The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
Menu
Admin Sign-In

Florida voted a state venereal hospital for Avon Park in 1943, and repealed it in 1945

For two years, on the statute book of the State of Florida, there stood a state hospital at Avon Park. It was never built.

The act of 1943

Chapter 21841 (No. 207), Laws of Florida 1943, Committee Substitute for Senate Bill No. 5, approved by the Governor on 25 May 1943:

AN ACT to Establish At or Near Avon Park, Florida, a State Hospital For the Care and Treatment of Persons Afflicted With Venereal Disease, and for the Construction of the Necessary Buildings and Equipment of Such State Venereal Hospital, and to Provide for the Staffing, Supervision, Management and Control of Such Institution, and Making Appropriation Therefor.[lof-1943-21841]

Section 1 accepts the land, and names who gave it. Two hundred and ten acres in Section 34, Township 33 South, Range 28 East, Highlands County, set out quarter by quarter, “less that portion of land within Lake Lelia and Lake Glenada” — a donation “made by the City of Avon Park, Florida, for the purpose of being used as a site for the construction of a State Venereal Hospital.”[lof-1943-21841]

Section 2 establishes the hospital on that land. Section 3 directs the Board of Commissioners of State Institutions to “establish, build and equip” it “as soon as practical.” Section 4 appropriates $150,000 for the buildings. Section 5 places it under the Board’s supervision. Section 6 authorizes the Board to accept money “from the United States Government or any agency thereof, or from any other source.”[lof-1943-21841]

The repeal of 1945

Chapter 23096 (No. 582), House Bill No. 924, Laws of Florida 1945 repeals Chapter 21841 outright — by then codified as section 384.20 of the 1943 Cumulative Supplement to the Florida Statutes of 1941. It became a law without the Governor’s approval and was filed with the Secretary of State on 11 June 1945.[lof-1945-23096]

The repealing act gives no reason. It is a bare repeal, two sections long.

What it tells us

Avon Park’s city government gave away 210 acres to get it. The land was the city’s to give, and the city gave it. That is a decision by the Avon Park city council, taken in or before the spring of 1943, and it should be in the council minutes.

It is a war measure. Wartime Florida was covered in military installations, Avon Park’s own Army airfield and the Lodwick flying school among them, and the control of venereal disease around them was a declared federal and state priority. During World War II, the U.S. Public Health Service, in cooperation with state and local health departments, established a national program of “rapid treatment centers” or quarantine hospitals to treat venereal disease, particularly among women. Section 6’s authority to take federal money makes the connection explicit. A site “at or near Avon Park” — inland, remote, with an army airfield and a bombing range at hand — was the sort of place such an institution was put.

The lobbying and administration. The Florida State Board of Health managed a Division of Venereal Disease Control and heavily promoted prophylactic efforts for service members. While the specific lobbyists for Chapter 21841 do not appear in the digitized corpus, the effort was driven by the state and federal government’s wartime public health initiatives. Rather than building a dedicated hospital, Avon Park maintained local dispensaries; a state board flier directed service members to prophylactic stations at the Armory on Verona Avenue and a dispensary at the Lodwick Inn.[fl-memory-343603]

The site is described precisely enough to find. Section 34 of Township 33 South, Range 28 East, in the southern tier of the township that made up the boom-time city, excluding the water of Lake Lelia and Lake Glenada. The quarter-section calls in the act would let a surveyor draw the parcel on a map today.

Nothing was built. The repeal came two years and seventeen days after the Governor signed the original act, before the war in the Pacific ended. The $150,000 appropriation was never spent, and there is no record that the Board of Commissioners of State Institutions took action before the legislature repealed the mandate.

What happened to the land

The 210 acres did not go back. In the same 1945 session that repealed the venereal hospital act, the Legislature voted by Chapter 22696 to put the South Florida State Hospital on the same Highlands County land, again on condition that the land be given to the state; Highlands County spent $10,000 and the City of Avon Park a further $5,000 buying more of it to donate, and citizens gave the rest. The state then took a set of existing buildings in DeSoto County instead. In 1951, by Chapter 26817, the same land became the site of the Florida State Hospital for Alcoholism. The whole sequence is set out in Report: The state hospital at Avon Park, 1943-1955.

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. Legislature of the State of Florida, Chapter 21841 (No. 207), Laws of Florida 1943 (Committee Substitute for Senate Bill No. 5): An Act to Establish At or Near Avon Park, Florida, a State Hospital For the Care and Treatment of Persons Afflicted With Venereal Disease (1943)
  2. Legislature of the State of Florida, Chapter 23096 (No. 582), Laws of Florida 1945 (House Bill No. 924): An Act to Repeal Chapter 21841, Laws of Florida, 1943 (1945)
  3. Florida State Board of Health, Help Beat the Axis with Prophylaxis (1940)

Something here wrong, or incomplete? The Society would rather know. Tell a volunteer.

Have a question about this record?

← Back to collection

Ask A.P.

Ask the archive

    Try asking:

    0 / 500

    A.P. answers only from the Society's own archive and cites what it used. Questions are not linked to you; search history is stored on your device only (how it works).Ask a volunteer for anything it cannot answer.