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HOTEL PENNSYLVANIA
The Pennsylvania: The last of the West Palm Beach grand hotels
Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers
April 30, 1994 Archives.
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By AVA VAN de WATER
Palm Beach Post Home Editor
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In the booming 1920s, downtown West Palm Beach had dozens of hotels and rooming houses that drew tourists for the winter social season. The Intracoastal Waterway lapped at the hotel door fronts, and ferries shuttled guests to and from Palm Beach.
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Today, just one of those grande dames remains, and maybe not for long. The Pennsylvania Hotel sits quietly on South Flagler Drive, only its elegant ivory facade, arched windows and graceful lines hinting of its social heyday.
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“The Pennsylvania was the biggest, the fanciest and the nicest,” said Dale Waters, historic planner for West Palm Beach.
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Built in 1926 – smack in the middle of prohibition – the hotel was dubbed “The Breakers West.” It was the site of balls, coming out parties, elegant dinners, and other celebrations associated with the city’s social season. Even slot machines graced its halls.
Now, the eight-story, 230-room building has a more serene role – a residence for the elderly run by the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirmed of South Florida Inc. But the hotel is abuzz again since the Sisters announced plans to raze the former hotel to make way for a 19-story, up-to-date residence for the independent elderly as well as those needing special care.
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Preservationists are upset about the possibility of losing the hotel, one of the last large Mediterranean Revival-style buildings downtown.
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Designed by the prestigious firm of Harvey & Clarke as a prime example of the Mediterranean style so popular in the 1920s, the hotel has graceful arches, a tower and decorative ornamentation. A flat roof is hidden by parapets, decorated with barrel tile.
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Inside, the crown jewel is a beautifully tiled mezzanine, where 4-inch squares of Spanish tile provide a gleaming backdrop for high ceilings. Wonderful columns are decorated up to 4 feet with colorful blue, green and yellow tiles made by Addison Mizner’s factory.
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The Pennsylvania once hummed with activity. The dining room seated 400; a beauty shop and barber shop had a steady stream of customers. But today, footsteps echo in the halls of the nearly empty building that is being prepared for an uncertain future.
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Of the half-dozen resort hotels that graced the downtown waterfront, only the Pennsylvania remains. The former George Washington Hotel, now the Helen Wilkes Residence Hotel, has been dramatically altered. Long gone are the Lake Court (now the site of the Noreen McKeen Residence next to the Pennsylvania), the Salt Air (the old downtown Holiday Inn site), the Royal Palm, the Monterey and the South Palm Inn.
Designed to be entered from Evernia Street, the hotel features a large, arched window with iron grill and stairs that lead to the grand mezzanine. Unfortunately a large canvas awning hides the window’s beauty, and an alternate entrance, favored by the Carmelite Sisters, takes visitors into a lobby of 1960s or ’70s vintage.
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But beyond the mezzanine level, there is little of interest in the hotel.
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The upper floors are marked by long, straight hallways that lead to small rooms with tiny baths. Although ceilings in the mostly 11-by-11-foot rooms are tall – about 12 feet – the hallways have dropped ceilings of acoustical tile that hide air-conditioning ducts and pipes. Contemporary bamboo wallpaper lines the walls; new carpet covers the concrete floors.
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And while there is a beautiful crystal doorknob here, a simple brass knob there, the rooms are nondescript. New windows with plastic mullions replaced original double-hung sash windows in the mid-1980s. Tiny bathrooms with tall tubs hinder the elderly, and ill-designed fire exits lead not to the outside, but to the mezzanine or lobby.
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“The facade of the building is beautiful. The mezzanine is beautiful. The functional use of the building ends right there,” said Kathleen Chobot, spokeswoman for the Carmelite sisters.
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But preservationists hope to preserve the facade – and a part of West Palm Beach’s elegant past. They would like the sisters to consider gutting the interior of the building (except for the grand mezzanine level) rather than tearing it down.
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“There is not a whole lot left downtown,” Waters said. Of 25 major buildings, “maybe 6 or 7 are of landmark status . . . There really isn’t another major building downtown in that style.”
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THE PENNSYLVANIA THROUGH THE YEARS
1900: Henry M. Flagler sells the land at what is now the southwest corner of Evernia Street and Narcissus Avenue to Wilmon Whilldin. The same year, Whilldin sells it to Lewis D Lookwood.
1901: Lockwood erects a four-story, wood-frame hotel, the Holland House. To the east of the hotel sits a public park and boat pier.
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1923: Lockwood sells Holland House to Henry J. Dynes.
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1925: Dynes buys the lot next door, razes Holland House and commissions the architectural firm of Harvey & Clarke to design the eight-story Pennsylvania Hotel.
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1926: The 216-room Pennsylvania Hotel opens.
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1927: Financial troubles plague the hotel. Harvey & Clarke files a $6,000 lien against it.
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1930: Florida-Collier Coast Hotels Inc. takes over the Pennsylvania, renaming it the Royal Worth Hotel.
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1943: Robert Kloeppel of Jacksonville buys the Royal Worth, changing name back to the original
Pennsylvania Hotel. (Kloeppel also owns the George Washington Hotel – now known as the Helen Wilkes Residence Hotel and originally called the El Verano Hotel.)
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1960: A two-story parking garage is added to the west of the hotel.
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1961: A swimming pool is added on the east side, off the mezzanine and sun room. The pool deck forms the roof of a loggia on the ground level.
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1964: Kloeppel’s heirs sell the Pennsylvania to the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirmed of South Florida Inc. for $800,000. By November, it is functioning as a seasonal and permanent private residence.
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1965: The front desk area is converted to a chapel.
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Mid-1980s: Extensive renovations are made to the hotel, including replacement of wood-frame sash windows with contemporary windows with plastic mullions.
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1986: John Johnson of the Historic Palm Beach County Preservation Board approaches the sisters to nominate the hotel for the National Register of Historic Places. Administrator Sister Joseph agrees.
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1987: A new administrator of the Pennsylvania Retirement Residence, Sister M. Fidelis, writes to George W. Percy, State Historic Preservation Officer, stating that the sisters “strongly object to the property’s inclusion on the National Register.” No reason was given for the objection.
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1994: Sisters announce plans to demolish the Pennsylvania and replace it with an 18-story, 230-bed nursing home and adult living facility.
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C.J. WALKER Staff Photographer
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1. The elegant 1926 Pennsylvania Hotel in West Palm Beach was nicknamed The Breakers West. It was the setting for elaborate social events and had slot machines in its hallway.
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2. Graceful arches, a tower and external ornamentation on the Mediterranean-style Pennsylvania are worth keeping, preservationists say.
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3. The Pennsylvania (above) as seen in a 1929 postcard. Its mezzanine has columns decorated with colorful tiles (left).
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Originally appeared in The Palm Beach Post, Saturday, April 30, 1994, on page 1D.
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Palm Beach Post
Fri, Aug 7, 1925.
Page 3
Crowning the Clematis avenue work is the Monterey hotel at the Sapodilla intersection being erected by Ray W. Sheldon for the W. E. Harding syndicate. On a high elevation overlooking the whole downtown section, this three-story Spanish type building is being hurried to completion for opening December 1. The first floor is already in shape for second-floor timbers; all plumbing material and other supplies are on the grounds, and its garage unit is completed. The Monterey will have 175 finely furnished bedrooms with eight business rooms on the first floor.
Probably the biggest project of its kind in the city is the eight-story $1,250,000 new Pennsylvania hotel,which C. A. D. Bayley & Co., of New Orleans and Atlanta, is building for H. J. Dynes to replace his well-known old Holland House at Evernia Street and Flagler Drive. The old building has been demolished and piling is being driven for the foundation. Plans are for the Pennsylvania to open 250 finely appointed fireproof rooms to the public on a year-around basis on January 1. The New Pennsylvania will be of Italian Renaisance type fronting Evernia for 150 feet and Flagler Drive for 158.
The Palm Beach Post
Fri, Feb 17, 1995
Page 26
By JOEL ENGELHARDT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
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Aged hotel set for day of dynamite
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WEST PALM BEACH — The Pennsylvania hotel, once the grande dame of the city's waterfront, is a spectacle, split open by workers, rife with explosives, ready to blow. In five seconds at about 11 a.m.
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Saturday, a series of explosions will bring down the 69-year-old hotel — turning a place of memories into a pile of rubble 20 feet high. In the name of progress, the explosions will raze the hotel that welcomed Elvis Presley for a few days in 1956, a landmark remembered for its elegance and as the city's last — and best — 1920s waterfront hotel.
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"There was nothing like it around. It was a neat place to go. It sort of made you feel elegant, even though you may not have been," said Bobby Riggs, a retired teacher who grew up downtown in the 1930s.
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The building's owners for 31 years, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, overcame stiff opposition from the city and from historic preservationists to win approval to destroy the building. After months of angry debate, a lawsuit and failed talks, the nuns won over the city commission Dec. 5 with a plea to let them use their property the way they want to best serve their residents.
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The building's center will go down first, then the sides will fall inward to protect neighboring buildings. Viewers will be allowed along Flagler Drive south of Fern Street and north of Datura Street. More than 150 pounds of explosives, drilled into holes in about 230 support columns, are set to take the building's legs out from under it.
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"We'll just let the good Lord's gravity do the work. It wants to come down, we're just helping it do what it wants," said Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, the Phoenix, Md., company overseeing the detonation. The Sisters plan a modern $30 million elderly care facility on the site. The Sisters' order is based in Germantown, N.Y., and has been dedicated to caring for the elderly since 1929. They ran The Pennsylvania as a retirement center but decided last year that it no longer met modern standards and could not be retrofitted.
The building's cracked concrete shell, stripped clean by demolition crews, reveals the stairwells they said were too narrow to be restored, the bedrooms too dark and dreary, the U-shaped exterior too inflexible to capture the views. The nuns have not lined up financing and do not know when construction will begin on The Pennsylvania's 15-story replacement, a combination nursing home and retirement center, said their attorney, Ron Kolins.
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The Pennsylvania stood as a prominent social gathering place, dubbed "The Breakers West" when it opened in 1926, a reference to the luxurious Palm Beach hotel. Riggs, who lives in Lake Clarke Shores now, remembered it played host to baseball teams here for spring training — but only the "big-money boys" such as the New York Yankees.
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Preservationists who last year fought its destruction, view its loss as a loss in city character, removing one last unique blip on a skyline overwhelmed by modern blobs.
"It's sad to see it go, but 'Remember The Pennsylvania' is a cry that we'll look back on and say that was when the historic preservation movement really took off in West Palm Beach," said Michael Bornstein, a member of a nonprofit preservation group that attracted 120 members to fight the hotel's demolition.
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No protests are planned, and many of the leaders in the fight to preserve the building will avoid the area Saturday. "People don't like to go to executions, and that's just what it is," said architect Bill Feldkamp, president of the group Historic West Palm Beach Inc.
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But last year's divisive debate over the building has a bright side — it forced the Sisters to improve their plans for a replacement building, said Mayor Nancy Graham, who was slapped with a lawsuit after she denied a demolition permit in July.
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The nuns dropped the suit in December. "We worked out a good situation. The new design is one the city will be proud of. It ended up win-win despite the loss of the building," the mayor said. The city has removed the Mizner-era tile and a grate over arched windows from the building's original lobby and may place the tile in its proposed children's museum, Graham said.
