Bonnet House, Historic house museum in Fort Lauderdale, United States

The Bonnet House is a historic house museum at 900 Birch Road in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, also known as the Bartlett Estate. The main house, art studio, music studio and guest house are vernacular buildings designed by self-taught architect Frederic Clay Bartlett, based on Caribbean plantation-style architecture. The 35.4-acre estate includes 100 feet of beach and five ecosystems: primary and secondary dunes, mangrove wetlands, a freshwater slough and a maritime forest.

Hugh Taylor Birch, a Chicago lawyer, bought the land in 1895 and gave it to his daughter Helen and her husband, the artist Frederic Clay Bartlett, as a wedding gift in 1919. Bartlett, a self-taught architect, built the main house in his interpretation of Caribbean plantation-style architecture. After Helen died in 1925, he married Evelyn Fortune Lilly; they wintered here until his death in 1953 and hers in 1997.

The name comes from the bonnet lily, a plant of the grounds. Frederic Bartlett, a self-taught architect, designed the vernacular buildings himself, and a motif of pairs recurs throughout the house, reflecting a shared interest of Frederic and Evelyn. Evelyn kept a pet monkey and bought 30 to 40 monkeys to live in the estate's trees.

Visitors can take guided tours that show the main house, art studio, gardens, and the different natural areas on the grounds. It helps to wear comfortable shoes since you'll spend time exploring both indoor spaces and outdoor environments.

A group of monkeys has lived on the grounds since the 1980s after coming from a closed local establishment. Some of their descendants can still be spotted there today, adding an unexpected layer to what you see during a visit.