Florida Historical Markers Programs - Marker Detail

Description: Gibbs Cottage, a one-and-a-half-story frame vernacular residence constructed in1894, was home to The Honorable Thomas Van Renssalaer Gibbs. His father, Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs, served in the Florida cabinet during Reconstruction. This cottage is a prime example of the architecture used for upper-class African-American homes during the post-Reconstruction period. Thomas Gibbs served in the Florida legislature from 1884-1887 and helped sponsor a bill that created the State Normal College for Colored Students, present-day Florida A&M University (FAMU). In 1887 Gibbs, as vice president, and Attorney Thomas De Saille Tucker, as president, co-founded the school. When the college moved to the former location of Highwood Plantation in 1891, Gibbs purchased land at the corner of Martin Luther King Blvd. and Palmer Street. He built this home and lived there with his wife, Alice Menard Gibbs, who also taught at the school, and their six children. Alice died on October 23, 1898, and Thomas died soon after on the 31st. Following their deaths, the cottage was sold several times until finally acquired by FAMU in 1929, which served as housing for married FAMU faculty. The cottage is the oldest wooden building on FAMU campus.