Munyon’s Island was once home to Hotel Hygeia

Near North Palm Beach stands the little-known and mostly untouched Munyon’s Island.

Originally 15 acres, it was used in the 1930s and 1960s to dump fill from the dredging of the waterway, tripling its size to 45 acres.

From 1992 to 1997, Palm Beach County restored 20 acres of wetlands. As an environmentally sensitive tract, operated by the state park, visits to it are restricted, and it’s open only by day. Once, rising above the island was the glamorous Hotel Hygeia. Alas, its glory was fleeting. Here’s a 1990 look back by our friend and former colleague, Norv Roggen, who died in 2001:

No doubt Dr. James Munyon was heartbroken when his Hotel Hygeia on Big Munyon’s Island burned down in 1917. But he would be pleased to know the 21-room structure won’t be forgotten.

The five-story hotel was a popular overnight stop for boat-traveling tourists in the early 1900s. It was also the distribution point for Munyon’s Paw-Paw tonic, a mixture of sulphur water and papaya juice that sold for $1 a bottle as a cure for dozens of ailments.

But one night in 1917, tragedy struck Munyon’s utopia.

The hotel, named after the Greek goddess of health, burned to the ground.

Disappointed, Munyon sold the island to New York restaurateur Harry Kelsey, developer of Kelsey City, now Lake Park.

Later, sand was dredged from the Intracoastal Waterway and dumped there, burying the hotel’s remnants and foundation.

The North Palm Beach Village Council’s persistence had prevented the building of high-rises that would have obliterated the Munyon hotel site. Billionaire John D. MacArthur acquired the property from Kelsey in 1955 and planned to build a bridge to the island and develop it. The village objected, and after a lengthy court battle, MacArthur gave up when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. After MacArthur’s death in 1975, the state acquired the island.

Hygeia Hotel on Munyon’s Island burned down in 1917 and was not replaced. The island later was acquired by the late John D. MacArthur, who planned to build a bridge to the island and develop it. But the North Palm Beach Village Council resisted. (Palm Beach Post file photo)

For more information:
John D. MacArthur Beach State Park: (561) 624-6950.
Historical Society of Palm Beach County: (561) 832-4164.
Tucked Between the Pages of Time: A History of Lake Park and Environs, compiled by Dorothy Borden Gooding

Tags: hotels, Munyon's Island

Singer Island then and now

Then, left: In the 1920s, Paris Singer and architect Addison Mizner started the Blue Heron Hotel, a $4 million resort on what is now Singer Island in Riviera Beach. The huge structure was more than half-finished when, in 1926, the land boom collapsed. The hulk stood for 14 years before being razed in the early 1940s. Riviera, incorporated in 1922, was renamed Riviera Beach in 1941. (Historical Society of Palm Beach County)

Now, right: A line of condos sits between State Road A1A and the Atlantic Ocean. Blue Heron Boulevard, which runs about 6.5 miles from A1A west to Beeline Highway, is named for the hotel that never was. (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)

See more Then & Now photos in our Then & Now photo gallery.

Tags: hotels, Riviera Beach, Singer Island

Iconic Pennsylvania Hotel came down in 1995

Fifteen years ago this week, on Feb. 18, 1995, the historic 70-yearold Pennsylvania Hotel, a concrete link to South Florida’s chaotic real estate boom, came crashing down.

In the 1920s, downtown West Palm Beach sported dozens of hotels and rooming houses. The Pennsylvania, built in 1926 at Evernia Street and South Flagler Drive, was the last.

Dubbed “The Breakers West,’’ it was one of seven great waterfront hotels.

The other six are all gone: the former George Washington Hotel, later the Helen Wilkes Residence Hotel; the Lake Court, now the site of the Noreen McKeen Residence next to the Pennsylvania; the Salt Air, at the site of the downtown Holiday Inn razed in 1994; the Royal Palm, the Monterey; and the South Palm Inn.

The eight-story, 230-room Mediterranean Revival-style Pennsylvania was designed by the famed architects Harvey & Clarke with graceful arches, a tower and decorative ornamentation.

A flat roof was hidden by parapets, decorated with barrel tile.

Inside: a mezzanine with high ceilings and 4-inch squares of Spanish tile. Columns were decorated up to 4 feet with colorful blue, green and yellow tiles made by architect and developer Addison Mizner’s own factory.

A dining room seated 400 and the place had a barber shop and beauty salon.

The Pennsylvania hosted balls, coming-out parties, elegant dinners and other celebrations of the city’s social season.

In 1964, it was sold for $800,000 to the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm of South Florida. A 1986 attempt to get the hotel onto the National Register of Historic Places failed when the sisters objected. In 1994, the group announced plans to level the building, saying it wasn’t structurally sound, and build an elderly care facility. City commissioners approved by one vote. The building came down in five seconds. Ground was broken in November 1995 for the $40 million, 13-story McKeen Towers seniors residence. It opened in February 1998.

The Pennsylvania Hotel in 1962 in West Palm Beach. (Palm Beach Post file photo)

Tags: buildings, hotels, West Palm Beach

Lakefront Hotel Rose In 1923, Razed in 2005

Question: Do you have any history and photos of the Helen Wilkes Hotel? –Dottie Nelson, Port St. Lucie

Answer: The hotel, along the downtown West Palm Beach waterfront, stood for more than eight decades until it was razed in 2005.

Built for $1 million, it opened in 1923 as the 160-room El Verano Hotel — Spanish for summer. With the real estate boom well on, the area was losing thousands of tourists and potential buyers because they simply had no place to stay. Several hotels soon went up to fill the void.

“One of the finest and most modern of the hotels in West Palm Beach is El Verano, located on the lakefront north of the city park,” a 1924 newspaper story said. Guests were so picky that the owners bought a farm so they could grow their own fresh produce. It later became the Hotel George Washington.  One of the region’s more colorful — and long discounted — urban legends says it was owned by a German family, and red aircraft warning lights on its roof flashed in a sequence that messaged submarines.

In 1946, when the Philadelphia Athletics came to West Palm Beach to train at Wright Field — later Connie Mack Stadium — the players and their manager, Connie Mack, stayed there.

Helen Wilkes bought the then-troubled hotel in 1973, five years before she became the city’s first female mayor. The former nurse also was a city commissioner until 1992. It became vacant in 1999. There were proposals to replace it with offices, restaurants and townhouses. It was considered for the National Register of Historic Places, which might have saved it, but the first two floors had been wrapped in a 1970s “river rock veneer.”

The city, meanwhile, envisioned replacing it with an open public area or into a public building. Finally, the city gave the owner, WCI Communities, permission to level it for the Madison condominium, with 30 units selling for $1.3 million to $5 million.

Palm Beach Post file photo: Helen Wilkes poses in this undated photo in front of the hotel that bore her name after she bought the property in 1973.

Tags: hotels