Lily Lawrence Bow Library

To survive Bow planted melons, pineapples, yams, tomatoes, and limes while her sons fished and hunted deer.

Since she was college educated Bow taught her sons as well as the children from a neighboring family from Sugarloaf Key.

Initially Bow did not want to leave but relented after Krome gave her sixteen-year-old son a job with the railroad.

She and her family left Cudjoe in October 1906, only days before a hurricane swept through, killing over one hundred railroad workers.

[6] Clarence J. Parman, a local architect, drew up plans in 1937 for the present site of what will become the Lily Lawrence Bow Library.

The WPA was to have a major impact on libraries and a Florida Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) report from March 1935 showed that thirty-one library/museum projects had been approved in 1934.

[8] The new building was made out of native oolitic rock and hand-hewn Dade County pine timbers.

In 1939 the City Council voted to name the building the Lily Lawrence Bow Library after Homestead's first librarian, an accomplished musician, artist, published poet, and a member of the local police force.

In it is reflected the great civic pride and the desire for better things in life that fill the hearts of Homestead's citizens.