St. Pete designates poet laureate’s home a historic landmark

An old house in St. Petersburg’s Driftwood neighborhood has officially joined the city’s register of historic places. City Council unanimously approved a historic landmark designation Thursday for the house of Florida’s former poet laureate Peter Meinke and his wife, acclaimed artist Jeanne Meinke, at 147 Wildwood Lane SE.

The house was built in 1937, before the Driftwood subdivision was formally recorded. It was the neighborhood’s first residence. Peter and Jeanne Meinke purchased it in September 1970 and made it their home for the next five decades.

Peter Meinke was not physically present for Thursday’s hearing. Instead, the 93-year-old poet appeared in a prerecorded video and let a poem make his case.

“Old houses are best,” Meinke began.

The designation recognizes two histories contained within the property: an unusual piece of early St. Petersburg architecture, and the home where one of Florida’s most celebrated poets and his artist wife spent much of their creative lives.

147 Wildwood Lane SE. Photo: realtor.com.

The two-story house was designed by Mark Dixon Dodd, an artist and designer responsible for many of Driftwood’s earliest homes. City preservation staff describes its architecture as Minimal Traditional, with English Vernacular Revival and Storybook elements. Painted brick chimneys, small second-floor balconies, casement windows and winding brick paths remain among its defining features.

Dodd designed the neighborhood around its existing landscape rather than imposing the traditional street grid over it. Roads curved around trees, and houses were tucked into dense vegetation. The result remains apparent along Wildwood Lane nearly 90 years later.

City staff found the Meinke house satisfied five criteria for historic significance and all seven measures of historic integrity. The house and detached garage have undergone relatively few major alterations. The garage was rebuilt following a 1971 fire, while the Meinkes enclosed a side porch around 1974.

Manny Leto, executive director of historic preservation nonprofit Preserve the ’Burg, told councilmembers that Peter and Jeanne Meinke were “two people who shaped the city’s cultural life.”

“This is not just about sentiment,” he added.

Dodd’s houses constitute the “historic core” of Driftwood, Leto said, while the Meinkes brought another layer of significance to the property.

“This house sits at the intersection of two distinct legacies: Dodd as a builder and the Meinkes’ decades of literary and artistic life,” Leto said.

Peter Meinke arrived in St. Petersburg in 1966 to teach at Florida Presbyterian College, now Eckerd College. He became the school’s first director of creative writing and taught there for 27 years. In 2009, he became St. Petersburg’s first poet laureate. Gov. Rick Scott appointed him Florida’s poet laureate in 2015.

Jeanne Meinke was an accomplished visual artist whose drawings appeared in The New Yorker, Gourmet and Bon Appétit, as well as throughout her husband’s books. She died in 2022 at 87, shortly before the couple’s 65th wedding anniversary.

Their house became part of that creative partnership.

Scott Ward, the recently retired Eckerd professor of literature and creative writing who knew Meinke for decades, recalled a home filled with books, paintings and pottery. Ward and his wife were among several young Eckerd faculty members who rented the house when the Meinkes traveled.

“The house was an extension of Peter and Jeanne’s lives,” Ward said. “Everyone who knew them remarked on this.”

There was a dining table worn by years of visitors. Live oaks shaded the roof. Each spring, azaleas overtook much of the yard with blossoms.

“Living in the house, for a young writer, was a lesson in how to live,” Ward said.

The house appears repeatedly in Meinke’s work. Poems inspired by the property and its garden include “Azaleas” and the poem he presented to City Council, once titled for its address and later called “Old Houses.”

Ward said one image in that poem – a “hand-carved attic beam” – immediately evokes the house.

“There is such a central rafter exposed in the ceiling of the ground floor,” Ward said. “Its hacked texture looks as if it were fashioned with an adze.”

“What is a life without the meaning you create in it?” Ward continued. “You can build your bed as Odysseus does, or you can buy one from Rooms to Go.”

The house also provided the setting for a marriage between two artists.

“I would say essential,” Ward said of Jeanne’s influence on Peter’s work and the home they built together. “The home is where everything happens, the setting of the marriage, the childhood, the work.”

Jeanne spent years restoring the house after the couple bought it. Previous owners had painted over much of its interior woodwork, including its pecky cypress beams. Floors had been covered with linoleum and the fireplace concealed. Jeanne stripped the beams by hand, removed the flooring and helped return the interior to something resembling Dodd’s original vision.

But Ward said what made the house distinctive was not simply its architecture.

“Husband and wife were also poet and visual artist, supporting each other and lending each other creative space, inspiration, and room to work,” he said. “One didn’t have to be in their presence long to see how much they admired each other.”

That intersection of art and place was also central to Leto’s argument for preservation.

“St. Petersburg is known as a city of the arts, and this poem exemplifies that tradition,” he told councilmembers.

There was little suspense by the time councilmembers voted. City administration recommended approval, and the Community Planning and Preservation Commission had previously endorsed the designation 7-0.

There was no public opposition Thursday. Cross-examination was waived and, with nobody arguing against the designation, the hearing moved quickly to a unanimous vote.

“It was a resounding ‘yes’ to this project,” Councilmember Copley Gerdes said.

Councilmember Lisset Hanewicz noted the unusual nature of the hearing.

“I don’t think we expected to hear a poem today,” she said. “This checks all the boxes.”

The designation means future exterior alterations to the property will undergo the city’s Certificate of Appropriateness review. It also ensures that a house built before Driftwood formally existed will remain connected to the people who eventually made it their own.

“Both Peter and Jeanne were known for their generosity,” Ward said. “They offered affection and goodwill to everyone they met.”

The books, drawings and house all carry something of that quality, he added.

“If anyone takes the time to look at those things carefully, he discovers at the center of each a profound humanity,” Ward said. “I can think of no better legacy for anyone than that.”

Before councilmembers voted to preserve the house, Meinke gave them his own explanation.

Note: The following is a transcription from Meinke’s recorded City Council presentation and does not reflect the lineation or punctuation of the polished poem, “Old Houses.”

“Old houses are best – they have secrets, shadows trembling everywhere in closets and corners, their weaknesses secret, cracks in the block, corroded pipes, the termites’ patient gnawing. Their strengths are secret, too, the hand-carved attic beam, the portrait paneled over. A feeling they’ve earned their way. Every board in the house has been pressed by finger and foot, forearm and knee. Tears on old tiles have worn their stories. Stories spread through the rooms like the hint of camellias we breathe. Stories here – we inhale old passions; exhale the dead resolutions that are still moving. In the closet there is something. Sun slants through casement windows around slender candles, shattering on the wicker where we sit in love with the shadows. Old houses are best. Old oaks bend over the windows whispering, ‘It’s alright; it’s alright.’ All those kids had fun. And remember that young couple had such love for each other? It overflowed. And did the azaleas sing, and birds blaze like roses? And even the garage, long ago burned down, was an object of affection.”