The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Castle Street and the Hal McRae Boulevard Renaming

Summary

Hal McRae Boulevard in Avon Park was Castle Street, the street on which the major league player and manager Hal McRae grew up.[sabr-hal-mcrae][os-1992-02-25-mcrae] The City of Avon Park changed the name at the turn of 1991 and 1992, some seven months after McRae became manager of the Kansas City Royals.[os-1992-02-25-mcrae][sptimes-2001-04-22-rays-tales][latimes-1991-05-25-mcrae] The renaming was a city act. The Florida Legislature did not designate the street, and Chapter 89-408 of the Laws of Florida, sometimes linked to it, concerns Port Canaveral in Brevard County.[laws-of-florida-1989-ch-89-408][fdot-designated-roads-2019]

Castle Street

Castle Street ran through Avon Park’s Black neighborhood: the 1950 census sheet covering Second Street, Fairfield Avenue and Castle Street records every household on it as Black.[census-1950-ed-28-8] The town’s chronology records that in June 1924 the railroad was required to build a trestle over Castle, and that Mt. Olive C. M. E. Church, organized in 1924, stood at 900 Castle Street.[maxwell-1976]

McRae learned the game on the neighborhood sandlots. His uncle Moses McRae lived next door with eleven children, and Hal, his brothers and his cousins played together, sometimes against visiting teams such as the Bradenton Nine Devils.[sabr-hal-mcrae] From the age of five he lived with his maternal grandparents, Lott and Clara Foster.[sabr-hal-mcrae]

As a boy in the 1950s he played stickball on a makeshift diamond at the corner of Delaney and Castle streets. He told the Tampa Tribune that a Mrs. Austin lived on that corner: “We knew that if we hit a ball into her yard, which was left field, she wouldn’t give it back. So that’s how I first learned to hit to right field.”[retrosimba-mcrae] The Orlando Sentinel, writing in 1992, told the same story in brief: on Castle Street he sharpened his batting eye “by hitting to specified yards owned by neighbors who wouldn’t call police.”[os-1992-02-25-mcrae]

Federal census schedules for Avon Park identify both the McRae households and the Austin neighbors on Castle Street. On Sheets 14 and 15 of Enumeration District 28-8 in the 1950 census, the enumerator turned onto Castle Street at Household 155 and recorded Hal McRae’s uncle Moses McRae (age 40, a laborer at the electric power plant), his wife Clara McRae (37), and eight children (Ernestine, 18; Wilma, 16; Moses, 13; Winifred J., 12; Jean E., 10; Charles W., 8; Doris, 6; and Alma J., 3) in Household 156, followed two doors down by 80-year-old widow Anna McRae in Household 158.[census-1950-ed-28-8] Three doors past Anna McRae on the same Castle Street sheet, Household 161 (Sheet 15, lines 20–25) enumerates Alex Austin (53, born in Florida, manager of his own sandwich shop) and his wife Bertha Austin (48, born in Georgia, who in the 1930 census had been enumerated on Sheet 2B of ED 28-2 as proprietress of a Black-owned grocery store), together with their daughter Mattie L. Walker (34, waitress in the sandwich shop), granddaughter Ozzie L. Walker (6), adopted son Clinton N. Austin (4), and unmarried great-niece Blond E. Austin (22, a four-year college graduate teaching third grade at the city’s Black elementary school, Hopewell School).[census-1930-avon-park][census-1950-ed-28-8] A second married Austin couple in the neighborhood, Henry Austin (56, born in Florida, the public school bus driver for the city schools) and his wife Lourenia Austin (53, born in Florida), had been enumerated on Castle Street in the 1930 census (ED 28-2, Sheet 4A, Dwelling 83, Family 85) and were enumerated again in ED 28-8 in 1950 (Household 302, Sheet 75, lines 7–8).[census-1930-avon-park][census-1950-ed-28-8]

When the street was renamed

Evidence: contested. The reports agree on the winter of 1991–92 and differ on the month.

Two reports from 1992 place the change in the preceding months. On 25 February 1992 the Orlando Sentinel wrote that “last December the city renamed Castle to Hal McRae Boulevard,” which dates the city’s action to December 1991.[os-1992-02-25-mcrae] A month later the same paper wrote that the people of Avon Park had “recently renamed Castle Street, where he played stickball as a youngster, to Hal McRae Boulevard.”[os-1992-03-25-mcrae]

The St. Petersburg Times, in a 2001 column devoted to McRae, gave a different month: “In January 1992, city leaders changed the street name on which McRae grew up from Castle Street to Hal McRae Boulevard.”[sptimes-2001-04-22-rays-tales] This aligns with an 18 January 1992 Tampa Bay Times (then St. Petersburg Times) article titled “Hal McRae Day”, suggesting a January 1992 dedication event.[tampa-bay-times-1992-01-18] A 2025 article on McRae’s hitting gives only the year, 1991.[retrosimba-mcrae]

The Royals had named McRae manager on 24 May 1991, making him the club’s first Black manager, with his son Brian McRae playing center field for him.[latimes-1991-05-25-mcrae] None of the reports says what prompted the city to act.

McRae’s SABR biography, published in 2018, gives a different year: it states that Castle Street was renamed in 1986, after the Royals won the 1985 World Series, and cites for this an email from McRae’s wife, Johncyna McRae, written in April 2018.[sabr-hal-mcrae] The 1992 newspaper reports, written within months of the event, describe a renaming in December 1991 or shortly before, and the 1986 date is not supported by any contemporary account.[os-1992-02-25-mcrae][os-1992-03-25-mcrae]

A city street, not a state designation

Florida’s Legislature names roads by law, but Hal McRae Boulevard is not among them. Chapter 89-408 of the Laws of Florida, Senate Bill No. 904, is “an act relating to the Canaveral Port District, Brevard County,” authorizing the Canaveral Port Authority to operate a foreign trade zone; it became law without the governor’s approval on 28 June 1989 and says nothing about Avon Park.[laws-of-florida-1989-ch-89-408] The Florida Department of Transportation’s statewide listing of designated roads gives nine designations in Highlands County, on US 27, US 98 and the road south from Venus, and none for McRae or for any Avon Park city street.[fdot-designated-roads-2019]

The boulevard today

Hal McRae Boulevard crosses US 27 in Avon Park.[sabr-hal-mcrae] It remains a city street: in 2021 the Avon Park City Council approved paving Hal McRae Boulevard from a car wash entrance to South Lake Boulevard, among other projects.[newssun-ap-council-approves-paving]

References

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

  1. United States Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, population schedules, Florida, Highlands County, enumeration district 28-2 (Avon Park city, New Part), sheets 2B and 4A, NARA microfilm T626 roll 318 (1930) · official
  2. Orlando Sentinel, McRae Manages K.C. With Eye on a Target (1992) · newspaper
  3. Orlando Sentinel, Managing as He Played, McRae Toils at His Tasks (1992) · newspaper
  4. St. Petersburg Times, Rays Tales — The Hal McRae Edition (2001) · newspaper
  5. RetroSimba, How Hal McRae showed the way to improved hitting (2025) · secondary
  6. Thomas J. Brown Jr., Hal McRae, SABR BioProject (2018) · secondary
  7. Bob Nightengale, Los Angeles Times, Royals Name McRae Manager: Father-Son Combination Formed in Kansas City (1991) · newspaper
  8. State of Florida, Laws of Florida 1989, Volume II, Chapter 89-408 (Senate Bill No. 904) (1989) · official
  9. Florida Department of Transportation, Listing of Designated Roads in Florida (2019) · official
  10. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (references/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976) · book
  11. United States Bureau of the Census, 1950 Census population schedules, Florida, Highlands County, enumeration district 28-8, Avon Park city (1950) · archival
  12. Highlands News-Sun, AP council approves paving projects (2021) · newspaper
  13. Tampa Bay Times, Hal McRae Day (unknown) (1992) · newspaper

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