Built for the Babe: Jungle Country Club Hotel, Part 2

Part 2 of 2

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By early 1925, Al Lang had good reason to believe that the Jungle Country Club, where he served as president, was poised to play a large role in St. Petersburg’s preseason. In recent years, it was common for many Yankees –  including Babe Ruth – to travel to Hot Springs, Arkansas, weeks before the official training camp opened, for preseason conditioning. Golf was a part of their early preparation, and Lang could reasonably expect that Ruth would continue the routine in St. Petersburg, playing the Jungle course and holding court in the renovated clubhouse.

What Lang did not anticipate was competition. Until that point, there had been no serious alternative that combined golf, prestige and proximity in the way the Jungle did, but that suddenly changed.

In 1925, plans for a luxury hotel, the Rolyat, took shape near the new Pasadena-on-the-Gulf golf course. The project was designed to attract the same seasonal visitors and social prestige that Lang had worked so carefully to cultivate. A few months later, Babe Ruth purchased lots in the country club section of Pasadena with the intention of building a winter home. Taken together, these developments suggested that attention could shift away from the Jungle.

The Jungle Hotel, 1927. Photo: Burgert Brothers Collection, Hillsborough County Libraries.

At the Jungle Country Club, the existing clubhouse, even after recent renovations, was no longer sufficient. It functioned well enough for local golfers, but was not capable of serving as a social hub for the most famous athlete in the world, the executives who followed him, or the reporters who chronicled his every move. The nearby Sunset Hotel offered convenience, but not prestige. If the Jungle was to remain in Babe Ruth’s winter plans, something more substantial was required.

Rather than expanding the clubhouse or delaying action, a decision was made to tear down the newly renovated clubhouse and plans were finalized for a grand hotel built directly beside the first tee of the Jungle golf course. Locker rooms would be situated on the first floor.

On June 13, 1925, Walter Fuller announced plans for the Jungle Country Club Hotel. By the following February, the 100-room hotel would open, timed to coincide with Babe Ruth’s 1926 arrival.

Construction moved quickly through 1925. At the same time, other luxury hotels in the city were nearing completion. The Vinoy opened on New Year’s Eve, the Rolyat on New Year’s Day 1926. The Jungle Country Club Hotel debut was delayed until the moment when it could make the strongest possible impression.

That moment came on Feb. 10, 1926.

The hotel opened its doors just as Babe Ruth arrived in St. Petersburg for his preseason conditioning routine. Ruth’s complimentary room was the hotel’s premier suite, overlooking the golf course and directly across the street from Al Lang’s home. Ruth marked the occasion by playing two rounds of golf, making full use of the course and its new facilities.

The hotel’s opening was described as a glittering social event, with more than 250 guests in attendance, imported entertainers, and elaborate décor throughout the building. The occasion was one of the season’s most significant gatherings, setting the tone for the hotel’s role as a social as well as athletic hub. Ruth was present for the opening, helping solidify the association between the hotel and the city’s spring training identity.

In the years that followed, the hotel became an extension of Lang’s baseball ambitions. Springtime banquets were held there, drawing baseball executives, businessmen, players and sportswriters. Photographs taken on the grounds circulated nationally. Babe Ruth played hundreds of rounds on the Jungle course, even scoring a rare double eagle on the 17th hole, a feat he later described as one of the greatest thrills of his life. His February birthday was celebrated at the hotel each year, drawing national newspaper coverage. Every spring, the Jungle Country Club re-entered the national conversation.

Ruth and his adopted daughter Julia on the course (colorized version). St. Petersburg Museum of History.

Ruth never built his Pasadena winter home. The Florida land boom was beginning to cool and the Jungle Country Club Hotel provided, free of charge, everything he needed including the suite, privacy, convenience, and a social environment built around him. In effect, Lang and Fuller had already constructed a preseason residence worthy of baseball’s greatest attraction.

Ruth was a driving force behind the hotel’s construction. Had Lang and Fuller concluded they could not meet the ambitious February opening date and opted to wait, the project might have been abandoned entirely since the Florida real estate bubble burst in 1926, making financing for new hotels nearly impossible.

Two decades later, the economic strains of the Great Depression and the disruptions of World War II eventually made the resort impossible to maintain, but not before it defined an era of glamour. During its heyday, the hotel was a whirlwind of high-society galas, baseball banquets, jazz-age dances, Babe Ruth birthday parties, and sun-drenched afternoons on the fairways, creating a lifetime of memories for the travelers who flocked to “The Jungle.”

In 1945, the party ended when the property was sold to Admiral Farragut Academy. The golf course has since been transformed into the Azalea residential community. The building itself remains in full use as Farragut Hall. A century later, it stands as a monument to that singular moment when celebrity, sport and ambition aligned. Babe Ruth built the hotel’s prominence and secured its permanent place in St. Petersburg history. On its centennial, the hotel reminds us that cities are often shaped by the rare moments when everything falls into place.

Addendum

The Jungle preseason may have played a silent role in baseball history. After his 1925 hospitalization for the “bellyache heard ’round the world,” many sportswriters believed Babe Ruth’s career was in decline, some thought it was over. However, a second act was defined by maturity and discipline and, with the help of preseason conditioning, it led to another decade of dominance.

Steve Elftmann is publisher of The Jungle Country Club History Project and commissioner of the “Babe Calls His Shot” statue at the entrance to the St. Petersburg Museum of History.

Read Part 1 here.