S.F. Travis Hardware, founded 1885: Cocoa's oldest business
The S.F. Travis Company, founded in 1885, is the oldest continuously operating business in Cocoa, according to the state's historical marker. Its 1891 store is the oldest brick building in the city, and for decades it delivered by boat from a dock behind the store.
The S.F. Travis Company was founded in 1885, and the state’s historical marker outside it calls it “the oldest continuously operating business in the city of Cocoa and one of the oldest hardware stores in Florida.” The marker, placed in 2019, says the business had been family owned and operated for more than five generations.
The building
The store is older than its owner’s purchase of it. According to the marker, the building went up in 1891, one of the first built after a fire in 1890, and Colonel S. F. Travis bought it in 1902. The marker calls it the oldest brick building in Cocoa and the only commercial building in the city from that period still used for its original purpose.
Travis added a second building in 1907. The two buildings’ fronts have changed little since a 1924 renovation added the large display windows, the awning, the brick facade and the second-floor walkway between them.
More than hardware
Travis sold, in the marker’s words, “everything from groceries and furniture to caskets and appliances.” The property also housed a mortuary, a telegraph office and, for a time, a small movie theater. It was the first building in Cocoa with an elevator and a sprinkler system, and among the first businesses in town with a telephone.
By boat
Much of the early business moved on the river. The company had a dock that came right up to the back of the store, and it made deliveries up and down the Indian River until the 1950s, when the dock was removed and the shoreline filled for the Cocoa River Development project.
The marker credits the store’s tools and building materials with helping build Cocoa Village, the Banana River Naval Air Station, later Patrick Air Force Base, and the Kennedy Space Center, and says it went on to serve defense contractors and aerospace companies as well as small businesses and homeowners. The downtown around it is covered on our Cocoa Village page.
Further Reading
- Pioneer Life in Southeast Florida by Charles W. Pierce
- Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon
Sources
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