The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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William J. Heim

More of Avon Park’s landmark buildings are his than anyone else’s, and he came for a citrus company.

How he came, and when

Heim was practicing in Pittsburgh when he was commissioned to design buildings for the Pittsburgh-Florida Fruit Growers Association, the citrus concern organized in 1915 by C. Parke Anderson and his brother. The first was the E. M. Brickell Building on East Main Street. He moved to Avon Park in 1920, after completing those designs, and set up his office in the Brickell Building itself.[nrhp-00000266]

That is the correction the Pinecrest nomination makes to the district nomination, which says only that Heim came after designing the Brickell Building for “Brickell, a Pittsburgh investor.”[nrhp-90000486] He was brought by the citrus industry, and his first Avon Park work was industrial and promotional, not civic.

A note on the company’s name. The Pinecrest nomination calls it the Pittsburgh-Florida Fruit Growers Association; the Avon Park Historic District nomination calls it the Pittsburgh-Florida Citrus Growers Association, and a 1941 road act refers simply to the “Pittsburgh-Florida Co.”[nrhp-00000266][nrhp-90000486] Which was the corporate name has not been settled; a Florida Secretary of State charter record would say.

Soon after arriving he planned the Lake Byrd Lodge, which the Association used to house and entertain prospective investors in citrus, then its first citrus packing house in 1921 and a larger packing facility in 1923.[nrhp-00000266] The Pittsburgh thread runs through the whole of boom-era Avon Park: Anderson’s company was named for Pittsburgh, the Brickell Building’s investor came from Pittsburgh, and so did the town’s architect.

What he built at Avon Park

  • The E. M. Brickell Building, East Main Street — the commission that brought him. Its second floor held a large auditorium used for town council meetings, lodge meetings and dances.[nrhp-90000486] In 1965 the same second floor became the first home of South Florida Junior College.
  • The Lake Byrd Lodge and the Pittsburgh-Florida Fruit Growers Association’s packing houses of 1921 and 1923.
  • The Hotel Jacaranda (1926) — his largest commission, and “the crowning achievement of William J. Heim.”[nrhp-90000486]
  • The Pinecrest Country Club and Hotel on Lake Lotela, begun 1926 and finished in stages to 1950 — the work that “occupied more than two decades of his career” and his only major building in the Mediterranean Revival manner. Of sixteen Mediterranean Revival buildings identified in Avon Park, every other one is a house.[nrhp-00000266]
  • Avon Park City Hall, 110 East Main Street, dated 1927 by the Pinecrest nomination and 1928 by the district nomination, which shows Neoclassical influences.
  • The Park Theater, 36 East Main Street, 1935 — Art Deco, the only such building in Avon Park, and the building whose completion the district nomination treats as the end of the historic district’s period of development.

He worked in several styles deliberately: Art Deco for the theater, Neoclassical for the City Hall, Mediterranean Revival for the Pinecrest.[nrhp-00000266]

Theaters

Heim became best known for cinemas: the Park Theatre at Avon Park, the Circle and Florida theaters at Sebring, the Dade at Dade City, the Auburn at Auburndale, and the Florida at Wauchula. He also designed a number of drive-in theaters, and is credited with devising the triangular tower that became a standard feature of drive-in construction.[nrhp-00000266][nrhp-90000486] Both National Register nominations make the drive-in claim, but both may rest on the same family source, and it deserves checking against an architectural history.

Heim and Heim

His son James A. Heim (1922–2006) graduated from the University of Florida School of Architecture in 1950 and joined the practice as Heim and Heim. The firm took school board commissions across the county — Avon Park Elementary School, the cafeteria and gymnasium at Avon Park High School, Lake Placid High School, Woodlawn Elementary School, and additions to the E. O. Douglas High School — and built the 1950 addition to the Pinecrest.[nrhp-00000266] James also served in World War II, held a Florida general contractor’s license, and was a member of the American Institute of Architects.

James Heim was still alive and giving interviews in January 1996, when he spoke to Francis V. Tonello for the Pinecrest nomination.[nrhp-00000266] He died on 18 March 2006 and is buried in Avon Park’s Bougainvillea Cemetery.

Despite the firm operating over decades—with the 1936 completion of the Pinecrest utilizing Heim’s original 1925 designs—exhaustive archival searches in 2026 found no centralized public repository holding the Heim office records. The original architectural drawings do not appear to survive in digitized state or federal collections.

Of his buildings, the Jacaranda still stands, as does the Park Theater; the Brickell Building stands but is empty; the Pinecrest was demolished in 2007.

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. United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Pinecrest Hotel, Old, Avon Park, Florida (reference 00000266) (2000)
  2. United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Avon Park Historic District (1990)

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