Hotel · Indiantown, Florida · Built 1925–1926
Seminole Inn
A white stucco Mediterranean Revival hotel of 1926 on Indiantown's main road, built by Seaboard Air Line Railway president S. Davies Warfield as the centerpiece of a planned railroad town on the edge of the Everglades.
History
S. Davies Warfield, a Baltimore investment banker, became president of the Seaboard Air Line Railway in 1912 and set out to stitch short lines into a system reaching deep into Florida. In 1924 he bought roughly half of what became Martin County and laid out a master plan for Indiantown, a stop on his new line from Coleman to West Palm Beach. The Seminole Inn, designed by Henry Stephen Harvey of West Palm Beach and built for about $66,000, was the plan's centerpiece; it opened in 1926 with 36 guest rooms and six bathrooms. That same year Warfield ran the first railroad across the Everglades, and in January 1927 the inaugural Orange Blossom Special carried 600 bankers, politicians and promoters, Harvey among them, on a celebratory run from New York.
Warfield died suddenly later in 1927, his grand plans for draining the Everglades unrealized, and the Florida land boom collapsed. His heirs kept the hotel but showed little interest in running it, and in 1937 the remaining Warfield holdings went to the Indiantown Company, which bought the inn itself in 1953 and housed its telephone company there until 1961. By the mid-1960s the building stood empty. The Wall family bought it in 1975, added a café in the courtyard, and in 1992–93 gathered up what original furnishings they could find. The inn remained the only place in Indiantown offering overnight lodging when it was listed in 2006. Wikipedia names Burt Reynolds, Ted Williams and Warfield's niece Wallis Warfield Simpson, later Duchess of Windsor, among its guests.
“The original hotel plans specified the alternating straight and twisted wrought iron rods that support the porch railings.”
Architecture
The two-story inn has hollow clay-tile walls under white stucco and a U-shaped plan, its front made of three blocks. The center block has a barrel-tiled gable roof and a one-story porch on paired Tuscan columns, with "SEMINOLE INN" lettered above the steps; the porch keeps its pecky-cypress ceiling, tile floor and railings of alternating straight and twisted wrought-iron bars. The flanking blocks have flat roofs hidden behind sculpted parapets crowned with terra-cotta shields and finials, cast-stone fleur-de-lis shields, arched first-floor windows and small iron balconies on scrolled brackets. Inside, the lobby has a pecky-cypress ceiling with exposed beams and a brick fireplace, and twin stairs rise to a second-floor conservatory.
What to look for
- Sculpted parapets with terra-cotta shields and finials
- Twisted-and-straight wrought-iron porch railing
- Pecky-cypress porch and lobby ceilings
- Cast-stone fleur-de-lis shields on the corner blocks
- The rail line running parallel to Warfield Boulevard
Setting
The inn faces Warfield Boulevard (State Road 710), Indiantown's historic main street, which runs beside the old Seaboard railroad tracks. Beyond the small town lie citrus groves, cattle ranches, wet prairie and pine woods; the St. Lucie Canal passes nearby, Lake Okeechobee is about 25 miles west, and Stuart on the Atlantic coast about 20 miles east.
Timeline
- 1924S. Davies Warfield buys land and plans Indiantown
- 1926Seminole Inn opens
- 1927Orange Blossom Special's inaugural run; Warfield dies
- 1937Warfield holdings sold to the Indiantown Company
- mid-1960sHotel stands abandoned
- 1975Bought and reopened by the Wall family
- 2006Listed on the National Register
Where sources differ
- The stays of Wallis Simpson and Ted Williams, and Wikipedia's report that parts of Smokey and the Bandit were filmed here, are not documented in the nomination.
