The appearance of construction signs at the 127-year-old Gladstone house on North Monroe Street struck Tallahassee historians like a smack across the head.
It placed front and center in their minds the looming destruction of the last of the Victorian-style mansions that once lined Monroe for more than a mile from the state capital to Thomasville Road.
“When you see that it’s about to get torn down, it sort of focuses people and raises questions that should have been asked” at the beginning, said Bob Holladay of the Tallahassee Historical Society of the state’s plan to widen the security perimeter for the governor’s mansion.
Holladay has emailed and hand-delivered to the Tallahassee City Commission a resolution calling on the state to delay demolition of The Gladstone until January 1, 2025, to provide time to save the structure.
The Gladstone is a Queen Anne-style six-bedroom home built in 1895 for a Tallahassee family. It later served as a World War II boarding house for soldiers training for the World War II Normandy invasion and provided rooms for travelers and college students well into the 2000s.