Urban area and local history museum or Fort Myers

    

http://www.photographersdirect.com/buyers/stockphoto.asp?imageid=1367663

http://www.efwefla.org/home.asp

      Driving to our first stop we past by the Edison and Ford Winter Estates.  I wish we could have stopped to tour the estates, because the museum explains how the area has changed and become industrialized over the years.  I have previously been to this museum on a school field trip, which everyone seemed to enjoy.  The main part of this field trip definitely did not start off on the right foot.  We stood in the pouring rain while we looked around the cemetery. Once the rain stopped we got to go and enjoy the sun in Centennial Park.  We got to see the Uncommon Friends fountain, which featured Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone camping.  I enjoyed this part of the trip and could see myself going to the park especially to go running.
   

http://www.focusofswfl.com/2010/07/pepsi-refresh-for-art-cente

   

    

http://www.floridarep.org/building.shtml

      When we visited the downtown area we got to see the Sidney and Berne Davis Art Center, which was my favorite building that we visited.  Most of the building was constructed out of coral from Key West.  Though it was beautiful it was not the best resource to use for construction, because coral is very scarce.  This building used to be used as a post office, but now they use it as an art center.  Instead of tearing it down and building a whole new building it was great to see that they did not waste more resources on constructing a new building.  Another interesting thing about this building was the pillars outside that light up at night with different names of native plants.  A Victorian playhouse called the Arcade Theater was in the local area and still puts on plays, but has been renovated since the early days.  Other stores in this plaza donate a portion of their proceeds to local charities.  I thought that it was great to see businesses giving back to their community.    

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/tags/neoclassicalarchitecture/interesting/

     

      The downtown area of Fort Myers seemed like it would be a great place to visit, but it still needs some maintenance.  If the area was kept up better and had more special events than I believe more visitors would be attracted to it.  Recently for Halloween they had an event called Zombie Con, which drew in more business for the local area.  I believe events like this can continue to help increase community engagement.