Built for the Babe: Jungle Country Club Hotel turns 100

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Part 1 of 2.

On Feb. 10, 1926, the Jungle Country Club Hotel opened its doors at Park Street and 5th Avenue North in St. Petersburg. Today, the Spanish Mediterranean landmark is known as Farragut Hall, the residence for Admiral Farragut Academy cadets.

The building might not have existed if it weren’t for the convergence of three heavyweights of St. Pete history: Baseball legend Babe Ruth, city booster Al Lang, and visionary developer Walter P. Fuller.

The hotel was an important part of Lang’s strategy to bring the world’s most famous athlete to the city’s west side. As president of the Jungle Country Club, Lang teamed up with Fuller to build a luxury hotel tailored specifically to Babe Ruth’s passion for golf. By placing the hotel on the first tee of the Jungle course, Lang and Fuller turned the resort into Babe’s pre-training camp headquarters.

Al Lang

Al Lang was a key ally of H. Walter Fuller and his son Walter P. Fuller, the developers who reshaped the western edge of St. Petersburg. In 1914, H. Walter Fuller gifted some prime land on Park Street to Lang and asked him to be president of the new country club. The lot overlooked Boca Ciega Bay to the west and the future golf course property to the east.

When the Jungle golf course opened in 1916, it was Lang who hit the inaugural ball off the first tee.

“Except for a brief hiatus following the boom, Lang was the genial and tireless glad-hand president of the Jungle Club for some 15 years,” Walter P. Fuller wrote. “Most of that time he lived across the street from the Jungle Club, usually greeted the first and the last players to tee off for the day and was loud, cheerful and friendly around the locker room all day.”

Lang began bringing major league teams to St. Petersburg in 1914. He understood that professional baseball offered more than sport. It brought visitors during the winter months, filled hotels, and put the city’s name in newspapers far beyond Florida. Spring training was publicity.

After World War I disrupted professional sports, Lang persisted, and in 1922 he secured the Boston Braves for spring training. The Braves were respectable, but Lang was not looking for just any team. He wanted a New York team, one that could deliver national attention.

For several years, Lang courted the New York Giants, then regarded as baseball’s premier franchise. But the game was changing, and so was the nature of celebrity. By the early 1920s, one player had grown larger than the sport itself.

Babe Ruth

Ruth transformed spring training from a routine preseason exercise into a spectacle. Fans traveled to see him. Reporters followed him. His presence alone guaranteed headlines. Lang knew what this meant for St. Petersburg. If the city could attract Ruth, it would attract tourists, photographers and national attention.

On July 17, 1924, it was announced that Lang had signed a contract with the New York Yankees to train in St. Petersburg. The mood of the city shifted almost overnight. What followed was a surge of optimism that local historian Will Michaels later described as “Ruthmania.” The excitement was not about the Yankees as a team. Without Ruth, they would have drawn little more attention than the Braves. The fascination centered on one man: Babe Ruth.

Walter P. Fuller

At the same time, Florida’s land boom was gathering momentum and speculation was accelerating statewide. On the city’s west side, Fuller owned vast tracts of land in and around an area known as the Jungle. Much of it was valuable on paper but difficult to monetize, leaving him exposed to mounting tax pressures.

That situation changed when investor “Handsome Jack” Taylor arrived from New York and purchased a large swath of Fuller’s west side land for an ambitious land boom project, Pasadena-on-the-Gulf. Fuller suddenly had the capital needed to promote and expand his Jungle enterprises.

In 1924, the Jungle Country Club undertook a major renovation of its clubhouse. With Babe Ruth, famous for his love of golf, now arriving in St. Petersburg each spring, the Jungle was positioned to become more than a local course. It had the potential to serve on the national stage.

Visiting golfers stayed nearby at the Sunset Hotel, only a few blocks south of the course. It was comfortable and convenient, but it was not the kind of place that could function as a social center for baseball’s biggest star and the crowd that followed him.

By the end of 1924, the pieces were falling into place. Lang had secured the most powerful promotional force in American sports. Fuller now had the means to act on long-discussed hotel plans. The club had upgraded its facilities. What remained uncertain was whether those efforts were enough to lure golfer Babe Ruth to the Jungle. But there was a problem.

The Rolyat

On Jan. 11, 1925, plans for a luxury hotel in Pasadena-on-the-Gulf were announced. The Rolyat Hotel would rise three miles south of the Jungle Country Club, near a new golf course. “Handsome Jack” Taylor was aggressively ramping up his Pasadena-on-the-Gulf promotions and hoped to catch Babe’s attention just before the slugger’s first spring training trip to St. Petersburg. It worked. In March, Ruth purchased lots in the Pasadena country club section with plans to build a winter home.

The opportunity to make Ruth the public face of Lang’s Jungle Country Club was slipping away.

Next up: Part 2: When Everything Fell into Place.

 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.

St. Petersburg artist Blake Emory works on his statue “Babe Calls His Shot” in 2025. Photo provided.