Monday, June 15, 2026

Ed Slavin: Preserve and Protect Sinclair Lewis Cottage, 177 Surfside


On Monday, June 15, 2026 at 08:20:33 PM EDT, Ed Slavin <easlavin@aol.com> wrote:



To: 
St. Johns County Commission Chair Clay Murphy, Vice Chair Ann Taylor & Commissioners Sarah Arnold, Christian Whitehurst and Krista Joseph; 
Sheriff Hardwick, 
Constitutional Officers and Staff:

1. St. Johns County Commissioners: re: item 7 on June 16, 2026, Please vote to postpone any action on 177 Surfside for one (1) year.

2. St. Johns County residents love and cherish our unique history.  

3. Please work together to preserve and to protect Sinclair Lewis  Cottage, the former seasonal home of  Nobel Prize winning author Sinclair Lewis.  

4. Please include a modest budget line item for research.

5. We're proud that our St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners preserved and protected the 1953 Jail Annex, where some 1000+ people were incarcerated after civil rights protests, including sixteen (16) Rabbis and Nobel Prize winning Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who graciously called this "the nicest jail" he'd ever visited.

6. We're also proud that SJC BoCC preserved another literary lion's landmark, the home of Wm. Stetson Kennedy.  

7. Likewise, let's preserve Sinclair Lewis Cottage as another literary landmark. 

Yes we can!

More on Nobel Prize winning Sinclair Lewis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis

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