In 1912 Henry Flagler built a
hotel on Lake Catherine in Chuluota, Florida, close to a spur of his
Florida East Coast Railway. He called the hotel Lake Catherine Inn.
The 2½ story brick building opened
for business with 22 (or 24) hotel rooms built around a central staircase
that led to the second floor. The Inn also had several fireplaces, a
wide front porch, an entry lobby, a dining room with a large kitchen
to support it, and a caretaker’s apartment on the third floor. Supplies
needed to run the inn were brought in by railway.
Flagler built this small hotel
in Chuluota as a hunting lodge for people staying at his St. Augustine
hotels, who wanted a trip to the country. Flagler also used the Chuluota
facility as a vacation place for his railroad supervisors.
There were major hurricanes in
the early 20th century, which might account for the way the
2½ story building was constructed. It has 3 courses of brick laid side-by-side,
creating walls that are 14" thick. The effect created by these heavy
brick walls is like that found in adobe construction—the interior of
the building stays cool during hot sunny days; then, during the night,
the heat absorbed by the brick during the day, disburses. The building
is remarkably comfortable and draft-free both summer and winter.
The building has large windows,
which were kept open for cooling in those days prior to air-conditioning.
Many of the windows still have their original "wavy" 90-year-old glass.
The second story floors of hard southern pine were all built to slope
slightly toward the center stairwell, to drain out of the building any
storm-force rain that might blow in through the upper windows during
a hurricane.
Two of the original claw-foot
tubs, a large kitchen chopping block, and many of the steam-heat radiators
used in the hotel, are still on the property. One of the fireplaces
is exposed.
Famous
guests who stayed at the hotel on Lake Catherine
An undated old news clipping
at the Seminole County Historical Society states that guests of the
Lake Catherine Inn included DuPonts, Dodges, Cabots, and Rockefellers.
A 1979 clipping recalls the memories of a 1960’s real estate developer
who found an old register from the hotel. The name of a count and a
princess appeared in the old book. He speculated they came down on the
railway from St. Augustine, "I guess they came here to see the wilds."
Changes
in the hotel on Lake Catherine
In the early 20th
century a rural settlement of cattle ranching families and sawmills
built up around Lake Mills in Chuluota. Seven sawmills thrived in the
early 1900’s. The Lake Catherine Inn was renamed The Chuluota Inn. It
was featured in brochures promoting the town and the county in the mid
1920’s. In 1925 a hotel room was $4.00 a day, including meals. The Sanford
Herald ran ads in the December, 1928 issues, stating:
"Chuluota
Inn on Lake Catherine, a quiet restful resort in the lake section of
Florida, an hour’s ride by auto from the coast at Indian River City
and forty minutes over paved highway from Sanford and Orlando.
A
modern hotel, comfortable rooms, steam heat, hot and cold running water
and best of meals, fresh eggs and rich milk, cream and fresh vegetables
from our own and local farms.
For
recreation the lover of natural sport will find good hunting and fishing
at CHULUOTA and in that delightful climate the feeling of the outdoors
is a recreation in itself."
In the late 1920’s, Florida’s
real estate boom went bust and the sawmills closed. The trains stopped
coming in the 1930’s, and by the 1940’s the tracks were removed. Soon
the hotel on Lake Catherine closed.
By the early 1960’s the hotel
was again operating under the name Lake Catherine Inn. It became somewhat
of a centerpiece for the community. Issues of the "Chuluota Challenger"
that were hand-typed, mimeographed, and distributed to the local residents,
listed various activities at Lake Catherine Inn. The American Legion
Post #225 met there, as well as the Hobby Craft Club and the Chuluota
Sportsmen’s Club. There were Christmas parties, New Year’s Eve parties,
and dinner-dances.
By the early 1970’s the hotel
had closed and the building was converted to an assisted living facility.
Although it seems well-suited for this use, there apparently was not
enough business to support it, and the building’s use was again changed
to apartments by the late 1970’s.
A building contractor owned
it during the 1990’s decade, and added some changes and improvements
to the apartments. The current owners, who are antique lovers, have
been catching up on maintenance, while trying to preserve as much as
possible of the original construction and character of the building.
We would like to think Henry Flagler would be proud of it.
Henry
Morrison Flagler, entrepreneur
Henry
Flagler was born in 1830 in New York. With an eighth-grade education,
he moved to Ohio where he worked in a grain store, being promoted to
sales staff by 1849, and becoming a partner in 1852. In 1853 he married
Mary Harkness.
In 1862 Flagler founded a salt
mining business in Michigan, but the end of the civil war caused a drop
in demand and the company collapsed. Flagler reentered the grain business
as a merchant and met John D. Rockefeller. Cleveland was becoming the
center of the oil refining industry in America; and Rockefeller left
to start his own refinery. In 1867 Rockefeller approached Flagler for
venture capital. They formed a Rockefeller, Andrews and Flagler partnership.
In 1870 the partnership became a joint-stock corporation named Standard
Oil, which led the American oil refining industry by 1872. Henry Flagler
moved his family to New York City.
By 1878 Flagler’s wife was very
ill. On advice from Mary’s physician they visited Jacksonville, Florida
during the winter. She grew worse, however, and died in 1881. Two years
later Henry Flagler married Ida Alice Shourds. The couple traveled to
St. Augustine. They found the city charming but the hotel facilities
and transportation inadequate. However, Flagler recognized Florida’s
potential for attracting visitors.
Henry
Flagler’s Hotels and Railway
In 1885 Henry Flagler returned
to Florida to begin construction on the elaborate 540 room Hotel Ponce
de Leon in St. Augustine, where wealthy northerners would stay in the
winter. Recognizing the need for better transportation if his hotel
ventures were to be successful, Flagler purchased the Jacksonville,
St. Augustine & Halifax Railroad (the first of what would become
the Florida East Coast Railway in 1895). The Ponce de Leon Hotel was
an instant success when it opened in 1888.
Two years later, Flagler built
a railroad bridge across the St. Johns River to gain access to the southern
half of Florida, and purchased the Hotel Ormond. By 1894 he had extended
his railroad to West Palm Beach and built the 1150-room Royal Poinciana
Hotel on the shores of Lake Worth in Palm Beach. Then, in 1896 Flagler
built the Palm Beach Inn, renamed in 1901 as it is known today--The
Breakers, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
After severe freezes hit the
Palm Beach area in 1894 and 1895, Henry Flagler decided to extend his
railroad 60 miles further south. He was offered free land in exchange
for laying rail tracks. His railway reached Biscayne Bay by 1896. Flagler
dredged a channel, built streets, began the first water and power systems,
and financed the first newspaper. When the town incorporated in 1897
its citizens wanted to call it "Flagler" in his honor; but Henry persuaded
them to use an old Indian name, "Miami." In 1897 Flagler opened the
exclusive Royal Palm Hotel there.
Henry Flagler decided to extend
his East Coast Railway to Key West, Florida’s most populated city (20,000)
at the time. It was 128 miles past the end of the Florida peninsula,
but a gateway to trade with Cuba and Latin America. The last portion
of the railway was completed in 1912, the same year he started construction
on a small hotel in largely undeveloped Chuluota, Florida, for people
who wanted the experience of a stay on the frontier.
Flagler’s second wife Ida had
been institutionalized for mental illness since 1895. Incurable insanity
was grounds for divorce. Flagler married his third wife Mary Lily Kenan
in 1901. Whitehall, built as a wedding present in Palm Beach in 1902,
was their 60,000 square foot, 55-room winter retreat. It established
Palm Beach as a winter resort for the wealthy members of America’s Gilded
Age. Today it is a museum honoring Henry Morrison Flagler’s many accomplishments.
In 1913, Henry Flagler
fell down a flight of stairs at Whitehall. He died at 84 years
of age and was buried alongside his first wife, Mary Harkness,
in St. Augustine.
A Standard Oil Company
document signed by Henry M. Flagler and John D. Rockefeller Dec 23,
1857