Kelsey City: The Boom Town That Changed Its Name
Florida
The town hall in Lake Park, Florida was not built for the town that uses it today. It was built in nineteen twenty-seven for Kelsey City, the town Lake Park was first called, named for Harry S. Kelsey, a Boston real estate developer who bought land here during the Florida land boom and platted an ambitious planned city with wide boulevards, a yacht basin, and grand promises of Mediterranean elegance.
Kelsey spent millions promoting the development. The boom collapsed in nineteen twenty-six. Kelsey City survived as a municipality but not as a vision.
In nineteen thirty-nine it was renamed Lake Park. The city hall building, a Spanish Mediterranean Revival structure with a tile roof and arched loggia, is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places as an artifact of the era when Florida developers believed they could build an entire civilization out of optimism, sunshine, and borrowed money.
