Welcome to Sarasota. It’s 1910 and, if you’ve come by train – the Seaboard Air Line Railway, aboard No. 81, pulling out of New York at 1:25 p.m. – you have passed through 23 cities and towns during the journey down, including Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Portsmouth, Raleigh, Columbia, Savannah; then on to Jacksonville followed by the small communities of Baldwin, Waldo, Ocala, Wildwood, Dade City, Plant City, Turkey Creek and Tampa.
It has been a long journey, over 36 hours, but at last the conductor calls out, “Sarasota!”
The train chugs slowly into the wooden station at First Street (today’s Lemon Avenue) and Main and when it finally comes to a standstill, you file out to begin your reconnaissance of the area.
If you’re looking for a place to stay, I recommend Dr. Jack Halton’s The Halton on Gulf Stream Avenue. Formerly a sanitarium, it has been converted into a hotel to accommodate the Palmers on their first visit in February. It offers beautiful bayfront accommodations, has a tennis court and is the perfect location for boating and fishing.
The old DeSoto Hotel, renamed the Belle Haven Inn, once the pride of the fledgling community, has fallen on hard times but will be refurbished and under new management by the end of the year and when the Palmers return in October, they will take rooms there.
For less expensive accommodations, choose the Sarasota House at Five Points or The Inn at Main Street and Palm Avenue; a rooming house upstairs and a livery stable on the first floor.
You’ll note immediately that while there are wooden sidewalks, the streets are not paved, and there are far more horses and buggies than there are automobiles. In fact, the center of Five Points still has a trough from which the animals drink. Also, be mindful where you step, animals are permitted to wander freely, much to the chagrin of the townsfolk who regularly have their yards and gardens trampled upon.
Downtown Sarasota is beginning to have the look of a bonafide town, a status it laid claim to in 1902 when it incorporated, choosing as its motto, “May Sarasota Prosper.” The buildings and houses that line the way along Main Street are still wooden, and fires are a constant threat. When the 16-room Bay View Hotel at Main Street and Palm burned down at the beginning of February, the rest of the downtown was fortunate that it did not go up in smoke with it.
That fire was followed shortly thereafter by another at the Bradley Boarding house and stables that also spread to the Sarasota Lumber Company, E.B. Grantham’s home, and C.C. McGinty’s office building, which was saved only through “super-human efforts.”
But by 1910 more and more brick and rusticated block buildings line the way from the train station to the dock on the bay, and finally, in September 1911, the Sarasota Fire Department is organized.
Sarasota historian Jeff LaHurd is the author of 17 books. His latest – “The People and Places That Made Sarasota a Paradise” – is available on Amazon and at Bookstore1Sarasota.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: A look back at the wooden streets of 1910 Sarasota
Reporting by Jeff LaHurd, Herald-Tribune archive / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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By Jeff LaHurd, Herald-Tribune archive | USA TODAY Network
