THE SETTLING OF SARASOTA (29th in a series)

The nation was in the depths of a depression on March 4, 1933, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States of America.

Sarasota was fortunate that the Boston Red Sox chose it as their spring training site. Tourists escaping from the northern winter cold came to see them play.

Fred Albee opened his Florida Medical Center in the former Park View Hotel in Venice. His patients ate nutritious food from his farms and groves and ice cream from his dairy.

March 9th, Congress passed the Federal Emergency Relief Act which expired in two years to be replaced by the Works Project Act (WPA). In 1935 it provided jobs for ¾ of the nation’s “heads of the household”. Sarasota received $131,465 from the WPA to work on ten area projects. This sum provided employment for 294 men in the city, 114 men in the county, and a total of 87 women throughout the area. In addition, work crews of the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) were kept busy for six years at Myakka State Park.

Booker High School, Sarasota’s first high school that admitted Negroes, graduated its first class of four in 1935.

John Ringling (right), the last of the five Ringling brothers, died on December 2, 1936. He was 60 years old. In his will he bequeathed his home, Ca' d Zan, and the Ringling Museum of Arts to the State of Florida. At his death, John was so deeply in debt that it took ten years to settle the estate.

In 1937, the city bought the property now called Bayfront Park from the defunct Sarasota Bay Hotel Co. by purchasing tax certificates valued at $15,000. The WPA put $131,000 into the project which made possible the construction of Bayfront Park and the Municipal Auditorium. The Auditorium opened on February 24, 1938 for the Sara de Soto Celebration. Three thousand people attended.

Today’s Sarasota/Manatee International Airport started as a small landing strip named Lowes Field. It was the destination for swim meets, gymnastics, music, shopping and dining before it went out of existence in 1969. It was Sarasota’s first municipal airport. On July 15, 1937, National Airlines was authorized to provide passenger and mail service from Lowes field. One daily northbound flight to Tampa and St. Petersburg, and one daily southbound flight to Ft. Myers and Miami were scheduled.

Sarasota was one of only 275 cities in the nation with airmail service. The aircraft was a single engine Stinson; the runways were grass. Unfortunately, however, the city was informed that National would soon cease operations until the runways were improved. Summer rains often made takeoffs and landings impossible.

The airport became a WPA project and work began on September 1938 with 15 men. By the end of November, 317 men were working on the improvements. Unskilled labor was paid 31 cents/hour, semi-skilled 37 cents/hour, and skilled labor 48 cents/hour. The airport grew to 640 acres and 300 of the workers lived in the Sarasota/Manatee area, futher aiding the local economy.

The city of Sarasota had 16,106 residents.

(To Be Continued)..

(C) Copyright, 2009 - 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.

THE SETTLING OF SARASOTA (25th in a series)

In previous episodes, we revealed little about Harry Higel, one of early Sarasota’s foremost citizens. He was mayor when Sarasota was incorporated as a city in 1913. He constantly fought for progress including being first to plat Siesta Key in 1907. On January 7, 1921, he was found brutally beaten and left to die in the middle of Beach Road. A reward of $1,000 was offered for evidence to convict. Although a suspect was identified, the evidence was circumstantial and the reward was never claimed.

On May 1, 1925, an eight page newspaper size advertisement entitled “Sarasota on the Gulf” was published and widely distributed. It stated, “Fortunes have been made overnight in Sarasota” and included articles to prove it. “Jim Bishop, a fisherman, sold a lot on Longboat Key for $30,000 and retired.” “Senator Park Trammell made a profit of over $10,000 on an initial investment of $750. Widows who had been land poor bought player pianos. Dozens of Similar articles appeared.

During the month of October 1925 real estate sales in Sarasota exceeded 11 million dollars.

Starting in 1923, John Ringling employed three huge dredges to make solid land of mangrove islands creating St. Armand’s, Lido and the southern end of Longboat Key. Sewer and water lines were installed, canals were dredged and roads were built. A causeway that cost $750,000 was built to connect the area with the mainland. The day that the causeway opened, February 7, 1026, Ringling Estates reported real estate sales exceeding one million dollars.

In 1925, Dr. Fred Albee purchased 2,916 acres south of Sarasota from the Palmer Real Estate Sales Group. He employed John Nolan, a respected city planner to design a city to be called Venice, a model city that would attract the elite.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) built the Cooperative National Bank of Cleveland, Ohio to increase pensions for their members. Profits grew by a million dollars per month and they sought property in Florida for an investment.

Based upon the fact that the Seaboard Airline Railway accessed the area, and that it fronted on the Gulf of Mexico, the BLE decided to buy Dr. Albee’s holdings in 1925. They retained John Nolan and planned to build Venice, the ‘Queen of the Gulf’ in a period of three years. Retirees would buy farms complete with a house built and crops planted.

The BLE spent $500,000 per month developing the property. There were sidewalks, gutters, storm sewers, six miles of graded streets, a new train station and an operating water plant. There was a 40 acre demonstration farm, a 160 acre dairy farm, 188 residences, 141 apartment units and 83 stores.

In the summer of 1927 a BLE audit committee discovered that the project had lost $3.4 million by June 30 and projected that if the remaining property were sold at the same price-to-expense ratio, more losses would be incurred. Four top officers of the BLE were removed and it was voted to get out of Venice as quickly as possible.

(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.

SETTLING SARASOTA (21st in a series)

In the fall of 1911, John Ringling spent a few days in the Sarasota area during which he visited with Ralph Caples who had just purchased a large home with acreage from C. H. Thompson. Early in 1912, John and his wife Mable returned to Sarasota in their private railroad car ‘JOMAR’. (Jo for John, Ma for Mable, and R for Ringling). It was during Sarasota’s coldest winter. John remarked that it was warmer up north; Caples told him that it wouldn’t last more than a few days and that land prices were going up.

John: “Tell you what Ralph, if you sell me the Thompson place cheap, just like it stands, I’ll buy it tonight.”

Caples: “Mr. Ringling, you’ve bought yourself a home.”

The transaction was recorded at the county seat in Bradenton on January 31, 1912. John and Mable moved into the Thompson house, and Charles Ringling, his wife Edith and their two children came down to visit and bought property adjacent to John’s.

Everyone knew the name Ringling and when it was learned that John and Charles had purchased property on Shell Beach, Sarasota rejoiced! Ringlings and circus were synonymous. It brought visions of elephants, clowns, acrobats and more.

One afternoon John and Owen Burns went to uninhibited St. Armand’s Key in Burns’ boat. John remarked that a causeway to the mainland would make the key the best residential section in the state. Through Burns, John bought St. Armand’s Key, acreage on the south end of Longboat Key, and Bird Key.

During the 1913-14 winter, the United States began to go into an economical tailspin when – boom- a Serb assassinated Archduke Francis of Austria and his wife. Russian troops invaded Germany, German troops invaded France. World War I had started. Orders for munitions, clothing, food and more poured into the United States. All of the country prospered including Sarasota.

In the fall of 1919 thousands of “tin-can” tourists invaded Florida. The Belle Haven Inn which had been purchased by C. T. Whittle from Ralph Caples for $35,000 in 1914 was rumored to have been sold to an anonymous buyer for $500,000.

(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.