Driven by Women

Venice, Florida

As I am heading to Venice shortly, another Mediterranean town came into view as I drove south along the Gulf of Mexico, a small but striking Italianate architectural gem with old world charm. It’s another Venice, this one in Florida with canals and bridges though it has palm trees and southern oak canopies lining the main street. While many Florida resort towns are miles of high-rise blocks this one has 14 miles of white sand beaches. These particular beaches are known for depositing treasures of fossilized shark teeth, claiming to be Shark Tooth Capital of the World.

Thousands of years ago Florida was almost entirely underwater in warm, shallow seas. These particular waters teemed with prehistoric sharks such as Megalodon, great white, bull, tiger, lemon, mako, and sand tiger sharks. Sharks continuously shed and replace their teeth. The gentle continental shelf and offshore sandbars in the Gulf of Mexico create ideal conditions for sediment deposition and fossil preservation. Uniquely, the currents and wave action concentrate shark teeth along Venice’s shores. 

In the 1870s, Richard Roberts established a homestead near Roberts Bay and the beach. He planted an orange grove and a few other crops. In 1884, he sold a portion of his holdings to Frank Higel. He established a citrus operation involving the production of several lines of canned citrus items, such as jams, pickled orange peel, lemon juice and orange wine. This all sent north by boats. For the next 30 years, the Higel family members were boat builders, fishermen, grove caretakers and contractors. When the railroad finally got to this part of the coast in 1911, it was seen for potential development.

But as it turns out, it was women who put Venice on the map. First, a widow from Chicago, Bertha Palmer a philanthropist with great wealth. He late husband was Potter Palmer who help create Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive and the famous Palmer House Hotel after the great Chicago fire. Bertha Palmer was intrigued by the whispers of real estate boom in Florida. She arrived and encountered a mosquito-infested boggy marshland, but that did not stop her she purchased 140,000 acres for development for farmland, cattle and her home on Spanish Point.

Palmer's success using the best agricultural science of her time and on the land that now encompasses Myakka River State Park, she introduced ranching techniques that would revolutionize Florida's cattle and hog industries. She transformed the 10,000-acre region by building a canal system to drain its marshes, and on the newly drained land, she created ten and 20-acre farms which were honeycombed by smaller canals. Each farm was equipped with an artesian well and road access for a connected community. This from an elder socialite from the city earned her everyone’s admiration. She was also significant in getting the railroad further south and attracting other high profile Midwest investors.

Another flashy transplant was Louella Albee, the wife of Dr. Fred H. Albee, a well-known orthopedic surgeon who invented bone grafting during WWI.  She was a Society maven who had her own business in hat making in NYC.  The two purchased 2,916 acres of land from the Venice-Sarasota Company. Dr. Albee had developed Nokomis and built its first luxury hotel, the Pollyanna Inn. Albee retained John Nolen, a world-renowned city planner, to design a Mediterranean city on his land. This city would be called Venice where he wanted to build a medical center for patients to recover from his surgeries. It was Louella as the driving force behind that development.

In the 1920s, the wives of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) played a central role in the creation of Venice, Florida. The BLE, a powerful Cleveland-based labor union, rather than simply selling the land, the BLE’s wives formed an auxiliary group — the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers’ Wives Auxiliary — to actively develop the community. This auxiliary purchased 30,000 acres and hired architect John Nolen to design a planned retirement community.

The women’s involvement was both organizational and practical. They promoted the area by bringing potential buyers to the Venice Train Depot by train, housing them in early hotels, and marketing the project as a desirable retirement destination. Despite facing setbacks such as the 1926 hurricane and the 1929 economic collapse, the wives reorganized and completed the development.

And just one more lady that made a difference was that of Mrs. Augusta Miner, another widow from Chicago. Mrs. Miner moved to Venice, Florida, in the early 1920s during the city’s rapid development and the booming Florida land boom. In Chicago, she had operated a tea-room, but she saw Florida as a new opportunity to expand her business and investments.

In 1927, she borrowed money to build the Triangle Inn on South Nassau Street, a two-story rooming house designed to house lodging rather than serve as a single-family home. The building was part of Venice’s planned community and was intended to provide affordable lodging for seasonal workers, tourists, and land buyers Miner not only built the inn but also lived in it while running the business until 1934. 

She also purchased acreage in Fort Ogden and raised citrus crops. The Triangle Inn became a hub for a variety of visitors, including piano teachers, secretaries, prospective land buyers, tarpon fishermen, and northern tourists escaping the cold. Her move to Florida was notable because she paid off the construction loan, unlike many others who defaulted and left the city. Today, the Triangle Inn is a historical site, restored and repurposed as the City of Venice Museum and Archives, preserving her legacy and the history of Venice’s early development with women in the lead.