Avon Park had three hotels in 1920, and the town history names only one of them

The Sanborn Map Company surveyed Avon Park in November 1920, when the town had 1,200 people, and the index of “specials” on its first sheet lists three hotels: “Hotel Avon” on sheet 3, “Park Hotel” on sheet 2 and “Village Inn” on sheet 2.[sanborn-1920]

The Hotel Avon

The Hotel Avon stood on block 46 by Lake Verona, next to the Masonic Temple.[sanborn-1920] It was the Verona of 1889 under the name it took at its remodeling of 1919, “the largest commercial hotel on the Ridge,” and it burned in February 1927.[maxwell-1976]

The Park Hotel

The Park Hotel, south side of Main Street at Butler Avenue, November 1920. Sanborn Map Company, via Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. Public domain.[sanborn-1920]

The Park Hotel occupied the second floor of a two-story brick building on the south side of Main Street at the corner of Butler Avenue, lots 133 to 135 of block 70, each shopfront twenty-seven feet wide. The ground floor held a grocery, a dry-goods store and a barber’s shop; the hotel had stove heat and electric light; the Smith and Gaylord garage, with room for fifteen cars, adjoined it to the east.[sanborn-1920]

The town history does not use the name, but it describes a hotel of this kind on the same street. Walter Whidden built a two-story building on West Main Street in the early Twenties whose “second floor was a hotel with a balcony extending over the sidewalk,” with efficiency apartments and rooms, kept for many years by Mrs. H. C. Bigbie, where rooms went for three dollars a week in the Depression; Max Wild’s two-story brick block stood next to it, running to the corner of Forest Avenue.[maxwell-1976] The Park Hotel was standing in November 1920. The book’s “early Twenties” for the Whidden building is too late: the Avon Park column of the county paper reported on 25 February 1915 that “Contractors Smith & Pabor have the foundations in for the Whidden block, and the brick will be commenced at once,” so that a brick Whidden block stood on Main Street five years before the survey.[dsc-1915-02-25] The map does not name the owner, and whether the Park Hotel and the Whidden building’s hotel were one house is not established.

The Village Inn

The Village Inn at 116 Main Street, November 1920. Sanborn Map Company, via Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. Public domain.[sanborn-1920]

The Village Inn was a two-story frame building at 116 Main Street, on the north side of the street in block 58, with a porch to the sidewalk, standing between a hardware and paint store at 114-115 and an office and the bank at 117-118.[sanborn-1920] It was in business by 1918, when R. L. Polk’s state directory listed “Village Inn, hotel” in the same column as the “Hotel Avon.”[gaz-1918] The 1976 town history never mentions it, and no source found so far names its keeper or says when it closed.

What it changes

The town’s hotel history has been told as a succession, the Verona until 1927 and the Jacaranda from 1926, with the boom hotels in between. In 1920, before any of the boom hotels was built, a visitor arriving at Avon Park by the Atlantic Coast Line had three houses to choose from: the big frame resort hotel on the lake, a frame inn on Main Street a few doors from the bank, and rooms over the shops at the west end of the same street.[sanborn-1920][gaz-1918]

Related

• Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Avon Park, November 1920
• Hotel Verona
• Black hotel workers and boarding houses in the 1920 census
• Hotels and winter visitors of Avon Park
• Avon Park in the business directories
• Main Street’s buildings and the City Hall

References

• dsc-1915-02-25 — S. F. Tucker (department editor), The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla. The De Soto County News, 25 February 1915, page 7: Avon Park Department, S. F. Tucker, Editor. 25 February 1915. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn95026908/1915-02-25/ed-1/?sp=7
• sanborn-1920 — Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Avon Park, De Soto County, Florida, November 1920 (four sheets). 1 November 1920. sanborn-1920-avon-park.md
• gaz-1918 — R. L. Polk & Co. Florida State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1918. 1918. florida-business-directories.md
• 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

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. S. F. Tucker (department editor), The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 25 February 1915, page 7: Avon Park Department, S. F. Tucker, Editor (1915) · newspaper
2. Sanborn Map Company, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Avon Park, De Soto County, Florida, November 1920 (four sheets) (1920) · archival
3. R. L. Polk & Co., Florida State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1918 (1918) · book
4. 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

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