Monday, January 12, 2009

THE SETTLING OF SARASOTA (28th in a series)

The year 1929 saw Sarasota in a deep depression. The population of the county was 12,200. Telephone subscribers dropped from 2662 to 1689. Pure pork sausage sold for 10 cents a pound, sirloin steak for 15 cents per pound.

The Ringling Causeway was in such a state of disrepair that it was closed until the city found sufficient funds to pay the labor cost for 50 men who worked on it for a month. The materials were donated.

Powell Crosley Jr. bought a 63-acre bay front property in Sarasota for $35,000 at auction. It had sold for $365,000 to a developer in 1925. He built an 11,000 square foot estate residence with 10 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms and called it Seagate.

Mr. Crosley owned an Automotive Accessories Company, a mail order auto parts company whose sales consisted mostly of thousands of five American flags in a holder that attached to the radiator cap. He also started the Crosley Radio Company in 1920 when his son wanted a radio, a new gadget that cost $130. Crosley bought a book on radios, learned how to make a crystal set and sold thousands at $9.00 each. They were called Harkos, and Crosley was called the Henry Ford of radio. In 1923 he built the 28th radio station in the U.S. with call letters WLW. It had a 500,000 watt transmitter and it was said that it could be heard anywhere on earth.

Crosley marketed the Shelvador electric refrigerator in 1932, the first with shelves in the door. The inscription on front of it read: Crosley/Shelvador/made in USA.

The Cincinnati Reds baseball team was struggling to survive in 1934. Powell Crosley bought the team, installed lights on the playing field, and the Reds played seven games “under the lights.” Attendance was ten times that for a normal day game.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32ND President of the United States in March 1933 and instituted a special session of Congress to pass a make-work program called the “New Deal”. On Saturday, December 2, 1933, the Conservation Corps (CCC) one of 21 New Deal programs, distributed 641 checks in Sarasota totaling $4,775, an average of just over $7.00 per worker.

(To Be Continued)..

(C) Copyright, 2008 - Leland Desmon. The information on this page may not be reproduced or republished on any other webpage, website, or publication. Please LINK TO US instead.

THE SETTLING OF SARASOTA (27th in a series)

In mid-June, 1927, the Sarasota City Council passed an ordinance “prohibiting the showing of moving pictures, plays, vaudeville-acts or other amusements on Sundays”: I suppose that ordinance affected visits to the circus winter quarters, Sarasota’s number one tourist attraction. I wonder whose job it was to police this illegality and how much he was paid to do it.

Also in 1927, John Ringling hired John H. Phillips to design the Ringling Museum of Art to house his vast collection of paintings collected during tours of Europe. (Phillips was the architect who designed the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art). Thousand year old marble columns were imported from Greece and wall foundations from Italy to be used in its construction.

In March, the Sarasota-Palmbee Highway, the first cross-state highway south of Tampa, was opened to traffic. It passed through the towns of Arcadia and Okeechobee on its way to the east coast. It is presently known as State Route 70.

The city fathers purchased a 290 acre tract of land from the trustees of the Palmer estate and hired Donald J. Ross to design an 18-hole golf course. In February, 1928 the golf course was opened to the public. In an exhibition game, a foursome composed of Bobby Jones and Louis Landcaster defeated Watts Gun and Jim Senter. Jones shot a 73 and was given a new Pierce Arrow automobile. Fifteen hundred golfers were in attendance. Although the course was named after Jones to “give it prestige”, some thought it should have been named after Sir John Hamilton Gillespie, Sarasota’s first golfer. Gillespie died of a heart attack while walking on a course of his own design four years earlier.

Sarasota's Property values dropped to “normal” levels in 1928. The future looked OK, and Sarasota’s first radio station, owned by the Chamber of Commerce with call letters WJBB, went on the air. It sent citrus baskets to the furthest listener of the day. Hawaii and Saskatchewan listeners were recipients. The Nye Odorless Crematory Co. of Macon, Georgia built and put into operation an incinerator to consume Sarasota’s garbage and trash. Whew!

The stock market crashed in October 1929.

Building permits that had totaled $4.5 million in 1925 dropped to $83,596 in 1929. The depression had begun; the number of winter visitors dropped to a very few; citrus rotted on the trees, and mullet brought less than one cent per pound.

John Ringling’s Sarasota bank closed; he ran out of money and credit; Mabel Ringling died at the age of 54. John was a broken man.

(To Be Continued)..

(C) Copyright, 2008 - Leland Desmon. The information on this page may not be reproduced or republished on any other webpage, website, or publication. Please LINK TO US instead.