Avon Park in 1937, building by building

Summary

In the spring of 1937 a writer working for the Federal Writers’ Project walked round Avon Park and numbered what a visitor ought to see. Her list runs to about thirty buildings and landmarks, each placed on its street, and it is the only street-by-street description of the town that exists.[darsey-1937] Half of what she pointed at is gone.

The tour

The tour begins where the town does, on the Mall — the wide central strip of Main Street, planted and divided into parkways — and works outward: the bandstand and the flagpole, Donaldson Park on Lake Verona, the City Hall and the library, the Armory on Verona Avenue, the Masonic Hall beside it, the hotels, Head Field, the lakes, the nurseries, and the houses of the townspeople whose art collections a visitor might ask to see.[darsey-1937]

Two entries in it are worth setting down whole.

The Masonic Hall. “Verona stands Masonic Hall which was built in 1891. It is the only building of the early days now standing within the heart of the city and is typical of the early type of architecture.”[darsey-1937] That is a claim about how little of the founding town was left by 1937 — one building, fifty years on from the settlement.

The Armory. “This handsome newly constructed building, the Armory, stands on Verona Avenue near Masonic Hall and is typical of the newer trend of architecture in contrast with the Masonic Hall building of the early 90’s. The Armory is the headquarters of 56 Field Artillery Brigade, Headquarters Battery.”[darsey-1937] It was new indeed. The Florida National Guard’s own history of 1939 records that Headquarters Battery, 56th Field Artillery Brigade, “organized and Federally recognized January 25, 1927,” had been “housed for 10 years in a partially adequate wooden armory” before moving, on 1 February 1937, “into a splendid new brick armory, erected by the W.P.A. with the cooperation of the City of Avon Park and Highlands County.”[fng-1939] The writer was describing a building four months old. The battery had been organized in 1927 and motorized in 1933; among the officers it names is Second Lieutenant Herbert F. R. Reck, commissioned in January 1931.[fng-1939]

The architecture

The Architecture section sets the town’s building in a sequence. It begins with the English hunting lodge the Bunburys built on Lake Pythias in 1889 — paneled in walnut brought from England, a hall running the whole depth of the house, a verandah on all four sides. It goes on through Southern Colonial and the vernacular “dog trot” houses of the pioneer years, to the Mediterranean and Spanish Mission manner of the boom, of which it takes the Pine Crest Lakes Hotel as the type. It ends by predicting that the clean lines then appearing on filling stations would spread to houses.[darsey-1937]

What has become of them

Evidence: single-source for the 1937 descriptions, which rest on the typescript alone.

Standing today, so far as can be established: the Mall, with its bandstand and flagpole; Donaldson Park; the City Hall; and Head Field.

Gone: the Masonic Hall, demolished in 1961; the Pinecrest Hotel and the Highlands Lakes Hotel, both demolished in 2007; and Lake Byrd Lodge, demolished after 2002. The Hotel Verona had burned ten years before the tour was written and does not appear in it.

Twelve of the thirty — among them the Recreation Park, the Cactus Garden, the log-cabin Chamber of Commerce building on the Mall, the Historic Oak, the Rex Beach Farm, the Harris Cabin Camp, the Engleman Hatchery, and four houses and studios named for their owners — cannot be traced either way.

The National Register nomination of 1990 is the authority on what survived to that year within the historic district, and it is the place to begin on any of them.[nrhp-avon-park-district]

Related

• The Avon Park Guide, a Federal Writers’ Project typescript of 1936–1938
• The Bunbury House on Lake Pythias
• Notable historic houses and builders
• The Verona Hotel and historic Avon Park landmarks
• National Register of Historic Places nomination, Avon Park Historic District

References

• darsey-1937 — Barbara Berry Darsey. Avon Park Guide, typescript for the Federal Writers’ Project: Points of Interest (pages 169 onward), Architecture (pages 142–145), and the auto tours. 31 December 1938. avon-park-guide-federal-writers-project-1937.md
• fng-1939 — Florida National Guard Association. Historical Annual, National Guard of the State of Florida, 1939: Headquarters Battery, 56th Field Artillery Brigade, Avon Park. 1939. https://archive.org/details/historicalannual00flor
• nrhp-avon-park-district — Florida Bureau of Historic Preservation / National Park Service. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Avon Park Historic District (ref. 90000486). 22 March 1990. nrhp-avon-park-historic-district-1990.md

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. Barbara Berry Darsey, Avon Park Guide, typescript for the Federal Writers' Project: Points of Interest (pages 169 onward), Architecture (pages 142–145), and the auto tours (references/avon-park-guide-federal-writers-project-1937.md) (1938) · archival
2. Florida National Guard Association, Historical Annual, National Guard of the State of Florida, 1939: Headquarters Battery, 56th Field Artillery Brigade, Avon Park (1939) · book
3. Florida Bureau of Historic Preservation / National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Avon Park Historic District (ref. 90000486) (references/nrhp-avon-park-historic-district-1990.md) (1990) · official

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