On a sun-drenched October morning, the Naples Pier Pavilion—a 1920s Art Deco jewel once crumbling under salt and neglect—reopened to the sound of waves and applause. As I stood with a pair of antique scissors borrowed from the Naples Historical Society archives, I marveled at the crowd: fourth-generation fishermen, FGCU engineering students in hard hats, and retirees who’d danced here in the 1950s. Their collective sigh of relief was palpable. We hadn’t just saved a building; we’d resurrected a sentinel of Southwest Florida’s soul.

This project was personal. My grandfather proposed to my grandmother under this pavilion’s arched colonnades in 1947. By 2023, those same columns leaned like drunks, their terrazzo floors pockmarked by decades of storm surges. The restoration? A 24-month tango between reverence and revolution.

Unearthing Secrets in the Salt-Crusted Bones

The pavilion’s decline wasn’t just aesthetic—it was structural treason. Saltwater intrusion had turned rebar into lace, while termites (the “silent renovators,” as I call them) had feasted on heart-pine beams. Our first task: forensic preservation.

Phase 1: The Art Deco Autopsy

• 3D Laser Scanning: Partnering with FGCU’s archaeology department, we mapped every fissure with Leica’s BLK360, creating a digital twin accurate to 0.1mm.

• Material Forensics: Lab tests revealed the original pink stucco contained crushed Coquina shells from Estero Bay—a recipe lost to time.

• Hidden Histories: Beneath warped floorboards, we found 1930s soda bottles and a worker’s timecard signed “A. Hemingway”—likely a local, not the famed author.

“It’s like peeling an onion with a thousand layers,” said Dr. Eleanor Whitmore, Naples Historical Society’s lead preservationist. “Except each layer could collapse at any moment.”