Bonnet House, the 35-acre estate tucked between Fort Lauderdale beach and the Intracoastal Waterway, is about to end every visit with a movie. Hidden In Plain Sight: Bonnet House Museum & Gardens, a new 27-minute documentary about the estate, gets its first public showing at the museum's Halloween Fest on Saturday, Oct. 31, and after that it becomes the last stop on every self-guided and guided tour.

For a place that has been open to the public for decades, that is a real change. Until now, Bonnet House mostly told its own story room by room, through docents and an audio tour on your phone. Starting in November, the story gets a proper ending.

A film the museum made about itself

The documentary is Bonnet House's own film, and the museum's own blog credits two filmmakers: executive producer Neil Goldberg and director Frank Linero. It traces the estate back to Hugh Taylor Birch, the early settler who bought the beachfront land, and to the two artists who turned it into something stranger and more personal than a typical winter mansion: Frederic Clay Bartlett and, later, his second wife, Evelyn Fortune Bartlett.

The title is the point. Bonnet House sits at 900 N. Birch Road, a short walk from the bars and hotels of Fort Lauderdale Beach, yet plenty of Broward County residents have never been through the gate. The museum has said plainly that it wants this film to change that, and to bring new visitors from across South Florida and beyond.

The film has already had two lives. South Florida PBS aired it in June, on WPBT and then WXEL, timed to the country's 250th anniversary. Then on Sept. 29, more than 300 guests filled the AutoNation IMAX Theater at the Museum of Discovery and Science downtown for a red-carpet premiere, followed by a question-and-answer session with Goldberg, Linero and Bonnet House CEO Patrick Shavloske.

What the story covers

The estate's real history is the kind that rewards a half hour of sitting still. According to the museum's history page, Birch's daughter Helen married Frederic Bartlett in 1919, and Bartlett designed and began building the house soon after. Helen died of breast cancer in 1925, and for years Bartlett rarely came back. In 1931 he married Evelyn Fortune Lilly, and the two of them spent the next two decades filling the place with the painted ceilings, carved animals and odd decorative flourishes that visitors still notice first.

Frederic died in 1953. Evelyn kept returning every winter, and in 1983 she gave the entire property to the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation. At the time it was the largest charitable gift in Florida's history. The estate landed on the National Register of Historic Places the following year and became a City of Fort Lauderdale historic landmark in 2002.

The documentary also spends time on the land itself. The grounds hold five distinct ecosystems in one walk: the Atlantic beach and primary dune, a freshwater slough, the secondary dune where the house stands, mangrove wetlands and a maritime forest. That slough matters to the name. The Cultural Landscape Foundation notes that the estate is named for the bonnet lily that grows there.

Meet Bonnie Gator

The premiere also introduced someone new. Bonnet House now has a mascot, Bonnie Gator, a seven-foot alligator in a lily pad bonnet decorated with flowers, pearls, butterflies, birds, frogs and vines, all borrowed from details around the estate. The museum says she is there to pull in younger visitors and families at events, which makes Halloween Fest her natural first big public outing.

If your kids have ever been bored by a historic house, a giant gator in a flowered hat is a pretty good counterargument.

Seeing it on Halloween

Halloween Fest runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 31, and the film will play in the Caretaker's Cottage throughout the day. The rest of the festival leans fully into families:

  • A costume runway for kids, adults and pets, with prizes that include hotel stays and gift cards
  • A trick-or-treat trail with the Fort Lauderdale Garden Club
  • Face painting, a photo booth and a live DJ
  • Food trucks (gyros and tacos), macarons, snow cones, cotton candy and popcorn

Festival admission is $25 for adults, $8 for ages 6 to 17, and free for children 5 and under.

Seeing it any other day

After Halloween, the film simply becomes part of a regular visit. Self-guided tours run Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the grounds closing at 5. Adult admission is $30, Broward County residents pay $25 with ID, ages 6 to 17 pay $8, and children 5 and under get in free. Docent-led guided tours of the downstairs run Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. for $35, and an Upstairs Downstairs tour that opens normally closed rooms runs Wednesdays and Saturdays for $40. Families with an EBT card can get in for $3 a person through Museums for All. The museum is closed Mondays and parking is free.

If you want a preview first, the museum has posted the official trailer and a behind-the-scenes interview with the producer and director on its YouTube channel.

Why it is worth the trip

Most Fort Lauderdale residents drive past Bonnet House on A1A or Sunrise Boulevard without a second thought, and that is exactly the problem the museum is trying to fix. Ending each tour with the full story, from the Birch land to Evelyn Bartlett's gift, turns a pretty walk through old rooms into something you actually understand on the way out. If you have been meaning to go for years, a Saturday in costume on Oct. 31 is about as easy an excuse as you will get, and if you have already been, there is now a reason to go back.