Avon Park City Hall
Avon Park’s city hall stands at 110 East Main Street at the head of the Mall, a Neoclassical building of 1928-29 with a row of columns across its front, and it is still the city hall.
Before it
The town government had no home of its own for its first fifteen years. Its meetings were held in Sargent’s Hall, the old post office, the Wray house, the Brickell Building’s upstairs auditorium and, when it was finished, the Hotel Jacaranda.[maxwell-1976] On 11 January 1926 the council agreed to rent the Brickell Building as a city hall at $50 a month, and in 1928 it moved into the Jacaranda Arcade.[maxwell-1976]
Building it
The money came in the last year of the boom. On 9 June 1926 the council passed the ordinance that borrowed $210,000 for sewers, $115,000 for parks and $30,000 for a city hall, and the voters carried it on 20 July.[maxwell-1976] On 21 March 1928 the council moved “to erect City Hall, Fire Dept. & Jail,” and on 1 August 1928 it authorized Poinciana Masonic Lodge No. 227 to lay the cornerstone. The minute of 20 March 1929 reads “City Hall completed, cost $28,680.00.”[maxwell-1976] The National Register nomination for the historic district has the same story from the other side: “the city floated a $30,000 bond issue” despite its debts, the C. W. Pabor Construction Company built it for $28,600, “terra cotta was specified for the exterior and cheaper art stone substituted,” the building was completed late in 1928 and the city took occupancy in March 1929.[nrhp-90000486] Milford Dilley, who helped build it, remembered that “all cement was mixed by hand and the large stones that border the top of the building were all lifted with a pulley by hand, and swung into place by use of a triangular device.”[maxwell-1976]
Before it had opened for business it was a mortuary. On 11 February 1929 Mayor William King and Chester Arthur Crews, the city’s tax assessor, auditor and comptroller, were killed by a Seaboard train, and their bodies “lay in state in the new city hall on East Main Street, which had not as yet been opened for official business. The whole town went into mourning.”[maxwell-1976]
Who designed it
Evidence: contested. The nomination names the architect as William J. Heim, who had designed the Brickell Building, the Jacaranda and the Pinecrest and would design the Park Theater.[nrhp-90000486] The Society’s 1976 history names Charles W. Pabor as the architect of “the High School, City Hall, Seaboard Railroad depot and the C. E. Lanier home,” and its Pabor family entry says “the present City Hall was one of the buildings he constructed in Avon Park.”[maxwell-1976] Pabor, born 28 December 1873 and buried at Bougainvillea Cemetery on his death on 7 January 1943,[fag-pabor] was the son of William E. Pabor of the Pabor Lake colony, and it was his construction company that the nomination itself credits with building the hall.[maxwell-1976][nrhp-90000486] The likeliest reading is that Heim drew it and Pabor built it, but no drawing or contract has been found to say so, and the two accounts are left standing.
Since
The property appraiser’s parcel for the site is owned by the City of Avon Park and carries no building valuation, as exempt municipal property.[hcpao-parcels] The nomination of 1990 listed the hall as a contributing building of the Avon Park Historic District, one of only two Neoclassical works in Heim’s Avon Park practice.[nrhp-90000486]
The new City Hall as it looked on 6 April 1929. The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (1976), page 38. Avon Park Historical Society.[maxwell-1976]
References
- 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
- nrhp-90000486 — National Park Service. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Avon Park Historic District. 22 March 1990. nrhp-avon-park-historic-district-1990.md
- hcpao-parcels — Highlands County Property Appraiser. Highlands County Property Appraiser, parcel records for the Avon Park Historic District: 28332201006900010A (1 W. Main), 28332201006900020A (15 W. Main), 28332201007000010A (101 W. Main), 28332201007000020A (119 W. Main), 28332201007200020A (307 W. Main), 28332201004200045A (2 E. Main), 28332201004800100A (19 E. Main), 28332201004200042A (22 E. Main), 28332201004200030A (36 E. Main), 28332201004200040A (110 E. Main). 2 September 2026. https://www.hcpao.org/
- fag-pabor — Find a Grave. Charles W. Pabor (1873-1943), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Avon Park. 2 September 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/34688276
Related
- Main Street’s buildings and the City Hall
- The Brickell Building
- William J. Heim
- The Mile Long Mall
- The Avon Park Fire Department
- The land boom and the bust at Avon Park
- The Pabor Lake colony
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
- 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
- National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Avon Park Historic District (1990) · official
- Highlands County Property Appraiser, Highlands County Property Appraiser, parcel records for the Avon Park Historic District: 28332201006900010A (1 W. Main), 28332201006900020A (15 W. Main), 28332201007000010A (101 W. Main), 28332201007000020A (119 W. Main), 28332201007200020A (307 W. Main), 28332201004200045A (2 E. Main), 28332201004800100A (19 E. Main), 28332201004200042A (22 E. Main), 28332201004200030A (36 E. Main), 28332201004200040A (110 E. Main) (2026) · official
- Find a Grave, Charles W. Pabor (1873-1943), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Avon Park (2026) · secondary
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