Paradise for Sale

by Nick Wynne

  Howey’s intent was to develop the largest horticultural empire in the world. The area and climate were perfect for citrus growth and offered rich, sandy soil with excellent drainage, which was protected from frost because of the one hundred square miles of freshwater lakes that surrounded his holdings. He formed the Howey Company, establishing its headquarters in the city named for him. He announced his plans in a series of lavish advertisements in northern newspapers, and investors flocked to the area. They traveled by barge through a series of freshwater lakes from Jacksonville to Howey’s sprawling “tent city,” which housed early laborers and settlers. In 1927, he used a fleet of five-forty passenger buses to bring potential customers from his sales offices in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Miami, Palm Beach and other locations. Howey guaranteed investors that their investments, including money advanced for land, planting and grove care, would generate 6 percent interest if the buyer signed a maintenance contract with Howey’s company, the Orange Belt Security Company. If the grove did not return the total cost of the original investment, plus interest, by the eleventh year, the Orange Belt Security Company would repurchase the property for a price that equaled the original amount paid out, and only the proceeds from previous citrus crops would be deducted.

  The guarantee was irresistible, and the Howey development moved ahead at full speed. A town named after him was incorporated on May 8, 1925. Bill Howey served as mayor from 1925 to 1936. It was difficult to draw a distinct line between the interests of the citizens of the town and those of the Howey Company, since they were often the same. In early 1926, citizens of the new town approved a $300,000 bond issue to fund a citywide water system, thirty miles of paved streets, a fire department and a city hall. In 1925, Howey began construction on his home in the city, and when it officially opened in 1927, he had spent more than $250,000 on its construction and an additional $55,000 on furnishings. The Florida legislature officially changed the name of the original town to Howey-in-the-Hills on May 13, 1927, in order to reflect the beauty of the lakes and hills, which Howey touted as the “Alps of Florida.”

  Keenly aware that undeveloped land held little interest for most investors, Howey quickly erected the Bougainvillea Hotel, a wooden-frame structure, which became the center of life in the Howey planned community. It burned down in 1917 and was immediately replaced by the Hotel Floridan, a stucco building, adjacent to the Chain-O-Lakes Country Club and golf course. To make sure that the Chain-O-Lakes course was a world-class facility, he secured the services of Chicago golf course designer George O’Neil, who worked with Chicago club professionals/course designers Jack Daray Sr., Joseph A. Roseman and Jack Croke. O’Neil’s handiwork proved immensely popular with visitors, and Howey was able to raise the hotel’s room rate each year as the demand to play the course grew.

  When the Florida boom started to go south in mid-1926, Howey remained confident that the resulting depression would not have much of an impact on his development. He had carefully planned to make the community self-sustaining, and his plan seemed to be working.

  From 1915 through 1924, Howey had registered 187 sales, but in 1925 alone, he sold 69 parcels. In 1926, sales of 117 parcels saw more than $5 million poured into the coffers of the Howey Company, which equaled the sales of the previous ten years. Although many Florida promoters had given up the ghost by 1927, it proved to be a banner year for the Howey Company when 127 parcels were sold. Sustaining growth during the “bust” was difficult, and by 1928, land sales had plummeted to only 90 parcels. This was a precipitous decline that continued in 1929 and 1930, when sales of land brought in only $250,000. The number of his employees fell dramatically from the mid-1920s’ high of six hundred, and the company payroll dropped from a high of $1.1 million a year to only $101,000 by 1930.

  Bill Howey continued to promote Howey-in-the Hills throughout the Depression—or at least until his death in 1938. Between 1931 and 1938, the Howey Company averaged only twenty-eight sales a year, but the company skated along, surviving on the annual maintenance and development fees paid by those who had purchased land. The contracts, challenged by the Securities and Exchange Commission, were eventually declared to be unregistered securities by the United States Supreme Court and illegal—but that was after Howey’s death in 1938. That same year, the Howey Company properties were sold to Claude Vaughan “C.V.” Griffin. However, through good years and bad, William Howey had persevered, and that fact alone made him an unusual individual among the many “lesser lights” of the Florida boom.

  CHAPTER 11

  Every Little Nook and Cranny

  Florida had discovered golf as an attractive medium of entertaining those who drifted within its borders during the winter months. Now it has embraced and appropriated the game as a prominent industry. The ancient Scotch game surely has had and still holds a definite place in the general scheme of the stupendous developments going on there now…It has come to be a recognized fact that a town in Florida, sending out calls to the visiting legions, that does not have a golf course, is burning good powder in blank cartridges. They simply have to provide their guests with the privilege of reviling a chronic slice, framing the festive alibi, or chortling over the execution of the long putt that hits the back of the cup and plops in.

  —“Golf Courses Dot Florida’s Landscape,”

  American Motorist, October 1925

  There were other developers, although none of them approached the size of Fisher, Merrick, Davis and Mizner in their operations. Around the state, hundreds of smaller developments—usually associated with the game of golf and frequently aimed at clientele from a particular state or region—dotted the countryside. Although golf courses had long been a mainstay for the hundreds of luxury hotels in the Sunshine State, by 1915 a new phenomenon—golf communities—appeared and soon became an important part of the boom frenzy. Northerners, who were limited to playing during the summer months only, eagerly sought venues that gave them the opportunity to enjoy the game year-round. Florida’s perpetual sunshine and its balmy winter temperatures made it ideal. So, too, did its location on the East Coast. With the construction of passable roads—such as the Dixie Highway—and strategically located rail lines, Florida was within a two-day ride for the bulk of the American population. Chicago, New York, Boston, Cincinnati and other large cities provided the people, while Florida provided the large open spaces that could accommodate the courses. From the late 1890s until the present, golf course designers have found employment, and today more than fourteen hundred courses give mute testimony to the fact that this phenomenon is continuing. Donald J. Ross, Tom Bendelow and Arthur W. Tillinghast became familiar names to golf enthusiasts who noted their particular styles of designs, while scores of lesser-known designers plied their trade without the fanfare that accompanied these men.

  The popularity of golf received a boost when President William Howard Taft (1909–1913) took up the sport as a way to get exercise. Since then, golf has been known as the “Sport of Presidents,” and most presidents play the game, although with varying skill levels. With Taft’s adoption of the game, the sport became de rigueur for people of importance. Some historians maintain that golf changed Taft from a progressive politician to a conservative one—he vetoed a bill that outlawed child labor—largely because of his contacts with businessmen on the courses. Perhaps. Once the game received the official approval of the president, it was adopted by thousands of politicians, businesspeople, celebrities and the public at large.

  Golf was unique in American sports. In its simplest form, the game is democratic in nature, allowing rich and poor to play the same game without any rigid requirements for equipment or dress. It is also democratic because there are no restrictions—except for professional tournament players—on skill levels or experience. Everyone, from the newest duffer to the most grizzled player, can play, even in the same groups. Golf is also nondiscriminatory because there are not prohibitions regarding sex or race. Women, who are among the most ardent enthusiasts of the game, can pl
ay alongside men, while African Americans, Hispanics and other races participate equally. Only societal norms—segregation, snobbery, economic status—place limitations on who, when and where golf is played. Today, however, most of these limitations are gone, although some private courses are still restricted to members only. The actual game, however, is indeed the most democratic and welcoming sport ever, but it is also the most demanding.

  For promoters during the Florida boom, the one thing about golfers that attracted their attention was their willingness to spend money in pursuit of the sport. Golfers become addicted to the sport, constantly pitting themselves against the courses, demanding more and more difficult challenges and spending more and more money to improve their game with newer equipment, private lessons and membership in exclusive clubs. Few advertisements for Florida developments failed to mention golf as an enticement for investors, and most featured a real or imaginary golfer, in full golfing attire, swinging away on some lushly landscaped course. Chambers of commerce aided in this effort by publicizing the temperatures of the Sunshine State. Miami’s chamber informed the public:

  On only six days in twenty-nine years has the temperature gone down to freezing; only once in that period has it reached 96 degrees; the average January temperature is 67 degrees; and the ocean water is above 70 degrees from December to April. There is rarely a day without sunshine, there are seldom fogs, and almost never severe storms [emphasis added].

  Tampa assured potential new residents and visitors that

  it is almost ideal, either for the tourist who wishes to escape the faintest reminder that the thermometer has a freezing point, or for the year-round resident who demands that his summer sunshine be tempered by cooling breezes. Ninety-six degrees Fahrenheit is still Tampa’s high temperature peak, and it has been reached only once. Even in August the absence of anything approaching the humidity of the northern coast cities or of the burning prairie winds of the Middle West, makes living comfortable in Tampa.

  St. Petersburg, which called itself the “Sunshine City,” echoed the same story. The St. Petersburg Evening Independent, the city’s major newspaper, offered its customer free papers on the days it rained and felt comfortable doing so.

  Golf enthusiasts took advantage of the climate of the Sunshine State and flocked to it. As early as 1900, dedicated golf communities became popular in Florida, and even during the depths of the bust, golf communities continued to grow. Although Coral Gables, Miami Beach, Boca Raton and Davis Islands received most of the publicity attending the boom, they were multipurpose communities that stressed more than just golf as entertainment. These new developments were located primarily on the west coast and in the center of the state. These were areas that did not receive as much attention from promoters, basically because of the absence of oceanfront venues, but were ideal for the creation of golf courses. St. Petersburg was a favorite area for golfers, and Walter Fuller and other developers offered golf as the major attraction for their developments. In the Panhandle and in southwest Florida, golf dominated advertisements for new communities, although fishing and hunting opportunities were also ballyhooed.

  In 1912, Barron Gift Collier discovered Florida when he took possession of Useppa Island. He quickly converted the rudimentary community on the island into a first-class golfing haven enjoyed only by his wealthiest friends and their guests. In the Panhandle, James E. Plew, owner of the Chicago Towel Company, established a vacation home in Valparaiso. In 1923, he established the Valparaiso State Bank to provide him a business base in Florida. In 1924, he constructed the Valparaiso Inn and hired the firm of Langford and Moreau to design and build an eighteen-hole golf course adjacent to the inn. He immediately invited friends from the Chicago area to become members of an exclusive golf club, using the Valparaiso Inn as the clubhouse, known as the Chicago Country Club of Valparaiso. A number of Chicagoans accepted his invitation and decided to spend their winters in the town. Reciprocal memberships in the private clubs of Chicago made it exceedingly popular, and a small community soon developed around the course. The club continued to operate until 1929, when it went bankrupt.

  Cleveland real estate magnate H.A. Stahl came to central Florida in 1922 to vacation and to assess the opportunities for investing in land. An avid fan of the Cleveland Indians, who held their spring training in Lakeland, Stahl accepted a 1923 invitation from the local chamber of commerce to come to the town to evaluate the area as a possible site for a new housing development. Stahl was impressed with the region and, in October 1924, purchased 560 acres on the south shore of Lake Hollingsworth for $935,000.

  Stahl planned a development similar to his ultra-successful Madison Golf Lakelands and Ridgewood Country Club in Cleveland. Before the end of the year, he sent several members of his staff to oversee the construction of the development, which became known as Cleveland Heights. Streets were laid out, and a sales office was set up at Cleveland Heights Boulevard and Lake Hollingsworth Drive. Photos on the brochure show Model-T Fords in the parking lot, but the palm trees that line the four-lane road today had not been planted.

  More than 1,000 lots were platted on both sides of Cleveland Heights Boulevard in late 1924, from Lake Hollingsworth south to Carleton Street and from Florida Avenue on the west to Warrington Avenue on the east. (A framed copy of the plat map hangs on the wall in the Cleveland Heights pro shop.) Stahl named many of the streets, some were paved and about 400 of the 1,080 lots were sold, with two-story Spanish-Mediterranean and Tudor homes going up near the lake. The project also included a four-block business district on Florida Avenue between Allamanda Drive and Kerneywood Street.

  The Pasadena Golf and Country Club in St. Petersburg went through several owners before it was purchased by attorney Dixie Hollins in 1929. “Sir” Walter Hagen, recognized as the best professional golfer of the period, was the president of the club, and his fame was enough to attract a number of people to the club. Courtesy of the Moorhead Collection.

  Useppa Island near Boca Grande was a bastion of privacy for Barron Collier’s friends who enjoyed playing golf. Even today, Useppa Island remains somewhat restricted and access is limited. Courtesy of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Library System.

  “The land is dry, even in the rainy season, and free from the moist, humid conditions that make living so undesirable in some of the low-lying coastal towns,” read the company’s brochure. Cleveland Heights was a “high grade residential community high up in the Golden Hills of Florida.” Salesmen, some of them ballplayers for the Indians, showed the development to prospective homebuyers from Tampa and St. Petersburg, who arrived on a sixty-two-passenger bus.

  To provide recreational opportunities for the residents of his new development, Stahl included a golf course and hired Cleveland architect H.P. Whitworth to design the clubhouse. The golf course architectural firm of William S. Flynn and Howard C. Toomey was retained to design a championship eighteen-hole golf course. Stahl also employed one of the nation’s foremost landscape architects, Charles E. Swinehart, to oversee the surrounding area. Swinehart, a graduate of the University of Illinois, had taken on similar jobs at Stahl’s Madison Golf Lakelands Course and the Ridgewood Country Club in Cleveland. The golf course and the $1 million clubhouse, built on the shores of Lake Hollingsworth, opened with all the flair of an elite Roaring Twenties country club in the spring of 1925. Women in full-length white dresses and men attired in hats, ties and plus fours walked the new course with caddies carrying their hickory-shafted clubs.

  Cleveland Heights thrived until 1927, when Stahl’s project went under as the bottom fell out of Florida’s land boom. Two years later, the stock market plunged, and the Great Depression engulfed the nation. In addition, the hurricanes of 1926 and 1928 made people skeptical about building and living in Florida, and by 1930, Stahl’s project was in receivership. The Cleveland Heights Golf Course survived to become one of Florida’s top public courses. The clubhouse, which became the Lakeland Yacht and Country Club in the mid-1930s, offered residents l
awn bowling, tennis courts and roque (croquet), along with a playground and beach.

  In 1923, Carl Dann Sr., a major land developer in central Florida and a talented amateur golfer, became disenchanted with the strict rules against gambling on golf games at the Orlando Country Club and decided that a new, less conservative club was needed. In a single morning, he collected enough $1,000 pledges from friends and business leaders to underwrite a new club. He decided to locate the new course—called the White Stag Golf Course—in the center of his new 435-lot Golfview Terrace subdivision. With streets with names like Mashie Lane, Niblick Avenue and Brassie Drive, the connection with golf was undeniable. Tom Bendelow designed the course, which was completed and opened for play in 1924. It was an immediate success. Unlike many of the other courses built during the boom, the White Stag—later called Dubsdread—course remained in private hands until it was sold to the City of Orlando in 1978.

  In 1915, James F. Taylor opened his Palma Ceia Park as an exclusive community west of Tampa. In order to attract wealthier residents of the city to his new subdivision, he offered a one-hundred-acre plot for the creation of a golf course at very reasonable terms. Members of the Palma Ceia Golf Club agreed to lease the land for $1 a year for ten years and then purchase it for a fixed sum of $150,000. Tom Bendelow, known far and wide as the Johnny Appleseed of golf course designers, was hired to design the course, and it opened for play in 1916. The Tampa Morning Tribune ran an advertisement for Palma Ceia on April 18, 1916, which promised: