Truman Annex

I found myself waiting to go to a movie at the Tropic Cinema just around the corner so I wandered through Truman Annex with my camera. I haven't been here ina  while and the whole place looks pretty much the same...

I'm not a fan of gated communities but who cares what I like. I wouldn't live in Truman Annex even if I could easily afford to, but lots of people like the idea of living in Key West but without the mess and color and vibrancy of a noisy populated Old Town.

The developer of this property created a style of housing that is now known as "the Key West style." It's a style reminiscent of Old Town Conch cottages but all gussied up. It's very effective  and seems to sell well, and not just here.

This used to be the Navy Base in Key West but when the land was put up for sale a young man who first came to Key West as a youthful homeless urchin sleeping in doorways as the legend has it put in a bid. He had to have a second go as the first bid bankrupted him but he got it done and is now one of those few families that have made millions off Key West.  

I like the doggie bags as outside dogs are NOT allowed in Truman Annex. Rusty has never stepped in here.

However even here loose chickens have made their way...seen in the distance...actual wildlife! 

Through all the gates there is tidal water at the Margaritaville Resort Docks:

Then there is the major tourist attraction which is  the  Little White House where President Truman liked to spend time during his presidency. It was more as a working vacation than an actual period of time off though he did walk around town and fish and do that sort of stuff.

In the Key West  style:

Try and figure how to locate this street address:

Navy officer housing converted into splendid apartments at splendid prices:

Meanwhile around the corner the masses line up for the ferry to Sunset Key and Latitudes restaurant for lunch:

A Portuguese cruise ship. Never seen one of those before in the Southernmost City.

I used to work in that corner of the marina prepping Stiletto catamarans to take tourists sailing round the harbor. After I got my job at the police department I allowed my Master's 50 ton license to elapse. I'm not real keen to go sailing for money again though it was okay while it lasted.

Truman Annex

The concept of the gated community is not a way of life that would suit me(or by extension my neighbors...) but some people love it. Even here in Key West the town that attracts old people with money to it's bohemian reputation there are those who crave a gated lifestyle. That being the case you'd think an entire city that lives as though gated like Naples might suit.

Truman Annex used to be a Navy Base and it was given to the city when deemed surplus to requirements but it has its share of history. The commandant's house became the Little White House when President Truman took a fancy to Key West. There are officers' quarters the weather station and so forth. And there are the homes expressly built for this development and they are modern homes in the Key West style. Developer Pritam Singh struggled to raise the 17 million asking price and went through noted troubles including they bankruptcy but he kept it together and went from being a homeless transient in Key West to one among its most successful developers.

Along the way he built homes that looked the way you'd expect homes in Old Town Key West to look, wooden painted white with greenery and porches and picket fences. Robert and I were walking through the development and he posed as he said goodbye and went his separate way.

I ambled along seeking and finding shade as the trees are  two decades in the growing and they are casting shadows. I have heard both sides of the gated community concept and in Key West where chaos thrives beyond the gates you can see the appeal of chicken free clean streets and the absence of bums.There are no stores here no paper wrappers on the ground but all that convenience is a few steps away in the rest of Key West, the noisy messy Key West most people think of if they think at all of this town. 

I've checked out some of the townhomes here and they are build in an odd way to maximize the number of units on each lot. The result is rather tight spaces and odd narrow living rooms and no sense of expansive living.  I guess it takes millions to buy that here.

Lots of signs too forbidding everything.

The same street names as in the outside Key West:

The gates opened fro time to time to allow residents' cars to escape:

The they closed to keep vehicles out. During the day scruffy oiks can walk through the Annex as it is open to the public.

Overhead the seaplane came back from the Dry Tortugas:

Free as a bird as they say. Or free as an untrammeled life gated inside  the Truman Annex.

Truman Annex

Truman Annex used to stick out a lot more in Key West when there seemed (to me) to be more of a split between the colorful eccentric city and the restrained segregated annex hidden behind its gates and fences. These days to someone of my jaundiced eye the entire city sometimes feels like an annex, occupied part time by people whose claim to eccentricity is having bought a property for far too much money.

Looking through the Presidential Gates, so called rather grandiloquently because they are supposed to only open for a President, we can see Caroline Street leading toward Duval. Not a clean tidy street to be sure but not exactly run down.

Truman Annex was the brainchild of a young Pritam Singh, the developer who came to Key West penniless and slept rough and who made a fortune through Truman Annex despite the fact his first bid for the former Navy property sent him bankrupt.

It is one of those Key West legends in the style of "today's the day" the battle cry of the man who found the treasure- Mel Fisher.

Singh created the "key West style" for him homes which can be seen here and at the golf course and at Tranquility Bay in Marathon.

White picket fences, balconies, lots of greenery and white paint. It is the style of Old Town rendered clean and modern and easy to live in with modern conveniences.

Because this used to be a Navy Base it was a good place for vacationing Presidents to stay and be secure. President Truman stayed as much as he could and when he was in town her lived the Navy Commandant's House which became known as "The Little White House."

It remains a visitor attraction in the Annex surrounded by all the carefully groomed homes in this enclave.

I saw these style of buildings at the Panama Canal  which was built in the same era in a similar climate. Nowadays these are sales and rental offices for the realtors on the property:

The streets inside the annex are additions to the streets outside the fences:

I can see the desire of some people to stay here free of chickens and parking problems, no bums and peace and quiet.

Now that the rest of the city seems less raucous the annex in turn seems less exclusive in some way.

The crowds on Duval Street seem to be rolling up the carpet earlier in the city than in decades past.

The working class are being pushed out and artists need to make a lot of money to live here anymore.

All of Old Town Key West seems to be gentrifying, catching up the annex as it were...

And outside the fences I took a picture of the US Custom House, a tourist attraction with a museum well worth the visit.

Right in the path of the cruise ship hordes.