Few things have changed at Fort Lauderdale’s historic Stranahan House, the beloved 124-year-old wooden building on the New River. As modern, shiny high-rises, restaurants and swanky hotels began to emerge around it, the house has stood as a reminder of the city’s humble origins.

Now, some welcome upgrades are coming to Broward County’s oldest building.

The Historic Stranahan House Museum celebrated a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday afternoon in downtown Fort Lauderdale to usher in new construction on the small campus that surrounds the county’s oldest surviving structure and onetime home to Fort Lauderdale’s founding family.

While the iconic white and green, two-story house will remain untouched, construction will begin late October on the $3 million project to provide additional amenities, including a gift shop, event pavilion, education center, welcome center and archival facility. The construction — led by architect Leo Hansen, Miller Construction, landscape architecture firm EDSA and engineering consultant Brizaga — will take about 10 months.

“It’s an incredibly exciting moment, because we’ve been working very hard to get here,” said Jennifer Belt, the Stranahan House executive director. “It almost kind of feels like it’s not quite reality yet. So I’ll be very excited the day that we have a bulldozer on property moving everything.”

The museum began its capital improvement plan in 2018 with a goal to transform the property and return it closer to its original purpose, as Fort Lauderdale’s first gathering place. The museum has met 75% of its fundraising goal, thanks to private donors and funding from city, county and state governments.

Frank and Ivy Stranahan, Fort Lauderdale’s founding family, were the first of many things in the area before it became the up-and-coming city it is today.

Originally from Ohio, Frank came to what is now Fort Lauderdale in 1893 and founded a thriving trading business with the Seminoles. As the New River settlement grew in size, 18-year-old Ivy Julia Cromartie arrived from Lemon City to become the area’s first schoolteacher. In 1901, Frank built the two-story house right along the New River with a trading post on the first floor and a community hall on the second. The couple later turned the building into their family home.

Today, as a museum, the property welcomes over 30,000 tourists and locals a year, along with thousands of Broward schoolchildren on field trips where they get to churn butter and ring the old ferry bell. Belt told the Miami Herald she’s most looking forward to the Egret Classroom, an indoor educational center, to welcome even more children onto the property.

“Right now, whenever we have children on property, they’re all outside, doing a lot of learning,” Belt said, as it drizzled outside the house. “The indoor capacity will help us be able to bring more summer camps in when it’s so hot out, and it’ll also help with moments like this when it’s raining.”

Belt gestured to show where the upgrades will be built on the relatively small museum campus. The welcome center and gift shop will be by the sea grape tree at the property’s entrance by Southeast Sixth Avenue. Behind that will be a paved, open-air event pavilion with a permanent roof structure for shade. The existing administration building will be extended to house the education center, archival storage, ADA-compliant bathrooms and catering kitchen for events like weddings.

Along with private donations, the project received $500,000 from the Florida Department of Education, $500,000 from Broward County and $500,000 from the city of Fort Lauderdale. State Rep. Chip LaMarca, R-Lighthouse Point, and Democratic state Sen. Rosalind Osgood advocated for the state funding for the Stranahan House.

“This is what happens when you work together,” LaMarca said at the ceremony. “You can overcome anything in Tallahassee.”

A Fort Lauderdale native, Osgood told the Herald she was happy to help preserve and promote the Stranahans’ legacy, especially given the couple’s contributions to the local Black community. The couple provided job opportunities for Black residents, who then built Sistrunk, a historically Black neighborhood, Osgood said. Ivy advocated for the education of Black children and donated land to build Stranahan High School. (Osgood attended Fort Lauderdale High School, Stranahan High’s rival.)

“Being here reminds me of the diversity of the city of Fort Lauderdale and how many, many years ago, our legacy was diversity,” Osgood said. “It was us as a people, as a community, as proud residents of the city of Fort Lauderdale, working together to make sure that every segment of our community was strengthened.”

Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Steven Glassman said the city committed to funding the museum’s renovations because it takes historic preservation seriously.

“It’s important, especially for a city that’s growing like we’re growing,” Glassman said. “You have to hold on to the history. You have to be able to show people where we came from.”

Perhaps nobody knows the history better than longtime Stranahan House groundskeeper and tour guide John Della-Cerra Jr. At age 86, Della-Cerra offers a wealth of knowledge about the house, the Stranahans and the area’s history. For that, he was surprised at the groundbreaking ceremony with a proclamation from Broward County: Sept. 17, 2025, is John Della-Cerra Day.

Originally from Delaware, Della-Cerra moved to Broward County in 1957. That same year, he said, he met Ivy Stranahan at an event at Birch State Park. Della-Cerra was a teacher for special-needs children when Ivy visited the school in 1969, about 16 months before she died. Even when talking to children, Ivy was a very serious lady, he recalled.

She told them, “Get serious about education, because you’re going to be competing against students from all over the world. And if you’re not serious about education, you’ll be left along the side of the road, and you can never ever catch up.”

Della-Cerra, an institution at the institution, holds deep respect for Ivy, her passion for education and her vision for what Fort Lauderdale would become. He was hired at Stranahan House in 1989 to clean for $3 an hour. He’s been there, telling stories nobody else knows and keeping the grounds beautiful, ever since.

“I just liked working here. But the main thing is, always in my mind, Ivy,” Della-Cerra said. “I’m working for Ivy.”

His favorite part of the house is the second-floor balcony overlooking the New River. Late at night, after the hubbub of an event is over and everything is cleaned up, Della-Cerra always sits on the wicker furniture out there to take it all in for a moment.

Seminoles would ride their canoes down the river to come trade with Frank. “I see that picture,” Della-Cerra said. “I’m looking that way, and I see the Seminoles coming.”

A lifetime ago, you could see the school where Ivy taught just across the river. Today, there is a crane towering over new construction.