A learning experience  Artist transforms historic house into a
colorful showcase  April 27, 2001|By Charlyne Varkonyi Schaub,
Knight Ridder/Tribune.  FT. LAUDERDALE — Nolan Haan was sweeping
the front porch of the 16-unit apartment building in Ft.
Lauderdale's Sailboat Bend when a friend's proposition changed
the direction of his life.  Lila Gray, then president of the
Sailboat Bend Historic Trust, urged Haan, the group's treasurer,
to come with her to see a historic house in Smoker Park that was
destined to be torn down unless someone agreed to move it and
restore it.  Haan, an artist who had more taste than money, knew
he would love to save this building known as "The Oliver House,"
a two-story colonial built in 1924 for the city's first
treasurer, David Oliver. It was designed by Francis Louis Abreu,
a Ft. Lauderdale architect best known for his Mediterranean
Revival designs. The developer of the project to be built on the
Smoker Park site had offered $25,000 to anyone who would move
the house. Haan, knowi