Back to Chapter 5

What Hibbard and Barnett had no way of knowing was that for years, regulators in Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. had been acutely aware of the deception and fraud in the Sunshine State. Yet, they repeatedly covered-up Florida's true financial condition through deceptive reports, federal bank bailouts, regulatory secrecy, and enough high-profile politicians, regulators, and businessmen woven into the loop to make it practically foolproof. For example, Victor H. Northcutt, the Examiner in Charge sent by the Comptroller of the Currency's Office, was a veteran examiner with extensive experience. He reported the chicanery to higher authorities, but he also harbored personal ambitions to become a banker. Pushing for strong enforcement would be a bad career move.

By the time Hibbard established his business, the number of bankers and directors leeching off depositors' money out stripped the number of suckers coming in. He knew that Addison Mizner had moved much of his operation to Orlando, but didn't know that Mizner continued to funnel depositor's money through the Palm Beach National Bank. On June 21, 1926, Guy C. Reed, a Mizner stockholder living in New York, filed a lawsuit against Mizner's corporation, charging it was insolvent, and engaged in fraudulent advertising. The news leaked to the bank's richest depositors, who quickly and quietly pulled out their money. By the end of the week, the bank closed permanently.

On Monday morning, June 28, three weeks after Hibbard and Barnett recorded the plat of Fern Park Estates, a state bank examiner posted a curt notice on the front door of one of Mizner's favorite banks, the Commercial Bank and Trust Company. The bank would not reopen for business. Word of the closing triggered runs on affiliated banks. One newspaper described the withdrawals as "fierce." Another said, "Coffee cooled in china cups." Undoubtedly, it did.

By noon, a tornado of humanity swirled around the Palm Beach Bank and Trust Company, while frightened tellers locked themselves in their cages for protection. The Palm Beach National Bank, another one on which Addison Mizner had come to depend since his elite stockholders left, closed the next day. The official report Comptroller of the Currency Joseph McIntosh gave to Congress said the Palm Beach National Bank failed because of "unforeseen" economic conditions, and not because of "incompetent management" or "dishonesty." However, the secret records of the Comptroller of the Currency's probe stated that the bank failed because of fraud and insider abuse.

Immediately, anxiety spread through the Manley-Anthony banking chain in South Florida. Two weeks later, a lawsuit accused W.D. Manley of operating a massive bank fraud conspiracy, and that Bankers Trust Company of Atlanta was insolvent. After an Atlanta judge appointed a receiver for Manley's company, anxiety turned to panic and spread through Florida and Georgia like brushfire with a tailwind. In only ten days, 117 banks in the two states turned to ashes. On the night of July 16, 1926, four months after Hibbard signed on as Barnett's exclusive agent for Fern Park Estate's and a week after breaking the Manley chain, banks began to fall as quickly and systematically as dominos. That torrid first week of the banking bust concluded with the suicide of Manley's partner James R. Smith.

Not surprisingly, nobody who had caused the debacle wanted to take responsibility for it. Instead, bankers, regulators, and newspaper owners retaliated by perpetrating a sham equal to the empty promises they had made for years. The boom produced one set of lies. The bust produced another set. When Hibbard picked up most any newspaper, he found solid economic reassurance. Florida Comptroller Amos said, "The public [has] no need to become panicky for the trouble ... has spent itself, and the sky is already clearing." To compound the fraud, Dr. J. H. Terrell, Florida Bankers Association president - and J.R. Anthony's partner at the Commercial Bank and Trust Company of Ocala, declared, "Florida banks are in excellent condition ... Fundamentally, Florida is financially in better position than ever in her history. The banks are in a strong liquid position." In Georgia, T.R. Bennett, the state's banking superintendent, swore to citizens, "The trouble ... is not with the banks; it is with the people ... Agitators and hysterical people are doing incalculable harm."

Buyers evaporated from the market, leaving Hibbard squeezed into a real vise. He needed to make sales, and Barnett was probably anxious to get back the money he had invested in purchasing and planning Fern Park. As if Barnett and a sliding economy weren't enough motivation, Hibbard had to justify to the near-hysterical Mel that staying in Florida had been smart. The move had torn her away from her beloved Winnetka and her father. She tried to make a home for Hibbard and two growing boys in a place that was steamy and sweaty in the summer, and fly swatters were a household necessity six months out of every year. In her mind, her husband had staked their financial future on a land filled with swamps and mosquitoes. Hibbard felt the crush of responsibility for his decision. He could not stand to fail. He would have been mortified to fail, as a husband and provider, in front of his wife, children, and family up North. Certainly, to fail conspicuously would shame him in front of Mel's father, too. He had to succeed. The alternative was unthinkable.

In addition, Hibbard believed in Barnett's vision and shared it enthusiastically with everyone he met for the next week. He persuaded, promoted, and put his reputation on the line. No sales followed. When that happened, he probably thought of one of his most cherished Bible verse, Proverbs 9 Verse 18: "Where there is no vision the people perish." He knew buyers would follow a buyer they felt had vision. Then it occurred to him, if he had to become his own first buyer because of some bank failures, then he would.

Mel was standing by her agreement to keep the family in Florida when Hibbard crossed over the line, and grandly proposed to her that they buy a home site in Fern Park. Her grit matched his gravel at every turn, and her anger was understandable. Hibbard probably offered to build her a home in Fern Park, which would have sent her into a vortex of emotions. His "Babe" wanted nothing to do with his godforsaken Fern Park.

Like mother, like daughter. When Mel was a child, her father wanted their family to move away from his wife's socially civilized hometown of Albany, New York. His brother, Arthur Leonard, had become CEO of the Chicago Stockyards and needed help in getting cattle feed. Since J. R. was in middle management for the New York Central Railroad, the match seemed logical. However, Harriet Leonard felt no desire to leave her family and friends in favor of a city known for its cattle pens. J. R. finally lured his wife west with a promise to build her a home even grander than her parents' home in Albany, and one with a tennis court. That did it. Mrs. Leonard moved, but she occasionally let her displeasure be known, and at high volume.

Hibbard decided to meet Mel halfway - literally. He suggested they buy two lots: one lot in Fern Park, in hope of jump-starting sales, and another lot, a grand one on the eastern shore of Lake Maitland. The lakefront property was half-way between their Winter Park shop and Fern Park subdivision. Hibbard could expect to get decent terms because borrowers were scarce, and after networking with bankers over the last six months, they knew him. Barnett would be happy to take an IOU just to get the subdivision rolling.

No doubt, Mel rued the day she ever said, "I do." And although Hibbard could not demand her compliance as her father could, he refused to budge in the face of wife's fits of rage. Mel ruminated, searching for the lesser of two loathsome choices. Divorcing Hibbard would be against the religious and social tolerance of either of their families, and the Lake Maitland property laid further out of Winter Park than she wanted. To take Hibbard's offer would further anchor herself to a land she hated. Finally, rather than feel defeated and shamed by divorce by her husband's business, Mel signed the two contracts.

When it came to naming the house they would build, Hibbard and Mel met each other halfway again. Hibbard would have allowed Mel's surname to have top billing with "Leon Cassel," but they agreed "Cassel Leon" sounded best. To help them create the perfect family atmosphere on Lake Maitland, they brought two people into their lives. First was architect James Gamble Rogers II, her brother Daniel's best friend, with whom they had visited in Daytona Beach on their way South. Gamble would design a home to capture the soft evening breezes in which Mel reveled, and show off the expansive lake view, as well. Second was Fleetwood Peeples, the popular Rollins College swim coach. Fleet also taught small children, even infants, how to swim, and Hibbard and Mel knew it would be only a short time before their two small boys found the lake irresistible.

Even so, no matter how hard Hibbard tried to make Florida tolerable for Mel, Mother Nature insisted on being contrary. Before the ink dried on the contracts, the first hurricane of the season brushed through Miami and headed north. Known as the Bahamas-Florida Hurricane, it flooded the little town of Moore Haven with water from Lake Okeechobee. By the time it reached Winter Park, the hurricane brought harsh thunderstorms and caused considerable damage. When Mel faced the destruction, she saw that gracious oaks and towering pines had been yanked unceremoniously out of the ground by their roots. Infrastructure for the electricity and phone services were decimated. Phone lines were lying like spaghetti all over the ground. Buildings were battered and shattered. Certainly, Mel told Hibbard she did not want to hang around to experience 140 mph winds like the ones that battered the Caribbean and killed 287 people. Because the National Weather Bureau did not bother to track hurricanes at that time, the whole experience left her a bit frightened, always wondering if the next wind might be more than a summer thunderstorm. By now, however, Hibbard had them bound up in commitments, contracts, and personal agreements. They had no choice but to close their transactions.

Forever optimistic, Hibbard encouraged Mel to block the hurricane wreckage out of her mind, as if it never actually existed and focus on their home. They wanted it built out of cedar, with a sleeping porch on the lakeside, a coquina rock fireplace in the living room, and enough space for her piano. They planned to have parties and sail on the lake.

When Hibbard took a break from the planning, he could read what he figured was good news: a grand jury had indicted Comptroller Amos for malpractice regarding the Palm Beach Bank and Trust Company, and the Commercial Bank and Trust Company of West Palm Beach failures. Along with Amos, they also indicted officers of the two banks for making secret insider loans to their own companies, including the Mizner Development Corporation. However, Amos' indictment only caused bankers and politicians to cover their tracks further. After his 1926 indictment, Amos sealed his regulatory records and established Florida's secret regulatory system that is still in force today: it prohibits the public from seeing the federal government's regulatory and liquidation records of a defunct bank or savings and loan for another fifty years. The federal records of an institution that failed in 1970 remain sealed until 2020. States have even more power, including the right to destroy or permanently prohibit the public assess. Like many Florida residents of that time, Hibbard and Barnett would never live to know how widespread the corruption really was, only the chaos it caused.

Temporarily, citizens had hope for their future; then disaster struck again two weeks later. On September 22, 1926, a hurricane, known as the Big Blow, packing 125 mph winds, violated South Florida. It snapped houses like matchsticks, leaving 50,000 people left homeless, and 300 others dead. If there had been any buyers around before, they vanished, and what remained of the boom turned to bust. While Hibbard was relieved that he and other Winter Park residents escaped the hurricane's damage, he had a wife and two small sons he needed to support - and two mortgaged pieces of property - by selling others on the virtues of living in what he described as a paradise. Failure still was one luxury Hibbard couldn't afford.

In Altamonte Springs, the warm welcome the International Press Association had received in February vanished, as well. At first, the announcement had turned into a local land rush, but when the association realized it needed to purchase land adjoining the sixty-five acres Haines had donated for Press City, no one wanted to sell. The reason is not clear, but possibly the neighbors wanted to extract a premium price and the association refused to pay up. Possibly, neighbors wanted to hold their property for later profits and waited for the other guy to sell. Regardless, for many Northerners, including the International Press Association, backers of Press City, Florida no longer held any excitement, unless they counted hurricanes.

Hibbard's grandmother Lydia insisted on his being religiously observant as a child, but he did more than a little praying in 1926. Together with his vision and stubbornness, it paid off in a big way. In October, two months after Hibbard bought his Fern Park Estates property, the next sale closed. Reverend Hart Fuller, previously with the New York Methodist Conference, and his wife bought a lot and started building a home. A few weeks later, Grace Spain and Elizabeth Jones (occupation not noted) each did likewise. Harold Knapp, conductor of the Evanston Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Northwestern University Music Department, also bought a lot. When Winter Park's winter season kicked into full gear, so did Fern Park Estates' sales. Aunt Mae bought a lot just for the fernery income, as did publisher Roy Nash. Mr. and Mrs. Gunnell (occupation not noted) wanted a winter residence. Col. Charles Hallet, retired from the British Army in India, built a home on Lake Concord. With him, he brought Captain and Mrs. Clemmets Hallet. By May 1927, despite the wrecking of the banking and real estate markets in Florida, Hibbard and Barnett had sold eleven lots to people from Illinois, Winter Park, New York, England, and Canada.

Like a statewide metronome, optimism swung back and forth. Banking was still a crapshoot. No one knew what to believe. Some banks remained open but were actually insolvent. Had the full truth of the fraud been known there would have been more bankers in prison than in Tallahassee, the capitol of the state.

Given the rampant mistrust of people and institutions, Hibbard and Barnett discarded the flowery prose written for the "Artists and Writers Colony of Florida." Probably, at Hibbard's suggestion, they updated their sales pitch, promoting a more enticing slogan: "Fern Park Estates - Where an Assured Income Awaits You." Although nothing was truly assured, the brochure implied that owning and building in Fern Park Estates was at least as good as money in the bank. It invited prospective buyers to enjoy the finest in boating, fishing and swimming in clear blue waters. The area had every comfort a resident would want: excellent water for drinking and irrigation, telephone, and electricity service. Residents held their own musical recitals at the Community House. A pleasant four-mile trip to Winter Park presented cultural, educational and recreational experiences unparalleled elsewhere in Florida. For those desiring a winter retreat, no major northern city lay more than a mere 43-hour train ride away.

Away from the glossy brochure and its fanciful, enticing language, the financial picture grew ever darker. The company's records left no simple explanations, but given the difficult times and the fact that Barnett and his father received a cut of every sale Hibbard made, the two men's personalities slammed against each other harder than cymbals in Aunt Mae's fledgling orchestra. The sale of a lot to A. Maxwell Sloan appears to have ignited a commission dispute between Hibbard and Barnett over $400 ($4,800), as did Hibbard's $362 loan to Garrett Hedge to build his home. Being a writer, Barnett probably defended the strict language written in their agreement. Hibbard, with his broad-brush vision and fast-moving mind, would have argued what was practical for the moment. The tumultuous economic times would cause outbursts and disruptions in the best of partnerships, but these two issues brought Hibbard and Barnett to a bitter end.

For almost a year, people had known Hibbard as the exclusive sales agent for Fern Park Estates. To save what he could of his sales efforts, he decided to become an independent developer. He purchased a small tract of land immediately south of Fern Park Estates from Alice Boehler and started platting it into individual fern estates. Again, given the economy, it is likely that Hibbard conserved his cash and borrowed from banks or asked the seller to take back a mortgage.

Any buyer wanting to see either Hibbard's or Barnett's land would get there by driving south, north on the Dixie Highway, from Orlando and Winter Park. However, they would come to Hibbard's property only blocks from Fern Park Estates. To piggyback the name recognition he had built with Barnett, Hibbard named his five-lot subdivision Casselberry's Addition to Fern Park Estates. Barnett, no doubt, raged at the thought of his former sales agent riding on the coattails of his subdivision.

In mid-December 1927, Hibbard sold his first lot to Morris Glaser, a friend of Mel's father, who also worked at the Chicago Board of Trade. Hibbard contracted with another buyer for a lot to close when he could incorporate his business. When he did, Hibbard incorporated two companies: Winter Park Ferneries, Inc. and Winter Park Fern Corporation. After the angst between Hibbard and Barnett over Casselberry's Addition to Fern Park Estates, the second name would limit any possibility of confusion: both belonged to Hibbard. Because Hibbard felt he should have other people involved, it's likely that Mel gave her four shares, and attorney Vans P. Agnew his one. With his presence officially established, Hibbard converted part of the remaining acreage into fern estates. He reinforced his company name by calling the subdivision Winter Park Ferneries. After that conciliatory move, Hibbard probably figured that life around Barnett would go smoother. The game, however, had just begun.

Prior to their split, both Barnett and Hibbard had wanted a United States Post Office for Fern Park Estates. More than a convenience for owners, a post office would denote the permanence and status of an actual town. Finally scoring one over Hibbard, Barnett secured the approval for a post office and located it in his packinghouse. Reverend Hart Fuller, who had been Fern Park's second buyer, became the postmaster. With such a convenience nearby, Hibbard began advertising with the Fern Park address, as well as his Winter Park address. Barnett shot back that Winter Park Ferneries was not inside Fern Park Estates, so therefore Hibbard's company was not entitled to use the address. Barnett was determined to make delivery as inconvenient as possible for Hibbard, if he could not make it impossible.

Of all the promises Barnett and Hibbard had made to buyers, the most elusive was phone service. According to legend, Carl Galloway, owner of the Winter Park Telephone Company, rebuffed any request from either man to extend service the extreme distance of three additional miles from its current service area in the town of Maitland. Refusing to let Galloway deny him service, Hibbard pointedly asked how many hookups would it take to get the phone service to his ferneries. The number was six, a daunting number at that time. Hibbard didn't flinch; he placed the order: one for the office, and the rest to be hung on trees. As far as he was concerned, the trees were residents, and he would pay their bills. While some people remember the story differently, this version has endured as the most memorable of Hibbard's never-give-up business style.

As Hibbard promoted Winter Park Ferneries, Barnett decided not to get mad, but to get even. He contrived a brilliant plan to fence in his former sales associate. Barnett already owned the land north of Hibbard's, so he went to Alice Boehler, who owned the land of the other three sides of Winter Park Ferneries, and had sold Hibbard what he now owned. On September 5, 1928, Barnett closed on Boehler's land, completing his strategy and putting a strangle hold on any expansion plan Hibbard might have had. Barnett paid more than $18,000 (about $200,000) for vacant land in an uncertain market. It was the going rate for revenge and an untimely purchase.

Within two weeks, came Florida's third hurricane of the season. The great Okeechobee Hurricane blasted up from the Caribbean, showing what a smooth tropical breeze could do with a 900-mile running start. Because of improved weather bulletins, Palm Beach residents could prepare. However, no one could prepare for the devastation to the mostly migrant-occupied areas. The storm surges beat down the dike around Lake Okeechobee, killing 2,500 people. After punching Central Florida with 130 mph winds, the hurricane continued to Georgia and the Carolinas and did not dissipate until it reached Toronto. With 4,087 deaths, it remains one of the ten most destructive hurricanes in American history.

After that mighty blow, many newcomers grabbed what money they could get their hands on and any belongings that had not been looted or blown away, and abandoned the waterlogged Sunshine State. Up North, stockbrokers anxiously awaited their arrival, eager to invest that money in a sure thing: the raging bull market on Wall Street.

By the end of 1928, 150 banks in Florida and Georgia had locked their doors, but it was too late for depositors. More than $30 million ($350 million) had vanished. That same amount would have covered 45% of Bill Gates' share of Microsoft the day it went public in 1986. Comptroller Amos faced charges of gross malpractice. When he did, Amos pointed his finger at the Georgia banks. In Atlanta, Superintendent Bennett pointed his finger at Florida banks. Federal regulators pointed their collective finger at banks in both states. Each one declared that however much the other banks were at fault, they themselves were innocent.

Around Fern Park, Hibbard and Barnett had no money either. Their competition for dwindling floral and real estate customers and their territorial feuding had left them stalemated, a position neither one could afford. Hibbard had all his chips on the table, but Barnett had one ace that gave him the better hand.

Top