the Caloosahatchee River basin long before he decided to settle his family there. During the United States’ final war with the Florida Seminoles, he delivered mail and various goods to Fort Myers, which was at the midpoint of his run back and forth to Tampa.
He brought his wife, Evalina, on a number of those voyages and the couple both fell in love with the area surrounding the fort and vowed to make their home there one day.
Although we do not have the benefit of a diary, memoir or other account, Gonzalez was undoubtedly disappointed by what he found when he, his son, John Weatherford and Joe Vivas landed near the site of the fort’s two-story hospital on the eastern edge of the compound. Confederate soldiers returning to Tampa and Cedar Key had cannibalized the fort in order to make repairs to their homes, which had deteriorated while they were away fighting the Union Army.
Even though doors, windows, siding and flooring had been ripped from their frames, Gonzalez decided that enough material remained for him to piece together a residence for his family. So Weatherford and Vivas returned for Evalina and the kids while Gonzalez and his son restored the former commanding officer’s quarters which sat on the present-day site of the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center. They did such a good job that the home would stand for another 73 years, eventually being occupied by Harvie Heitman and his family before being converted into the town’s library following Heitman’s death in 1922.
After Evalina came, Gonzalez continued to make a living as a riverboat captain. He supplemented that income by serving as an interpreter for the Spanish cattle buyers who visited Punta Rassa to make deals with Jacob Summerlin, Capt. Francis Asbury Hendry and the other cattlemen who shipped steers to Cuba from the cow pens and wharf the Union soldiers had built there in 1865.
He also built a small trading post from which to sell groceries and other goods and make swaps with the Seminoles and Miccosukee who had refused to be relocated to Oklahoma at the end of hostilities in 1858.
The town grew slowly. The following Christmas, John Powell and moonshiner Bill Clay and their families joined the Gonzalez-Weatherford-Vivas clans. But no further settlers joined them and Manuel and Evalina decided to leave the confines of the old fort in 1872 when it became possible for them to homestead a tract of land near the present-day site of Fort Myers High School. That area bears the name of Manuel’s Branch.
Manuel and Evalina Gonzalez would eventually return to town in the 1890s. They built a home on Monroe Street. Evalina sold it to the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad for their depot for a large sum of money after Manuel died on Feb. 25, 1902. She then moved into a beautiful three-story Victorian home that her son built for her on the corner of Broadway and Second Street. Today, that home is part of the Veranda Restaurant.
Harvie Heitman
In 1894, Harvie Heitman opened a general store on the northwest corner of First and Jackson streets. Three years later, he replaced the clapboard structure with the town’s first brick building with financing provided by Standard Oil CEO Ambrose McGregor, who’d taken a shine to the enterprising young businessman.
Describing himself as a live wire grocer always attentive to his customers’ needs, Heitman operated from that location for the next 25 years, converting the general store into a grocery, adding a bakery and upgrading the space to open the town’s first bank in 1906.
The bank was known as the Bank of Fort Myers, and by 1911 it had outgrown its space in Heitman’s grocery store building (which also housed his brother’s telephone company on the second floor). So, Heitman built another brick building across the street on the southwest corner of First and Jackson.
Both buildings still stand. The 1897 brick building now houses the Goodwill Boutique. Izzy’s Fish & Oyster now occupies the former Bank of Fort Myers building.
Heitman was an ambitious entrepreneur. At the same time he started his general store and grocery, he went into the livery and hack line business. With backing provided by Ambrose McGregor’s widow, Tootie, he built the Bradford Hotel in 1905, thereafter assisting Tootie when she acquired, remodeled and ran the Royal Palm Hotel beginning in 1907. And he helped pioneer the citrus industry in Lee County, supervising the planting of a 300-acre grove for D.A.G. Floweree in 1900 (which he managed for the next 21 years) and founding the Lee County Packing Plant Company and building what became the largest citrus packing plant in the world when it was completed in 1910.
He also built a 7,200-square-foot garage in 1914 (that functioned as a meeting space for revivals and church services by visiting reverends and the local Presbyterian congregation), a state-of-the-art 9,000-square-foot roller rink (The Rink on Bay Street) and a vaudeville theater that morphed in 1917 into a movie theater under the name of the Arcade Theatre (now home to Florida Repertory Theatre).
But it was in his capacity as a developer that Heitman left his imprint on the look and feel of the present-day business district.
While he was completing the garage and roller rink along Bay Street, he built a two-story hardware store on the northwest corner of First and Hendry (that boasted the town’s first electric elevator and modern fire sprinkler system) and 193-foot-long Earnhardt Building (named for his mom). Both are still standing and fully functional today.
Heitman also installed streetlights along both sides of First Street from Henry to Jackson (obviating the need for shoppers to carry lanterns to illuminate their way between stores), the town’s first concrete sidewalks and assisted Tootie McGregor Terry and waterfront property owners with the construction of the seawall that runs from Monroe Street to Billy’s Creek.
For 21 years, Heitman served on both the town and city council, advocated for and against numerous social and political issues (including the construction of the Lee County Courthouse (now the Lee County Commission building) and managed Thomas Edison’s Fort Myers business and real estate affairs.
Less known is the role he played in promoting the town to the outside world, not just as a founding member of the Board of Trade and Fort Myers Golf & Country Club, but as a stockholder of and advisor to the Tarpon House Hotel in Punta Rassa, which was owned and operated by his father-in-law, George Shultz.
Heitman would likely have done much more had he not died of stomach cancer in 1922 at the age of 49. In fact, he had plans to move his home to the rear of his lot (where the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center is now located) and erect a 12-story hotel on the northeast corner of First and Jackson streets. That home, coincidentally, was the one that Manuel A. Gonzalez rebuilt from the remnants of the commanding officer’s quarters when he landed on the site of old fort in 1866.
The Artists
Erik Schlake
Fort Myers Mural Society artist Erik Schlake painted the mural of Manuel A. Gonzalez.
Mural and decorative artist Erik 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 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, Schlake 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, 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 all 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 the 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 in a fall 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.
Roland 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, Ruocco 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, Ruocco 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.
