Sarasota’s first public hospital opened on the corner of 3rd Street and Goodrich. It had a patient capacity of six. In 1926, A.B. Edwards built the finest theater on the west coast of Florida at a cost of $350,000. Fifteen hundred people were in attendance on opening night, April 19, 1925. The silent black and white movie was “Skinner’s Dress Suit”, a comedy starring Hedda Hopper, Reginald Denny and Laura LaPlante.
Ringling had spent $650,000 on the Ritz Carlton project when it became apparent that buyers for property at these inflated prices were rapidly disappearing; the massive hurricane of September 17, 1926 burst Sarasota’s real estate boom. The list of millionaires dwindled down to four. The 69 square mile area that the city had been extended to in 1925 proved to be more than the economy could sustain and the council agreed, 974 to 31, to a more appropriate 17 square miles.
Although work had stopped on the Ritz Carlton, John Ringling refused to give up. He bought the magnificent El Verona Hotel, renamed it the John Ringling Hotel, and installed the circus’s seven foot giant as the doorman, complete with a gold colored uniform and brass buttons.
To help Sarasota weather the storm, Ringling announced on March 23, 1927 that he would move the winter quarters of the circus from Bridgeport, Connecticut to Sarasota. This required spending at least $500,000 just for the buildings. During the first week in November, 100 railroad cars arrived in Sarasota with elephants, lions, gorillas (Gargantua and Mlle. M’Toto) and more. Dozens of performers and their families came too. The circus grounds were opened to the public on Christmas Day 1927. This attraction helped make Sarasota a tourist destination.
AN ASIDE
One day in October 1924, an unkempt couple moved into a shanty on Sarasota’s coastal area. A few days later the man showed a neighbor some gold coins and hinted he had found a buried treasure chest. The next day he bought a new car, some new clothes and then the couple disappeared. Who were they? Did they really find a treasure chest?
The pirate Jean Lafitte is known to have operated in the Gulf of Mexico, captured more than 100 vessels of all nations, and even buried Napoleon’s treasure somewhere along the gulf coast.
In 1926, a syndicate spent thousands of dollars searching for Lafitte’s buried treasure, to no avail.
(To Be Continued)..
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