Originally shared on Instagram on December 2, 2025. Photography and story by Mark Middleton.
I photographed this with a film camera in the very early 2000s, long before I knew how special this image would become. Back then, the old stilt house in Cedar Key—nicknamed the “Honeymoon Cottage”—was still standing, barely. Today, it’s gone…and somehow that makes this photograph even more powerful.
The cottage’s real name was the Thomas Guest House, built in 1959 by Margaret and Philip Thomas of Gainesville. They owned the historic Thomas Center and wanted a simple retreat on the edge of the Gulf—nothing fancy, just a wooden walkway and a quiet escape from everyday life. Over time, its lonely silhouette out over the water earned it the romantic “Honeymoon Cottage” nickname. Artists painted it, photographers chased it, and it even ended up on the patches of the Cedar Key Police Department. It became an icon of “old Florida”—weathered, stubborn, a little crooked, and completely full of character.
Hurricane Elena changed everything in 1985. The storm destroyed the walkway and left the house uninhabitable, but it also cemented its place in Florida folklore. The more it leaned, cracked, and surrendered pieces of itself back to the sea, the more people fell in love with it.
By the time I made this photograph, the cottage was already fading—tilted, broken, and clinging to its pilings. And now, decades later, it’s no longer standing at all. Only the memory remains.
That’s why this old film shot means so much to me. Photography preserves things we don’t realize are disappearing while we’re looking at them. This little house stood against storms, salt, and time…and now it lives on in frames like this, captured on a quiet day when it was still holding on.
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