Bonnet House Museum and Gardens Visitor Guide 2026

Bonnet House Museum and Gardens opens for self-guided tours Tuesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and an adult ticket for the house and gardens costs $30.

The last admission is at 4 p.m. and the grounds close at 5 p.m.; the museum is closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day, and the garden is also closed on Mondays (Bonnet House, Hours and Admission). Same-day re-entry works with the wristband handed out at the Welcome Center, and walk-ins are accepted, though the museum warns of waits on weekends and holidays.

Reservations are not required for self-guided visits, and all ticket sales are final and non-refundable (Bonnet House admission). Broward County residents with ID pay $25 instead of the $30 adult rate. The museum lists its phone as (954) 563-5393 (Bonnet House Museum and Gardens).

Bonnet House runs two docent tours of the main house, a downstairs Guided House Tour for $35 and an Upstairs/Downstairs tour for $40, and both need pre-registration.

Guided House Tours of the downstairs rooms run Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., last about 90 minutes and take no more than 12 visitors. Adults pay $35 and ages 8 to 16 pay $10; the museum does not recommend them for children 7 and younger, and no discounts apply (Bonnet House, Hours and Admission).

The Upstairs/Downstairs tour runs Wednesdays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. and Saturdays at 10 a.m. It also lasts about 90 minutes, costs $40 and goes into normally closed areas of the Bartletts' private living quarters; visitors must be able to climb 20 stairs (Bonnet House tours).

On the water side of the estate, kayak and paddleboard tours start at Coconut Cove and are run by the museum's partner, Fort Lauderdale Adventures. The museum asks for reservations 24 hours before the start time and says paddlers can walk the grounds afterward (Bonnet House, Paddle and Kayak Adventure Tours).

Bonnet House has a free visitor parking lot at its main entrance, 900 North Birch Road, just south of Sunrise Boulevard.

The museum bills itself as a historic artists' estate on Fort Lauderdale Beach (Bonnet House home page). The estate lies between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway and has two entrances: the vehicle and pedestrian entrance with the free lot at 900 North Birch Road, and a pedestrian-only entrance at 750 Breakers Avenue (Bonnet House, Directions). From I-95, the museum's directions take the Sunrise Boulevard exit east for 4 miles, over the Intracoastal Waterway bridge, then a right turn at the traffic light onto North Birch Road and a left into the lot at the end of the road.

Visitors coming by boat can use Water Taxi Stop 7, which the museum describes as a short walk away. The kayak page gives the parking entrance as the Main Visitor Parking Lot on 9th St. off Birch Road at the West Gate (Bonnet House kayak tours). Hugh Taylor Birch State Park is the neighbour to the north: the Florida DEP plan for the park puts Birch's own estate, Terramar, less than half a mile north of Bonnet House, with the park entrance on East Sunrise Blvd (Florida DEP, Hugh Taylor Birch State Park management plan).

Bonnet House is on the National Register of Historic Places for its art and architecture, as the highly individual design of artist Frederic Clay Bartlett, and its National Park Service record carries a published date of July 5, 1984.

The National Park Service record lists the property as Bonnet House, NRIS 84000832, at 900 Birch Rd., with areas of significance in art and architecture and a significant year of 1920 (NPS NPGallery, Bonnet House record). The nomination itself was prepared by the Florida Division of Archives, History and Records Management, dated 5-10-84, and certified at the local level of significance (National Register nomination, Bonnet House).

The nomination says the house and its 35 acre estate were designed and built in 1920-21 under Bartlett's supervision, and that the building matters not as an example of one architectural style but for its remarkable individuality and integrity. It calls the property one of a rapidly dwindling number of ocean front estates in South Florida and notes that it retains most of its original furnishings (NPS nomination form). Its historic name is Bonnet House and its common name on the form is the Bartlett Estate.

The 1984 nomination describes Bonnet House as a two-story, L-shaped main house of cinder block and cypress, a painting studio, a music studio, a three-storey tower and a shell room, set in a naturalistic tropical landscape.

Bartlett's painting studio was the first Bonnet House building completed, and next to it rises the estate's most dominant visual element, a square three-storey tower topped by four concrete spheres. The main house has a wide second story gallery that suggests a southern plantation house, while its octagonal dining room is fully paneled in dark cypress as a background for Bartlett's collection of mounted fish (National Register nomination).

North of the Bonnet House residence, a smaller building holds the Orchid House, Shell Room and Bamboo Bar; the form says Bartlett built it in the early 1930's as a gift to his second wife and calls the circular shell room perhaps the most individual interior of the estate. The courtyard has an aviary and fountain linked by coral walkways, and the grounds carry Royal, Date and Washingtonia palms on a naturalistic rather than formal plan (NPS nomination form). Those descriptions record the estate as it stood in 1984; the museum's Upstairs/Downstairs tour is the way into rooms now kept closed on the self-guided route.

Evelyn Fortune Bartlett, Frederic Bartlett's second wife, donated Bonnet House to the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, which the 1984 nomination says would maintain it as a house museum.

The nomination says Bartlett began building on beachfront property acquired through his father-in-law, Hugh Taylor Birch, a large landowner in Ft. Lauderdale. Bartlett and his first wife, Helen Birch, collected post-impressionist paintings, and after her death in 1925 he gave the collection to the Art Institute of Chicago in her memory. In 1931 he married Evelyn Fortune, who began calling the residence the Bonnet House after a variety of lily grown on the estate (National Register nomination). She kept it as a winter residence after his death in 1953, and the form lists the owner as the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation.

Two state documents tell the family story differently. The Florida DEP management plan for Hugh Taylor Birch State Park says Birch gifted 35 acres of property to his daughter Evelyn upon her marriage to Frederic Bartlett (Florida DEP, Hugh Taylor Birch State Park plan). The National Register form names Helen Birch as Bartlett's wife when the estate was begun and Evelyn Fortune as the second wife he married in 1931, so the DEP plan's wording does not match the nomination on who married Bartlett first.

Bonnet House lists Halloween Fest on October 31, Yoga on the Veranda on November 6 and the ZimSculpt outdoor sculpture exhibit from January 19 to April 11, 2027.

The museum home page also names Holiday Magic, Concerts on the Veranda and an Orchid Festival among its calendar programs, and already offers ZimSculpt tickets for purchase (Bonnet House Museum and Gardens). One date on the admission page is out of date: it still lists the closure for the Fort Lauderdale Air Show on May 9 and 10, 2026, which has passed, and the page gives no later Air Show closure date (Bonnet House, Hours and Admission). The same applies to the yoga series: two of its three listed sessions, September 18 and October 16, are already over, leaving November 6 as the next one on the home page.

Members get in free, and the museum says Member Guest Tickets and Museums for All admissions are sold in person only at the Welcome Center. For a busy event day such as Halloween Fest, buying a self-guided ticket online and showing it on a phone at the Welcome Center is the museum's own suggestion for a quicker entry (Bonnet House admission).

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Bonnet House admission, directions and kayak pages, the National Park Service nomination and record for NRIS 84000832, and the Florida DEP plan for the neighbouring state park.