Woman's Club of Winter Haven

The vicinity of Winter Haven, Florida was first settled in the 1860s with the arrival of the Thornhill family. They were soon followed by other notable pioneer families including the Boyds, Inmans, and Jacksons, all of whom grew a variety of crops including strawberries, tomatoes, peaches, and peppers. The community of Winter Haven was established in 1884. By 1900, the population of the town had grown to approximately four hundred, and Winter Haven boasted by having citrus groves, a school, post office, social club, hotels, several churches, a canning factory, and the headquarters of the Florida Growers Association. Winter Haven was incorporated in 1911, and by this time the residents had established for themselves a bank, a community band, a newspaper, and a movie theater. Many of the larger of the numerous lakes in the area had been connected by canals, prompting the funding in 1915 of the Twenty Lakes Boat Course Club. The Florida Boom of the 1920s brought land speculation and a great influx of newcomers to the area. In 1923, the Florida Citrus Festival was first held to salute this important agribusiness. In 1936, tourism became an economic mainstay in Winter Haven when a man named Dick Pope opened Cypress Gardens to the public. 

Organized in November of 1913, the Women’s Civic League of Winter Haven and Vicinity brought together prominent women in the communities of Winter Haven and Florence Villa. The latter was a rural settlement located several miles north of Winter Haven. Sixty-four charter members met in the Bonita Theater in downtown Winter Haven and elected Mary B. Jewett as president. The following year, the club joined the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs, which had emerged as the dominant women’s organization in Florida. Two years later, in 1916, the Winter Haven organization was admitted to the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Between 1913 and 1923, the Women’s Civic League did not have a clubhouse but met in the, now demolished, Presbyterian Church Annex.  

Early projects sponsored by the League included encouraging the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad to build a new depot in Winter Haven and to reroute its tracks through the city to avoid switching cars in the central park. Members lobbied the city government to establish a municipal fire department and to erect fences to contain wandering livestock. In 1918, the League initiated a tree-planting beautification program, resulting in the planting of approximately six hundred shade trees in various parts of the city. A contribution of $456 by the organization launched a campaign for the building of the Winter Haven General Hospital. 

Education played an important role in the activities of the club. In 1915, the League assumed responsibility for maintaining the city library. The library had been organized in 1910 as a private institution and was initially supervised by a men’s club and later was entrusted to the care of the local chapter of the Women’s Temperance Union.  

In 1915, the Civic League purchased the lot on which the present woman’s club building stands. Plans for the building were prepared, but before construction could begin in 1917, the nation entered World War I, and the construction was delayed. The efforts for the construction of a clubhouse were renewed after the end of the war, and a fundraising campaign was undertaken. Membership in the organization swelled from ninety-five in 1914 to its zenith in 1924 with three-hundred-seventy-four members.  

In the Fall of 1922, a new set of architectural plans were drawn up, and construction began early in the new year. The project was completed in November 1923 at a cost of $28,000. Much fanfare was associated with the dedication of the building. Downtown merchants closed their businesses for the ceremony on January 22, 1924. Mrs. Frank S. Poole, the club’s recording secretary, submitted an article on the building and a photograph of it which were published in the March 1924 issue of the Florida Bulletin, a journal published by the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs. The name of the architect who drew up the plans for the clubhouse was not recorded, but the Seymour-Craig Company of Winter Haven Supervised construction. 

Woman's Club of Winter Haven, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed December 22nd 2020. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/77841630.

Woman's Club of Winter Haven, Wikipedia. Accessed January 22nd 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman%27s_Club_of_Winter_Haven.