Water Works: Distillations

February 1, 2025 – September 21, 2025

Tour Spady Museum

Bringing People Together In Celebration of Black History

Water Works: Distillations

 Museum Hours

TUESday – Saturday 11am – 4pm

Black people arrived in Delray Beach to settle and build their family legacies in the late 1800s. They migrated to this area from the Bahamas and from North Florida and the coastal communities of the Carolinas and Georgia and similar areas.

In the deeply segregated south where Jim Crow laws were in force, entrepreneurship was a necessary part of survival for black people. Delray Beach had a strong and thriving “colored town” since it’s birth.

Visit the Spady Museum to experience Water Works: Distillations, an exhibit curated by South Florida artist and educator Allison Bolah (Opening February 7, 2025). Life in South Florida is defined by its water-infused climate—rain, humidity, marshes, rivers, and expansive beaches. Water is central to our utility, transportation, rituals, and stories. It shapes the way we cook, clean, relax, and mark transitions in life. This exhibit explores the essential and reflective nature of water in our existence.
Featuring the artwork of Franklyn Sinanan, Water Works delves into African Diasporic concepts of water and examines the Delray Beach Black community’s historical and contemporary relationship with local bodies of water through archival records, documentary filmmaking, and oral history.

BOOK A GUIDED TOUR – (561) 279-8883

These pictures depict the thriving establishments in Delray Beach’s “colored town” between the 1900s and the 1950s.

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Emma Reynolds, a Bahamian Immigrant, was a property owner with Shotgun-styled homes for rent, south of Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach
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The Hot Dog Hovel was operated by Mrs. Lydia McCray (behind the counter). Also pictured (l to r) is Blanche Hearst Edmonds, Frank Monroe and Leonard Muse
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Mansfield’s Grocery Store was operated by Oscar Mansfield, north of Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach
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Oscar Mansfield
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Roberts Cafe was operated by Ted Jones
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Nathan Variance is pictured behind the bar of his family establishment, originally named The Lavender Room, later renamed Tobacco Road

City Tours and Step-On City Tours are available.

Bringing People Together In Celebration of Black History

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