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When local photographer Felix Pinard took this photograph in 1899, the Palms Hotel had already become well established along Sarasota Bay, south of the present Indian Beach Drive. It had been designed by Alex Browning, one of the colonists who came to Sarasota from Scotland in 1885.

Built in 1891 by Wadhams and Jacobs of Braidentown, the hotel began as the private Tarpon Club operated by Alfred and Annie Jones. Its origin reportedly came out of conflict. Both Karl Grismer in “The Story of Sarasota” and Alex Browning in his memoirs recount the difficulties between the Joneses, when they leased the DeSoto Hotel at the foot of Main Street, and the hotel’s owner, Col. John Hamilton Gillespie, and his wife.

The Joneses left after four years at the DeSoto and, with financial support from some of the northern families who frequently the hotel, purchased land from the Whitaker family and built the 21-room Tarpon Club. Browning recalled that these families became shareholders and subscribed to the project according to the floor space they would need. The club “was occupied by this happy congregation of families for a number of years,” he wrote.

At some point in the 1890s, it became the Palms Hotel and, later, the Palms Villa. On approximately five acres, the hotel faced the bay across a deep front lawn that was landscaped with bamboo, sago palms, African dates, jasmines, roses and oaks.

Jane Brush later recalled her 1904 visit to the neighborhood. She saw her first date palm on the grounds of “The Palms” as she traveled by wagon on the road from Braidentown to Sarasota, a route that wound between the bay and the homes along Indian Beach. While she visited with the Helvestons (to the south of the Palms Hotel), Brush became acquainted with Bishop Curtis.

The Catholic Bishop from Baltimore and his sister roomed at the Palms, but ate their meals with the Helvestons. The Bishop was an avid fisherman and could be found almost daily, at the end of the Helvestons’ decaying dock, which extended several hundred feet out into the bay. Brush wrote that the bishop looked nothing like a bishop when he dressed for fishing.

In 1910, the Palms changed hands. J.M. Clark of Onaway, Michigan purchased it for his home and began to make a series of changes. He installed plumbing and water throughout the house and set out more citrus trees. By early in 1915 the Sarasota Times began noting the guests and their activities at the Palms Villa. One visitor “drove a Tin Lizzie and carried an auxiliary engine under the rear seat in case of an accident.” The weekly paper frequently described picnics on the Keys, reached by chartered boat, with shelling and surf bathing as popular activities. One column noted that “snap-shooting” was a favorite pastime.

By 1916, a number of improvements made the Villa more marketable. The Clarks installed a gas plant to provide lighting for the whole house, as well as for a new 400-foot dock that extended over the good-for-clamming-flats into deep water. They commissioned the gasoline launch to serve the Villa’s guests. Peninsular Telephone Company crews provided a new and private phone line to the Villa. The number was 240-L. County road workers resurfaced the “hard road” north of Sarasota.

To top that, the columnist for the Sarasota Times reminded readers that at the Villa they were harvesting tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce and peppers while their northern friends were “wallowing up to their knees in snow, slush or mud.” 

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