Eagle Crest

Eagle Crest

The History of Eagle Crest

What follows is an excerpt from a book by Walter P. Fuller titled "This Was Florida's Boom", published by Times Publishing Company in 1954.

Eagle Crest furnishes, I think, the most complete capsule picture of the 1925 boom.

It begins with drama, ends with tragedy and has the most of the elements of wealth and speculation.

The land that is now Eagle Crest first became private property Jan. 5, 1883. On that date Hamilton Disston acquired the land from the bankrupt State of Florida at 25 cents an acre. The entire 120 acres cost him $30.

The Disston deal, of course, is the biggest private land deal ever made in Florida; biggest, that is, in acreage. The State of Florida went broke about 1880 because of wild speculation in railroads.

The Railroad Era began in Florida in 1855, was abruptly halted for 15 years by the Civil War and reconstruction. When the carpetbaggers were kicked out in 1876, an era of wild State sponsored railroad promotion began. The State gave vast acreages as bonuses to railroad builders, and worse, guaranteed railroad bonds at the rate of $15,000 a mile; bonds, incidentally, that bore a per cent interest.

Nobody know just how much land was promised, but later administrations litigated, compromised, settled for cash, eventually ended up with a giveaway of approximately 22,000,000 acres, more than half the entire state.

Philadelphia bankers got a judgment the State Board of Internal Improvements on account of some of the bonds, had a U.S. marshal seize the State Treasury. The State was truly bankrupt.

Then Hamilton Disston, one of the five sons of the famed saw manufacturers of Jacob Disston and Sons, stepped in with his offer of $1,000,000 for 4,000,000 acres.

Governor Bloxharn accepted the offer, thus touching off a state controversy that lasted a generation.

I have often wondered if Disston and the bankers, who were neighbors, had some teamwork on that deal. Disston picked much land in Pinellas County, eventually founded Tarpon Springs and what is now Gulfport, but under the name of Disston City. He also platted 100-foot streets around many of the 40-acre tracts.

Disston Blvd. and a small part of 16th Street are the only surviving traces of that long-sighted vision.

Hamilton, himself, was no mean land dealer. Hardly had his deed been recorded before he resold half of his holding to a British syndicate at a dollar an acre, that group founding Sarasota and Kissimmee.

Disston, also, on Nov. 15, 1885 sold 440 acres of land to Edwin F. Keen, of Philadelphia, at $5 an acre, a neat 2,000 per cent profit. Most of Eagle Crest was developed on the land Keen bought.

I came into the picture in 1922 when I undertook what eventually was a successful effort to open 5th Ave. N. from bay to bay. My father had conceived and created Central Ave. from 9th St. to the Bay, beginning his efforts in 1907 and completing them Jan. 1, 1915.

But I was tired of going home from time-to-time by boat or wading when Central Ave. was flooded out and undertook to open another route to the west end of town.

Keen’s 440 acres included a mile and a quarter of the proposed right-of-way but he would answer neither letters nor wires.
So, I went to Philadelphia in 1922 to talk with him, ended up buying his 440 acres for $35,000.

I found Mr. Keen at the Union League on Broad Street. He lived there. The Union League is the innermost shrine of Republicanism in Pennsylvania. Good little Republican boy babies in Philadelphia are nominated for membership before they are a month old. If they continue to be good little boys and vote the Republican ticket straight, if their papas stay rich, and if none of the family gets in jail and their mamas and sisters get invited to the right places, by the time he is using a cane, he may get into the Union League.

My Philadelphia banker-partner was a member, and after I had been his partner for several years and he was pretty sure I was a thoroughly deserving youth, although a Democrat, he invited me to lunch there at rare intervals. These were proud and solemn occasions to be treated with due reverence.

Well, there sat Mr. Keen in a chair in front of the big plate glass window, gazing forth on Broad Street. He probably was, or easily could have been, the model for pictures you have seen in the humor papers of old men sitting in overstuffed chairs gazing out the Club window upon the crude world outside.

Keen had never seen his land, didn’t want to. No, he wouldn’t give me a quitclaim deed for a street. Yes, he would sell. In fact, Mr. Keen assured me he wanted every dollar of his invested in things he could see from his window in the Union League looking out upon Broad Street. And it was quite plain he didn’t want to have to turn his neck too far to see his investment either.

I finally bought his land on contract at $35,000 with 8 per cent interest on deferred payments. We had no hassle on price. He just objected to any kind of settlement other than cash, and he wanted that deposited in the Girard Trust Company, almost next door to the Union League. He wanted me to definitely understand he would take no Florida checks. He didn’t either.

The 440 acres are now two-thirds of Eagle Crest, all of St. Jude’s Manor, West Lake Pasadena, part of Azalea Homes and a half dozen other subdivisions in that area. I finished paying for my land Jan. 3, 1924 and sold 400 acres of it to the Boca Ciega Corp., owned by Thomas J. Rowe and II. L. Page, for $80,000.

I kept 40 acres that eventually became West Lake Pasadena, and it later became a sad, sad, story that illustrates the shady or seamy side of the 1925 boom.

Page and Rowe had been friends and associates in Norfolk. Page was a successful speculator here during the boom, eventually developed that portion of South Madeira Beach lying on the north side of Johns Pass. Members of the family still live here.

Rowe was not enthusiastic about the purchase, went to it largely because Mr. Page was eager for the deal. He and Mr. Page eventually swapped around with the result Page retained that portion which is now Eagle Crest.

Page formed a little syndicate that incorporated itself as Dulwich Land Company and bought 80 acres of the Keen lands from Boca Ciega for $80,000 or $1,000 an acre. This occurred Feb. 5,1925. Dulwich also had bought the additional 40 acres that completed the tract that is now Eagle Crest. Dulwich, I believe, also paid $1,000 an acre for the 40.

But now look what happened! Dulwich bought the 120 acres for $120,000 on Feb. 5, 1925, but it sold Feb. 28, 1925, just 23 days later, for $860,000 or $3,000 an acre.

The last purchaser – and the final one for a quarter century, was Harry Eagle of New York, president of the Eagle Silk Co.

I had known Eagle before he bought. His father, a wealthy, retired gentleman of Philadelphia, had loaned the Allen-Fuller Corp. considerable sums of money from time-to-time. We once asked him for $250,000, and he referred us to his son, Harry of New York, who he said was rich. I had been in New York but had no success with the younger Eagle.

Eagle promptly launched on the fine development that is now Eagle Crest; his manager, John McBean, telling me at one time Eagle invested approximately $3,000,000 in the enterprise.

He dug lakes, brick paved every street and ran a five-foot pipeline to Boca Ciega Bay to carry off surface water. The City, which had been selling and guaranteeing improvement liens, in seemingly endless and heedless millions, because uneasy in the fall of 1925 (several years too late) and starting with Eagle insisted developers of outlying tracts pay part of their improvements in cash. My memory is that they required him to pay 30 per cent.

Speaking of liens, let us return to the 40 acres on 5th Ave. N., which I retained. In 1927 the City finally finished paving 5th Ave. N. It plastered a lien of approximately $16,000 on the 40 for that job; another of almost equal size for the Eagle Crest storm water sewer. I caught some smaller liens for Lake Pasadena paving. Altogether, improvement liens on that 40 acres totaled about $40,000.

Then the boom broke – people quit paying their improvement liens, taxes shot up to raise money for interest on the bonds issued against the liens and in one year taxes on the 40 acres jumped from less than $50 to more than $600.

The inevitable result was that eventually the City acquired title to my 40 acres, sold it for a song to some speculator who had acquired a tax deed. But to return to Eagle.

By the time his property was ready for sale, the boom was over and I doubt if he sold a dozen lots. He, however, built himself a winter home on one of the lots, lived there winters until he died.

In 1928 W.W. (Bill) Hardaway and I were desperately trying to save the Pasadena and Jungle properties and spent all that summer and most of the next one in New York and Baltimore trying to refinance. Twice we thought we had succeeded. This is the story of one of the failures.

I previously had approached the Prudence Company of Brooklyn, which had a reputation of financing speculative mortgages, and it had offered me a million dollars to refinance the Jungle, if I would give them a mortgage for $1,500,000. I declined, preferring to go broke more gradually.

Incidentally, the Prudence Company went broke in 1932 despite an $80,000,000 loan from President Hoover, the first loan, I believe, ever made by the RFC.

Anyhow, Bill and I finally cooked up a deal we thought was pretty good. The idea was to merge the ownership of Pasadena and the Jungle, including the Rolyat and Jungle Hotels, two golf courses and several millions of mortgages and contracts receivables, and add to this Eagle Crest. This would make a pretty strong combination.

The proposal was that Eagle would take preferred stock for his interest, Pasadena and my people would take common, and we would slap a big bond issue on the merged properties to pay existing debts. As you can doubtless believe, it took considerable talking and planning to get our own people to agree to the arrangement.

We then approached Eagle in his New York office. I told his secretary who I was and that we wanted to talk to Eagle about his St. Petersburg land holding.

This young lady looked me straight in the eye and assured me Eagle owned no real estate in St. Petersburg, Florida. This rather stunned and puzzled me, but I insisted he did, that I knew Eagle personally, had talked to him before about his property many times in St. Petersburg.

She finally told me, with considerable frigidity, that Eagle had sold the property to his nephew. It eventually dawned on Bill and me that he had deeded the property away because he found it hurt his business standing in the good year 1928 to be known as sucker enough to own Florida property.

But we finally got in to see Eagle, were jubilant to find that he liked the idea. We then rushed to negotiate with the Prudence Company, got along famously and at the end of several days were given to understand we would be given a loan of $3,000,000 on a long-term bond issue.

We started preliminary preparation of papers, of which there would, of course, be a great many. The Prudence Company called us in and casually advised:
“Of course, we expect Eagle to personally endorse the $3,000,000 notes.”

Our hopes deflated like pricked balloons. Nevertheless, we doggedly returned to Eagle, go in to see him after waiting several hours. To our amazement, he readily agreed to endorse the notes. We so advised the Prudence Company and spent a most pleasant evening floating around in pink clouds.

Next morning, the New York papers announced in big headlines that Eagle had committed suicide the night before.

Then the story came out that Eagle, who had vast factories manufacturing silk stockings and other silk goods, had undertaken to corner the silk market of the world, had succeeded – just as rayon burst onto the markets of the world and ruined him.

This, to both Bill and me, proved just one of the bitter chapters of the boom aftermath, an aftermath that has largely escaped notice because it was usually undramatic and unknown.

That night, or a night or two later, I was wandering down Broadway, lonesome, broke, discouraged. Two young, well dressed, Broadwayites walked rapidly past me. My ears pricked up when I realized they were discussing Florida.

One said:
“You know what’s the matter with Florida?”

Said the other:
“Who cares?”

Thus it was in 1928.

About our association

Association Info

We meet monthly, on the second Wednesday, at St. Petersburg Catholic High School Media Center from 7 - 8 pm. Please join us for an informal meeting that always includes an interesting guest speaker and free pizza, soda and cookies (provided by Domino's).

EAGLE CREST WINS AWARDS!

The Neighborhood Partnership Association announced the recipients of their annual 2002 awards. Eagle Crest took Honorable Mention in the following categories:
Best Neighborhood Website
Best Neighborhood Newsletter
Best Association President

We also received the Neighborhood Partnership Outstanding Achievement Award for Extraordinary Service and Dedication to City Council District One. (We were nominated for this by Richard Kriseman, our District Representative)