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Visit to John Horr's old house

Captain John Horr's old house, located on the island now known as Key Marco, has been partially taken over by the surrounding vegitation. Built in 1877 of tabby, a compound of seashells, sand and limestone, the house is a hollow shell that the inhabitants of Key Marco want to preserve. Anthropologist Matt Betz visited the site Monday to provide some pointers for how to keep the structure intact. He said it is the only tabby structure he knows of south of Tampa on Florida's west coast.

Photo by LESLIE WILLIAMS HALE, Daily News

Captain John Horr's old house, located on the island now known as Key Marco, has been partially taken over by the surrounding vegitation. Built in 1877 of tabby, a compound of seashells, sand and limestone, the house is a hollow shell that the inhabitants of Key Marco want to preserve. Anthropologist Matt Betz visited the site Monday to provide some pointers for how to keep the structure intact. He said it is the only tabby structure he knows of south of Tampa on Florida's west coast.

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  • Ann Dilbone, Horr's great great grandaughter, looks around the site. She said her grandmother, born Hortensia Horr, can remember going to the house as a young girl. 'I wonder where my granny slept,' she mused, looking around the little two-story structure. Dilbone, who was born in Ohio, lives in Naples now. She said she first visited the site in 1976, after her uncle mentioned casually that their family used to own an island in the area.
  • Captain John Horr's old house, located on the island now known as Key Marco, has been partially taken over by the surrounding vegitation. Built in 1877 of tabby, a compound of seashells, sand and limestone, the house is a hollow shell that the inhabitants of Key Marco want to preserve. Anthropologist Matt Betz visited the site Monday to provide some pointers for how to keep the structure intact. He said it is the only tabby structure he knows of south of Tampa on Florida's west coast.
  • Hector Sostre, left, and his boss, Peter McFarland, check out a Strangler Fig growing up one corner of the old house. McFarland's company, Quality Tree Services, helped remove some of the growth Monday morning in an effort to preserve the structure. The tree roots are both tearing the walls apart and holding them up, so they cut away live growth and treated the roots with weed killer to keep them in place but stunt their growth.
  • Oyster and conch shells jut from the walls of the house, peeking out from the layer of stucco used to weatherproof the house's exterior.
  • Matt Betz, of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, points to a tortoise burrow that goes beneath the house.
  • Wood door frames help keep some walls in place as others crumble around them. Meanwhile, trees grow out of the very walls of the old Horr House.
  • From left to right, Eileen Ward, Johanna Parkes, Matt Betz, Peter McFarland and Hector Sostre discuss a plan of action to preserve the house from encroaching vegetation on Key Marco. Ward's company, Greensward, does landscaping on the island and she has helped drive some of the efforts to maintain the site for tour groups interested in the area's history.
  • Johanna Parkes, a Key Marco resident, reads the plaque in front of Horr's house.
  • Hector Sostre hands a branch down to Rogelio Serrano as he trims away a Strangler Fig growing up the walls of the old Horr house.
  • Eileen Ward, of Greensward, and Matt Betz, of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, both crouch to watch branches being trimmed from the walls of the structure.
  • Matt Betz, of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, points out cracks in the walls of Captain Horr's old house. The structure, he said, is basically falling apart at the corners. A significant storm event could spell disaster for the home, which is on the U.S. Register of Historic Places. His nonprofit may be able to offer assistance with contracting a company to shore up the home's foundation and keep it standing.
  • Hector Sostre, an employee of Quality Tree Services, trims away the branches of a Strangler Fig that has taken over one corner of the structure. Nonetheless, its roots appear to be holding up an entire section of wall above one doorway, just to the right of Sostre. Working pro bono, Quality Tree Services cut away the branches and used weed killer to stop the roots from growing further into the walls.
  • Nature and architecture are virtually indistinguishable from each other in the old house: seashells comprise the walls, tree roots hold them up and lizards scuttle across all of it.
  • Matt Betz checks out the maker's mark on a piece of glass bottle he found at the site. It was one of several small artifacts, probably from Horr's time that he found just by doing a cursory glance around the ground.
  • Matt Betz discusses options for reinforcing the structure with Eileen Ward.
  • Whole pieces of conch and oyster shell jut from the walls of the old Horr home. The construction, called tabby, uses whole shells mixed with mortar of some sort. Archaeologist Matt Betz, said he typically sees another type of construction, called Cochina, which uses crushed up shells as a base. Horr probably took materials directly from the shell mounds on the island in order to construct his home, Betz said.
  • Ann Dilbone, left, and Matt Betz, right, look around as Hector Sostre, center, takes a break from cutting branches.
  • Ann Dilbone, great-great-granddaughter of John Horr, points to the wood beam in an exterior doorway of the house.
  • Ann Dilbone walks past what was once a doorway into her great-great-grandfather's vacation home on the island originally named for him, Horr's Island. Now called Key Marco, the small island just to Marco Island's south is an upscale settlement of multi-million dollar homes. In John Horr's day, it was a pineapple plantation, supplying his wholesale grocery business in Key West. The crumbling structure recently got an assessment from Matt Betz, an archaeologist with the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy.

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