Sailboat Bend and the Riverwalk
Near Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Follow the New River west from downtown and you reach Sailboat Bend, the oldest neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale and the first ever granted the protection of a historic district, a designation it won in nineteen ninety two. It is the largest of the city's historic districts, holding more than five hundred fifty buildings, most of them small one story houses in the Bungalow, Mission, and Mediterranean Revival styles that went up between the early nineteen hundreds and the nineteen fifties. The name comes from a sharp curve in the river where sailboats once had to maneuver carefully to work their way through.
This ground carries the deepest roots in the city. It was near here, on the sixth of March, eighteen thirty eight, during the Second Seminole War, that Major William Lauderdale established the military fort that eventually gave the city its name. As the river settlement grew and the railroad arrived, farms and homes spread along these banks.
Today the riverfront just downstream has been transformed into the Riverwalk, a shaded linear park that traces the New River past museums, restaurants, and moored boats, connecting the old heart of the town to the water that made it.
