The Avon Park Hotel burned on 2 February 1927, not in 1926
The Historical Society’s own web page on the Verona Hotel says that “a fire in the south wing badly damaged the structure and it was demolished in 1926.”[aphs-verona] The date is wrong by a year, and the building was not demolished: it burned to the ground.
At about 2.30 on the morning of Wednesday, 2 February 1927, fire broke out in the boiler room of the three-story frame hotel on Lake Verona, by then trading as the Avon Park Hotel. It spread so fast that the building was enveloped by the time firemen from Sebring, Frostproof and Wauchula arrived to help the town’s own volunteers. Thirty-six guests got out “in scanty clothing hastily thrown on.” The proprietor, R. C. Holmes, put the loss at $100,000, and the Associated Press told the country that “the first of the large tourist hotels to be built in interior South Florida” was gone, having been “remodeled and redecorated at a cost of about $50,000 last spring.”[keowee-1927-02-09] The short form of the same dispatch ran on the front page of the Washington Evening Star that afternoon: “Fire early today destroyed Avon Park Hotel, landmark of pioneer days, with an estimated loss of $100,000. Thirty-six guests escaped in scanty attire.”[star-1927-02-02] Neither account reports a death or an injury.
The city’s own record agrees. The council minutes excerpted in The First Hundred Years of Avon Park carry the entry “2-2-27…Avon Park Hotel burned,” and the book’s narrative says plainly that “the Verona finally burned in February 1927. Some of the large timbers and lumber that was salvaged from it were used in other structures around town,” among them Arthur Hatchel’s West Beach Hotel on Lake Lotela.[maxwell-1976]
The wire service and the council minute are independent of each other, and they agree to the day. The 1926 date on the website stands alone against them. The likeliest explanation is a slip of memory that attached the hotel’s end to the year the Hotel Jacaranda opened, when the town was gaining two new hotels and losing its first.
The fire had a long afterlife. When the St. Louis Cardinals left Avon Park after the spring of 1929, club owner Sam Breadon named the shortage of hotel rooms since the fire as one of his reasons, a claim the town’s mayor disputed. That exchange is told in Head Field.
Related
References
- star-1927-02-02 — Associated Press, in the Evening Star. Florida Hotel Burns, Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 2 February 1927, page 1. 2 February 1927. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045462/1927-02-02/ed-1/?sp=1
- keowee-1927-02-09 — Associated Press, in the Keowee Courier. Fire Demolishes Hotel at Avon Park, Fla., Keowee Courier (Pickens Court House, S.C.), 9 February 1927, page 7. 9 February 1927. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026912/1927-02-09/ed-1/?sp=7
- maxwell-1976 — Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell. The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida. 1976. the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md
- aphs-verona — Avon Park Historical Society. The Verona Hotel: The early years of Avon Park. 31 August 2026. https://avonparkhistoricalsociety.com/article/145_The-Verona-Hotel
Where this comes from
- Evidence
- corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
- Review
- unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
- Rights
- society
Sources
- Associated Press, in the Evening Star, Florida Hotel Burns, Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 2 February 1927, page 1 (1927) · newspaper
- Associated Press, in the Keowee Courier, Fire Demolishes Hotel at Avon Park, Fla., Keowee Courier (Pickens Court House, S.C.), 9 February 1927, page 7 (1927) · newspaper
- Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (Held at the Avon Park Historical Society Depot Museum, Avon Park, Florida) (1976) · book
- Avon Park Historical Society, The Verona Hotel: The early years of Avon Park (2026) · secondary
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