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.

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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.