Sarasota – New Years Eve 1926

The Hotel El Vernona opens with a formal New Years Eve celebration!

“Designed by Dwight James Baum to resemble a moorish Castle, the five story hostelry offered 150 rooms, most with a bay view, and the Sarasota Herald bragged it was ‘Almost startling in its magnificence, brilliant in its glory and fairly taking one’s breath with the simple grandeur of its appointments.'” Owen Burns, The Man Who Bought and Built Sarasota” by Jeff LaHurd

 The hotel stood along Broadway, today’s Route 41.

The grand building was named after Mr. Burns’s wife Vernona.  The hotel would become the social epicenter of Sarasota – the place to be seen!

Owen Burns and Dwight James Baum