Clarence Geist and The Boca Raton Club

Meet the man who helped build the city of Boca Raton—and enhance the legacy of The Boca Raton.

BY SUSAN GILLIS

Few modern residents of Boca Raton today have heard of Clarence Geist. But Geist, the second owner of what is today The Boca Raton, is in many ways a true hero— not only to the hotel but to the entire city of Boca Raton.

Clarence H. Geist was born in 1866 on a farm in LaPorte, Indiana. After education at a “normal school” (teacher’s college), he made a living selling horses. He returned to Chicago to work for the Rock Island Railroad, entered the real estate market, and eventually joined Rufus and Charles G. Dawes in the development of a gas and electric utilities company. (Charles Dawes was to serve as vice president in the late 1920s, and the Dawes brothers took over the management of the Mizner Development Corporation in mid 1926.) Geist married Florence Hewitt, and in 1905 they moved to Philadelphia and Geist began investing in utilities, gaining control of the Philadelphia Suburban Water Company. It was his association with the water supply that earned him the nickname “Waterboy.”

Geist had become a snowbird in Palm Beach in the early 1920s. He built a beautiful house, La Claridad, on Golf View Road designed by Marion Syms Wyeth, the original architect of Mar-a-Lago. One of the legends about Geist is that he built the Boca Raton Club because he had been blackballed from the Everglades Club due to his uncouth behavior. This is not true—he was a member of that august body and many others as well. He also became an investor in the Mizner Development Corporation’s “Boca Raton” project.

By spring of 1927, the Mizner Development Corporation was deeply in debt, yet another victim of the collapse of the Florida Land Boom. After several rounds of bidding, Geist’s agent, New York attorney Jerome Gedney, offered $71,500 for the 16,000-acre holdings of the MDC, including the Cloister Inn, Administration Buildings, Floresta and Spanish Village houses, and miles of oceanfront. He also accrued millions of dollars in debt. Geist’s principal interest was golf. He was an avid golfer who owned the Seaview Golf Club near Atlantic City, which is still in business. Geist had long considered establishing a winter club like his summer club in New Jersey. The Cloister Inn, with its three courses, seemed like an ideal investment, but first, the 100-room inn needed to be expanded. Geist hired New York architects, Schultze and Weaver, already famous for the Biltmore in Coral Gables, the Roney Plaza in Miami Beach, and the Miami News Building (Freedom Tower) in Miami. They also designed the current Breakers in Palm Beach and would go on to create the Art Deco masterpiece the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

In 1928, the architects drew up a plan for a 300-room addition featuring a six-story building surrounding a square entrance courtyard. This would triple the size of the Cloister Inn but incorporate it into the new plans. Schultze and Weaver planned the new hotel with respect to Mizner’s original design. There are several features in the “addition” that mimic those in the Cloister Inn.

Construction began late in 1928 and took all of 1929. The new hotel had a much fancier entrance—the facade now faced south instead of west. Camino Real was completed to the Intracoastal, and a roundabout with a fountain in its center enlivened the entrance drive. The Club retained Mizner’s public rooms, but the original Mizner Dining Room was turned into a lounge and replaced with the new lakeside Cathedral Dining Room. Jacques Greber was the landscape designer; he oversaw a new fountain with the “Boca Raton lady” (actually Salome) by sculptor Ettore Pellegatta at the center of the courtyard. The second courtyard, within the rectangle of Mizner’s original inn, was also renovated, and a beautiful Charbagh-style garden with water running in troughs into the Mizner loggia replaced what had been sand and palm trees.

One of the new features was a beautiful saltwater pool that stood where the new Harborside Pool Club is today. It was known as the “Garden Pool.” There was also an indoor pool, like the swank hotels of old. It was not at all popular; why would you want to swim inside when you had the glorious Florida climate outside? Eventually, Palm Beach architect Maurice Fatio was commissioned to convert the pool into an auditorium. Today it is the Valencia event room. In addition, the hotel’s beachfront access was at the “Cabana Club,” on the beach south of the Boca Raton Inlet at Bahia Cabana, where the Addison condos stand today. There were initially 200 cabanas and a saltwater pool and casual dining under the moonlight. It was replaced by the Beach Club in about 1980.

The new hotel opened unofficially at Christmas, 1929, but formally on January 7, 1930. Although the Club operated as a hotel, it did require membership. Originally, 700 members paid $5,000 for their membership and received 50 shares of stock in Geist’s new Spanish River Land Company. After that, members paid $100 a year to retain their memberships. Club members would enjoy all of the amenities of the lavish new hotel, including tennis courts, golf, lots of swimming, and horseback riding.

There are several legends about Geist that are likely untrue or at least questionable. Most seem to have originated with Boca Raton novelist Theodore Pratt, who published a booklet dubbed “The Story of Boca Raton” in 1953. This was written shortly after Alva Johnston published the amusing but apocryphal account of the Mizner brothers available in the book The Legendary Mizners. Pratt claimed Geist, known for his coarseness, was a “big, barrel-bodied, loud-voiced fellow who didn’t care what he said to anybody.” He would stride around the lobby in his bathrobe after coming off the golf course and preempt anyone waiting on the elevator to be taken to his sixth-floor suite. The nightly movies could not start until he arrived, and he never bothered about the time (possibly true).

Geist was allegedly in great fear of being kidnapped. To prevent this, he supposedly kept two armed guards with him at all times and ordered the staff fingerprinted to learn of any past crimes. There may be a grain of truth in some of this; it became popular after his death to “Geist-bash” amongst the locals. To his family, he was the opposite of a boor—polite, considerate, and kind. He could certainly be high-handed. The Boca Raton Historical Society contains a copy of a long speech he apparently gave to the city commissioners and others in 1929. In it, he admonished the citizens to behave themselves; one can only guess how the locals reacted. Here are some excerpts:

There are just two pests we have to contend with in Boca Raton. The first is politics…The only ones in the town that should draw any salary should be the Town Clerk that keeps the books, the man who runs the Waterworks, and the Policeman.

The second greatest pest you have to deal with in this community is the mosquito… If the people will get together…and persuade them to bury their tin cans and keep their rain barrels covered, and if the whole community will be inclined to watch the mosquito situation, I see no reason why this community should not be well rid of mosquitoes. If they don’t do this, you are never going to make any money out of your town, because people are not going to come down here and be pestered with mosquitoes…I am anxious to have a town built here that everyone will be proud of…I don’t want to run your political situation here one minute. I want you to run it yourselves, but if I go ahead and build a splendid community of houses and homes, it is going to be necessary for the people who live here to cooperate with me…My coming to Boca Raton does not mean that I came here to take anything away, because there is 1926/The Boca Raton 77 nothing here to take away. The sun, the ocean, and the climate is something no one can take away from this Town…But don’t forget to get rid of the mosquito.

Geist’s Boca Raton Club manager was a man named Gordon Anderson. City records show the close relationship between the Club, Clarence Geist, and the city at the time. The Club was prepared to direct the town’s actions and even spend the town’s money on projects important to its maintenance. Most local citizens seemed to have accepted this patronage, since it benefited them most.

BRIDGES

The first bridge over the Boca Raton Inlet was a fixed bridge, which spanned east-west south of the current span. Mizner planned to replace this span to allow access from the ocean to his new hotel; this did not happen before his project went bankrupt in 1927. In December 1929, with the opening of the new Club at hand, Geist’s Spanish River Land Company added a draw to the bridge and raised it to accommodate boat traffic. In addition, Geist also had a swing bridge, originally from Deerfield Beach, moved into place at the Intracoastal, now the Camino Real bridge. It was a turn bridge, which operated on a pivot. This bridge was eventually replaced with the current bascule span in 1938.

FLORIDA EAST COAST RAILWAY STATION

Boca Raton’s only railroad station at the time of Geist’s arrival was a wooden freight depot located on the east side of the tracks just north of Palmetto Park Road. This was clearly inadequate for the patrons of the swanky new hotel. In 1929, the railway began construction on a beautiful new station designed by architect Chester Henninger, smack dab in the middle of Dixie Highway north of Camino Real. It opened in 1930, and today Dixie Highway curves to accommodate the building.

WATER PLANT

Boca Raton’s first water plant was on East Boca Raton Road close to today’s Northeast Fifth Avenue. For the “Waterboy,” Geist, this was completely inadequate for his new hotel. On June 13, 1928, the city commission voted to put the water plant issue before voters. At the time, the city was in terrible debt due to the bust of the Boom, the construction of Town Hall, and the acquisition of “Old Besty,” the city’s first fire engine. A few days later, the city commission voted to hire J.B. McCrary Engineering to build the system and passed an emergency ordinance declaring the need for a new water system based on public health needs. The cost was $55,000, which came in the form of a loan from Geist, who also said, “…Water is the foundation of every community and without GOOD water, no one will ever come to this town. … There are three things that kill people—the first is bad water, the second is bad whisky, and the third is good whisky.” The water plant was the most modern, state-of-the-art plant in Florida at the time and opened in 1929; it was a beautiful example of the Mediterranean style in vogue at the time.

HOUSES

In 1930, Geist began construction on two houses on Camino Real opposite the hotel designed by Marion Syms Wyeth in the Mediterranean style. They reportedly cost $45,000—a tremendous sum in 1930. The westernmost house was sold in 1931; the easternmost house didn’t sell right away and was leased to club members, at least in the 1930s. The latter is historically designated and still stands at 290 East Camino Real. In 1936, he made a second attempt in the neighborhood east of the Intracoastal and south of the Club, known as the Estates Section. He had four houses constructed by Palm Beach architect Maurice Fatio in what was then a “tropical Georgian” style popular in Palm Beach at the time. The houses still stand; 1240 Cocoanut Road is in the Boca Raton and National Register of Historic Places.

AIRPORT

In 1935, Club Manager Anderson told the town that many Club members had airplanes, and wouldn’t it be great if Boca Raton had an airport? Over the next several years he wrote many letters to officials at state and local levels seeking funding for the project. The town was able to offer land “too far west” for development, a salary for an airport manager, and some labor and equipment to apply for a Works Progress Administration (WPA) grant in 1936. When the WPA hesitated because the offer was too low, Anderson encouraged city fathers to add an additional $15,000, including rock for the runways, equipment, and skilled labor. He also campaigned in Washington and arranged for the Club to pay for part of the project. By 1937, the airport was in operation, although without lights or even a hangar. The presence of even this modest facility would be vital in attracting the Boca Raton Army Air Field to town in 1942.

TRUE STORIES

Another Pratt story about Geist is the scene he created upon his arrival in his private train car each year. Pratt reported:

Club-connected people and their relatives were expected to turn out at the railroad station. While the club orchestra serenaded him, Geist descended from his car like a deity. He went down the receiving line, shaking hands with everybody in what he believed to be true democratic fashion. The gentry was being nice to the peasants. In the spring, the absurd performance was repeated in reverse.

The old-time Boca Raton residents remember the hotel orchestra playing for Mr. G. and everybody in town showing up for his arrival. And why not? The man, with his fancy clubhouse, was truly the savior of poor little Boca Raton, which was suffering whiplash after the failure of the Mizner Development Corporation and the dramatic bust of the Boom. Throughout the Depression years, almost every person in Boca Raton owed their livelihood to the Club. They either worked there part-time or supplied goods and services to the hotel. Geist’s “self-serving” projects also brought a safe new water supply, an airport, two bridges, and a shiny new passenger station for all Boca’s citizens to enjoy.

Today, few people recognize the name of a man who so impacted the history of our community. Clarence Geist did not live to see the new drawbridge at Camino Real; he died in June of 1938. In its 1939 dedication, the bridge was actually named in his honor, “in memory of the part played by the late Clarence H. Geist in the development of Boca Raton.”