Sea Ranch Lakes: A reluctant buyer, a hotel and an exclusive community

By Jane Feehan

Robert Hayes Gore purchased The Fort Lauderdale News in 1929, one of many purchases that helped define today’s Fort Lauderdale. By 1930, he reportedly owned a portfolio of 32 properties; most were downtown. It was said he wanted to make Fort Lauderdale one of the most beautiful cities along Florida’s east coast.

During the Great Depression plenty of land became available to serve as foundation for some of Gore’s dreams.

Realtor Lovick Miller wanted to sell oceanfront property north of Lauderdale-by-the Sea, known as the Ausherman tract. C.C. Ausherman was the first president of Fort Lauderdale’s Realty Board (1929); he bought that land during the boom days before 1926. Some say he turned down an offer of $1 million for the tract during the good times. Good choice, bad timing. In 1928 or 29 he sold it to another Fort Lauderdale pioneer, John Lochrie. Lochrie wanted to sell, perhaps for tax reasons, and Miller had just the right prospect for the purchase:  R.H. Gore.

Except Gore did not want it, even at the low price of $25,000. The tract was too far north of his downtown home, businesses and other properties. Miller told Gore he could make at least $100,000 on the land. Enticed, Gore bought the property. Great choice, perfect timing. The 45 acres (reported but doesn’t ring correct)  with 1,800 feet of ocean front, became the site of the Sea Ranch Hotel and Cabana Club, and later part of the Sea Ranch Lakes community (where more acreage was purchased).

Gore and family opened the Sea Ranch Cabana Club in 1939. Initially a membership organization, the club offered 20 cabanas, each with dressing rooms and other amenities, and a dining room with bar overlooking the ocean. The seaside club opened to the public soon after. Reciprocal comforts were available to guests of the Governors’ Club downtown Fort Lauderdale, which Gore also owned. The Sea Ranch Hotel was added in 1940, remodeled in 1949 and provided more than 60 rooms. Also added were the Hayloft Bar and additional dining facilities. A stable with horses for riding was also part of the remodeling project. The hotel’s guest list included the rich and famous, including Rita Hayworth and her new husband, Aly Khan (m. 1949-1953).

And then came the community of Sea Ranch Lakes, part of the original Gore purchase, where he eventually lived.

Named for the oceanside hotel and two fresh-water lakes on the property, the walled community underwent development in 1956. Its 210 lots bordered the Intracoastal Waterway and circled the lakes. Lots in those days were sold for $10,500 to $36,000. Advertisements lauded the community as “exclusive, secure and private.” It remains so today with its gatehouse and homes priced in the millions. Officially organized as a village today, Sea Ranch Lakes population is estimated at 600.

The hotel’s history, which included a popular dinner theater operated by Brian C. Smith (b. 1940- d. 2010) ended in the early 1980s when the property was sold to make way for the Sea Ranch Lakes Condominiums selling at $660K-$900,000 at this writing.  And so it goes, condo madness.

Copyright © 2022 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

For more on R.H. Gore, see: index

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, March 8, 1930

Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 1, 1930

Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 23, 1939

Fort Lauderdale News, Sept. 3, 1940

Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 28, 1940

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 12, 1949

Fort Lauderdale News, April 13, 1954

Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 15, 1956

Tags: History of Fort Lauderdale, R.H. Gore, Sea Ranch Lakes history, Fort Lauderdale history

Fort Lauderdale's publisher R. H. Gore once governor of Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico flag

 

By Jane Feehan

Robert H. Gore, Sr. (1886-1972) a Kentuckian who adopted Fort Lauderdale as his home, once served as the 11th governor of Puerto Rico.

He climbed out of poverty to success through the newspaper publishing business in Indiana and Florida. Gore acquired the Fort Lauderdale News in 1929 and was later named publisher of the Daytona Beach Record and the Deland Sun.

Gore, a supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was tapped as finance committee chair for the Democratic National Committee in 1932. He later asked for and was granted by FDR an appointment as governor of Puerto Rico. Gore was sworn into that office May 22, 1933. He left his adopted Fort Lauderdale with his wife, mother and six of his nine children to begin his one-year term.

While in office, Gore successfully encouraged tourism to Puerto Rico and used some of his own funds to improve conditions on the island. Because of family illness, assassination threats (commonplace at the time) and political intrigue, Gore resigned a few months short of his term. He returned to Fort Lauderdale where he subsequently helped shape the city’s political and economic landscape.

Sources:

 - Gore, Paul, Past the Edge of Poverty, R.H. Gore, 1990.

 -  University of Florida Foundation at:

  www.uff.ufl.edu/scholarships/ScholarshipInfo.asp?ScholarshipFund=003883

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history

Governors Club opens in 1937 setting Fort Lauderdale hospitality standards and legal precedent

 

Governors Club circa 1940 Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

The Governors Club, located on Las Olas Boulevard, was built by Robert Hayes Gore, Sr., owner of the Fort Lauderdale News. For decades after its 1937 opening, the hotel was a Fort Lauderdale landmark and gathering place for politicians, socialites and national notables.  

Gore (RHG) bought the Wilmar Hotel, an unfinished eight-floor steel skeleton in 1936 for $20,000. The original owner, William H. Marshall, first mayor of Fort Lauderdale, stopped work on the building during the 1920s when he ran out of money. Gore hired an architect and construction firm to resume the project and opened it as the Governor’s Club in December, 1937. (Gore was once governor of Puerto Rico.) 

A Fort Lauderdale News story lauded its "eight floors of sheer beauty and convenience." Furnishings of the building afforded guests "facilities on par with any in the United States." Charles Haight of Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. in Chicago planned the interior of the hotel. Its lobby was decorated in soft blue and Van Gogh yellow with modern paintings and blue leather furniture. Each floor presented a different color scheme.

The Governors (the apostrophe was deleted) Club operated from Thanksgiving until Easter each year until 1947 when it was opened year round.  In its early days, the hotel hosted singer Kate Smith, broadcaster Lowell Thomas, film maker D.W. Griffith and other celebrities who enjoyed its privacy. The Governors Club also became a popular spot for holiday dining, special occasions, and as refuge during hurricanes. State politicians often chose it as a site from where their key speeches were delivered.

The hotel faded over the years as competition for rooms shifted to the beach.  For more than a decade, the Governors Club lay vacant until it was demolished in 1995. A bid to preserve the hotel as a historical landmark failed.

Of legal note about the Governors Club is a Florida law holding builders responsible for their work. RHG successfully sued builder Fred Howland, Inc., shortly after construction began on the hotel, for shoddy workmanship (leaking windows and joints during storms), providing precedent for a Florida law. Copyright © 2011, 2020 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

License  1938-1939 (apostrophe removed ...)

Sources:
Burghard, August and Weidling, Philip A. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966

Fort Lauderdale News, June 30, 1937

Broward County Historical Commission

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale hotel history, Robert H. Gore, Sr.

WFTL and RH Gore - Afloat in the Venice of America

By Jane Feehan

Radio station WFTL, the first in Fort Lauderdale and Broward County has had a series of owners closely associated with the founding and growth of the city. 

  

Fort Lauderdale pioneer Tom M. Bryan bought a radio station in 1937 and used the call letters WFTL. After he operated WFTL for a year and a half, Bryan sold the station to Ralph Horton, who, in turn, sold it to Miami investors. The station became known as WGBS.

Fort Lauderdale was without its own radio station throughout World War II and until 1946, when it went back on the air with new owners Martin E. Dwyer of Chicago and U.S Rep. Dwight L. Rogers of Fort Lauderdale.  They first operated the station across the street from the Governors Club Hotel. Then they moved it to a houseboat on SE 15th Street, along the New River, and advertised with the appropriate slogan, "Afloat in the Venice of America."

During the fall of 1948, R.H. Gore, owner of the Fort Lauderdale Daily News, The Governors Club Hotel, and Sea Ranch Cabana Club, bought the station. At that time he also launched its sister station, WGOR-FM. Gore’s mission for both radio properties was to place “community interest above all other considerations.” The station, then an NBC affiliate, operated at 100 E. Broward Boulevard, where news was read from a desk at the Fort Lauderdale Daily News.

Gore sold the station a few years after acquiring it to Joseph C. Amaturo under whom WFTL reached stability and success. Since then, WFTL has had a long, convoluted string of owners.

In 2013, 850 WFTL, "Florida's Talk Leader," was a 50,000-watt station owned by the James Crystal Radio Group, the largest (according to their website) locally owned and operated radio station group in South Florida. The James Crystal Radio Group also owned and operated WMEN-AM 640, WFLL-AM 1400, and KBXD in Dallas. It filed for bankruptcy in 2014.

Today the station is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting and licensed in West Palm Beach with a reach that includes Broward County. As mentioned, WFTL ownership has been a complicated tale.

Copyright © 2013, 2023. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Gore, Paul A., Past the Edge of Poverty.  Fort Lauderdale: R.H. Gore Company, 1990.

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 9, 1948.

850WFTL.com

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, radio in Fort Lauderdale, historical researcher, film researcher, RH Gore

Look up in the sky! It's flashing, it's news. Fort Lauderdale 1948

Goodyear blimp, a common sight above
Fort Lauderdale beach today

By Jane Feehan

For three days in January and three in February 1948, residents of Fort Lauderdale, Dania and Hollywood could look up to the sky to read local, state, and national headlines. The Goodyear blimp* flashed news in five or six line bites each day from 6 to 9 p.m.

The blimpcasting event, a public relations initiative, was sponsored by Robert H. Gore’s Fort Lauderdale Daily News.  Most of us today probably have seen blimp messaging from one of the tire company’s airships but it was not a common sight in the 1940s. Many residents called the newspaper to express congratulations and to ask if the flashing news was the product of post-war technology. It was not; blimpcasting was first developed by Goodyear airship operations in 1930.

Incandescent signs were adapted for use on the curved sides of a blimp through the development of special light-weight equipment. Early signs, according to the Fort Lauderdale Daily News (Feb 8, 1948), were “boxed-in letters of tubing.” By 1948, eight by six feet frames “were a universal composite type of sign containing all the letters of the alphabet and numerals in one frame.” Equipment was simple: “a typewriter-style tape punch and a translator.”  (People then would be amazed by the simplicity of today’s digitized banners!**)

The Daily News phoned in headlines to the airship, the Mayflower based at Watson Island in Miami, where it was translated for broadcast. Ten letters  were posted in five or six lines at a time but there were no breaks while reading. It took between seven and eight minutes to go through the news that could be viewed 1,000 feet below and as far as a half mile away.

Robert H. Gore bought the newspaper in 1929 and sold it to the Tribune Company of Chicago in 1963. Once governor of Puerto Rico, Gore helped shape the political landscape of Fort Lauderdale for decades. 

Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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*Rides on the Goodyear blimps are available at the invitation of the company only. Most of the lucky riders are Goodyear customers, winners of local charity auctions, local dignitaries, or members of the press.

** After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, a Goodyear Blimp flashed emergency messages to disaster survivors. It may be a viable way of communicating in the aftermath of another disaster when/if conventional methods of communication are unavailable. Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

For more on RH Gore, see index

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Jan. 28, 1948

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Jan. 29, 1948

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Feb. 8, 1948

Gore, Paul A. Past the Edge of Poverty: A biography of Robert Hayes Gore, Sr. Fort Lauderdale: R.H. Gore Co. (1990)

Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s, R.H. Gore, Fort Lauderdale historian, Fort Lauderdale history, history of Fort Lauderdale