Palm Harbor Museum


The Palm Harbor Museum is located in the historic Hartley House in Palm Harbor, Florida. The house was built by Thomas W. Hartley between 1914 and 1919, on property bought by his father, James Hartley, about 1880. The house was designed to accommodate the Hartley Family. The house was built on a reinforced concrete foundation with concrete block construction. The blocks were poured on-site, made with white sane from a nearby scrub. The outside surfaces of the blocks were cast to simulate a stone finish. Each block weighed 84 pounds and the blocks were joined with pink mortar, which is said to have gotten its unusual color from crushed berries. A hall ran the length of the downstairs and its walls were reinforced concrete to provide bearing support for the second floor. Downstairs rooms have 10 foot high ceilings and upstairs are 8 feet high. The upstairs rooms and two of the planned porches were never completed by the family due to shortage of funds.
The house was acquired in 1996 by Pinellas County as part of the extension of Belcher Rd; it is under the management of the Heritage village and houses the Palm Harbor Museum which is dedicated to preserving the history of Palm Harbor, Crystal Beach, Florida, Ozona, and Curlew from the 1800s to the present.
The Palm Harbor Museum opened in 1998 and is operated by the Palm Harbor Historical Society. It is located at 2043 Curlew Road. Current exhibitions include the history of the Citrus Industry, Palm Harbor in World War II and the Way we worked. The house also highlights the lives of the Hartley Family and how they lived. Many of the downstairs rooms were preserved and along with some original furniture you can see how this family lived during this period.
Admission is $3.00 per person, children under 12 free.