Florida’s First Resort Hotels

1877-1893 

By the 1850s, Florida was already seen as a winter retreat, but tourism didn’t truly take off until after the Civil War. In the postwar boom, resort hotels flourished across North Florida, with Jacksonville as the main gateway. Ocean-going steamships brought the tourists and provisions, which river steamboats and railroads carried inland. Fourteen menus and an unusual piece of ephemera capture this early chapter of Florida’s tourism industry.

Grand National Hotel 

Jacksonville 

This menu was seemingly mailed with a letter, as evidenced by the fold lines and the touristy inscription “our room” penciled on the image of the hotel. Built in 1873, the Grand National Hotel faced the St. Johns River. A beehive of activity is depicted on the riverfront. 

The bill of fare closely resembles that of a Northern hotel of similar standing. As shown by the “Fulton Market corned beef,” some of the food was shipped from New York City—then a major distribution hub. In fact, regional influences were muted on table d'hôte menus at the time. When local dishes appeared, they were typically limited to a single item. In this example, Southern cuisine is represented by the entrée called “hominy à la Kimball,” a nod to the Kimball Hotel in Atlanta. 

St. James Hotel 

Jacksonville 

Opened in 1869, this four-story wooden hotel was expanded several times, becoming the largest—and arguably the finest—in the Southeast. This menu prominently features lemon ice cream, a flavor popular at northern beach resorts during the summer. The St. James was destroyed in 1901 by a fire that devastated much of downtown. Interestingly, the fire was caused by a chimney spark that ignited piles of Spanish moss being dried for stuffing at a small mattress factory. 

Windsor Hotel 

Jacksonville 

This 1880 menu features “New York turkey” and “New York beef,” which denoted quality. The bill of fare also includes pork and baked beans—a Sunday staple nationwide, rooted in New England tradition—but here the dish is described as “Navy style” rather than the usual “Boston style.” Cornbread, likely a house specialty, appears alone in the lower right-hand corner. The Windsor Hotel was also destroyed in the Great Fire of 1901. 

The back cover advertises the Swannanoa Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina, with W. M. Nicholls listed as the proprietor of both establishments. It was common for hoteliers to alternate between summer and winter resorts, closing one at the end of the season and opening the other. In addition to serving vacationers seeking a better climate, resort hotels in both the North and South catered to invalids pursuing “rest cures” for conditions without effective medical treatments. The ad notes its location “opposite Dr. Glitzman’s Sanitarium for diseases of the throat and lungs.” Sedentary activities such as whist, euchre, and backgammon were popular pastimes, played in the parlor or on the porch. 

Egmont Hotel 

Fernadina, Amelia Island 

Fernandina is a small town on Amelia Island, a 13-mile-long barrier island about 30 miles north of Jacksonville.  Its deep-water channel and access to the Atlantic Ocean made it a key port with a direct supply line to New York. The small menu below was printed by the Florida Mirror, a local newspaper that also did job printing. In a style of the time, letterpress printers used type ornaments to create quirky designs that mimicked more expensive processes like engraving.

Larkin House 

Palatka 

Larkin House stood along the banks of the St. Johns River. Described as one of the “laziest” rivers in the world due to its very slow current, the 310-mile river winds north past Sanford, Palatka, Enterprise, and near Orlando before reaching Jacksonville. Along the way, it broadens into lakes ideal for boating and fishing. Before the railroad between Jacksonville and Sanford was completed in 1886, steamboats carried passengers and supplies to the small towns and resort hotels lining the river. This menu is from New Year’s Day in 1882. 

Putnam House 

Palatka 

The 1883 menu below is printed on card stock engraved by John A. Lowell & Co. in Boston. Opened in the aftermath of the Civil War, the first Putnam House burned to the ground in a fire in 1884 that consumed all of downtown Palatka. It was replaced by a larger and more elegant hotel, which was also destroyed by fire a few years later. 

In addition to Putnam House, hotelier Franklin Orvis owned the Windsor Hotel in Jacksonville (seemingly acquired from the afore-mentioned Nicholls sometime after 1880) and the Equinox House in Green Mountains of Vermont, where First Lady Mary Lincoln vacationed with her sons Tad and Robert in the summer of 1864.

Sanford House 

Sanford 

The number of typeface designs grew rapidly in the nineteenth century, driven primarily by the rise of advertising. Many of the novel designs expressed the spirited self-confidence of the era. The bill of fare on this Christmas menu from 1884 was printed with a typeface called Bijou, introduced a year earlier by the MacKellar, Smiths, & Jordan foundry in Philadelphia.

Magnolia House

Orlando 

The table d’hôte menus below are from the winter season of 1886, when Orlando’s population was just 2,500. The border contains an advertisement for the New York Novelty Bazaar, a souvenir shop on Church Street offering “Florida curiosities” and fancy stationery. An 1884 map of the developing commercial district shows a number of vacancies on Church Street and doesn’t yet list the Bazaar, but it does note the nearby Alligator John Curio Shop around the corner. 

Altamonte Hotel 

Altamonte Springs 

Opened in February 1883 at the north end of Lake Orienta, the hotel was patronized by wealthy Bostonians drawn by the mineral springs, mentioned on the menu below. When guests arrived at the Altamonte train station, they transferred to a donkey-drawn tram for the final stretch. A historical marker notes the donkey’s name was “Dixie Flyer.” The hotel installed electric lights in 1923. 

Brock House 

Enterprise 

Built by a riverboat captain in 1856, Brock House was extensively renovated in the mid-1870s. Overlooking Lake Monroe, the upper-class resort was touted as a hunting and fishing paradise, attracting notable guests. A rare surviving artifact is this paper lunch box featuring an illustration of the hotel on one side, the word “Lunch” on the other, and a red-white-and-blue cotton handle. It was manufactured in Manhattan by Robert Gair, the Scottish-born inventor of the folding carton. When assembled, it measured 4¼ × 6¼ × 2¼ inches. The boxes were reportedly used to pack lunches for guests returning to Jacksonville on the steamboat, and were perhaps used for picnic lunches during outdoor activities like buggy rides. 

Indian River Hotel 

Rockledge 

Rockledge, now recognized as the oldest city in Brevard County, had only a few hundred residents on Easter Sunday in 1888—the date of this menu. The bill of fare is crudely reproduced on cardstock decorated with vignettes of the hotel and the brackish Indian River Lagoon. 

Magnolia Hotel 

St. Augustine 

Located on St. George Street—once known as the Fifth Avenue of St. Augustine—this upscale hotel stood on the city’s highest ground, offering “a fine view of the ocean.” An 1876 advertisement revealed the appeal of a predictable menu and singular style of cooking, boasting, “The cuisine is in every respect unexceptional.” 

Ponce de Leon Hotel 

St. Augustine 

This luxury hotel opened on January 10, 1888. Built by Standard Oil co-founder Henry M. Flagler, it was the first hotel constructed entirely of poured concrete, using local stone filled with fragments of mollusks and ancient invertebrates as aggregate. It was also one of the first buildings in the country wired for electricity from the start, powered by DC generators installed by Flagler’s friend, Thomas Edison. An illustration of the Spanish Colonial Revival style hotel is shown on this menu from its first month of operation. 

The tradition of labeling the midday meal “dinner” was fading by the time of this luncheon in 1893. Other changes were also underway, as Florida’s tourist industry was about to change its locus, shifting hundreds of miles further south. 

Encouraged by the success of the Ponce de Leon Hotel, Henry Flagler began buying short-line railroads, eventually creating the Florida East Coast Railway. By 1894, his railroad reached West Palm Beach, where he built the massive Royal Poinciana Hotel on the shores of Lake Worth in Palm Beach. Two years later, he opened the Palm Beach Inn—later renamed The Breakers—overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. By then, his railroad had stretched to Biscayne Bay. Flagler called his vision “a new American Riviera.”