And the Key Lime Pie - it really was first created in the mansion's kitchen at the turn of the century by the Curry's cook, Aunt Sally!

One evening in 1975, Al Amsterdam docked his yacht in Key West's harbor and took a stroll with his wife, Edith, through downtown. Al and Edith, the owners of Casa Blanca on Cherry Island in upstate New York's Alexandria Bay, were especially fond of historic homes. Edith spied a wedding-cake white mansion aglow with the light of it's crystal chandeliers. A for-sale sign hung in the yard. Fortunately for Key West visitors, the Amsterdams promptly bought what was to become the Curry Mansion Inn. The mansion was (and is) their family home ever since.

The house was named for William Curry, a penniless Bahamian immigrant who made his fortune reputedly as a salvager -those scurrilous fellows who preyed on shipwrecked travelers in Florida's pirate-infested waters.- Curry attained status as Key West's first millionaire and began building the Mansion in 1855. The architectural details are common to wreckers, incorporating elements of many ports-of-call: the widow's walk of New England, the ornate trellises and balustrades of New Orleans and the columns and colonnades of the Deep South. Curry's son Milton completed the Mansion in 1899, furnishing it with the 18th-century antiques and Victorian pieces gracing the parlor today.

The imposing entry is paneled in bird's-eye maple, handwrought spindles and Tiffany glass sliding doors. A formal dining room is staged with Haviland china and faux replicas of the Curry family's original solid-gold Tiffany flatware. An 1853 Chickering piano, reputedly most recently of Henry James's Newport home, sits in the music room.

Today the home of innkeeper, Edith Amsterdam, the Mansion is also an intriguing museum listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Curry Mansion Inn...where the elegance of Key West's past is equaled only by the elegance of it's present.