Even before the land boom hit Sarasota, world-renowned orthopedic surgeon Fred Albee saw the potential for development in Nokomis and Venice. He purchased thousands of acres along what was then called the Gulf of Mexico and, in 1925, hired city planner John Nolen to design his vision of a coastal paradise. Already famous, Nolen had been influenced by the England Garden City Movement that focused on small hamlets surrounded by parks and greenbelts. He brought this urban planning philosophy to America and, eventually, to Venice.

Albee ended up selling his land to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE), which was looking for investment opportunities, but continued Nolen’s contract to “lay out the most beautiful city of which the skilled mind could conceive.” The BLE estimated that 50,000 rail men with their families would move to Venice after they retired.

Nolen designed a beautiful, walkable city, and, within two years, Venice had three grand hotels (Hotel Venice, Hotel Parkview and Hotel San Marco), apartments, a bank, restaurants, parks, lovely homes and buildings, farms, paved streets, beaches, a golf course, civic center, railway station, and every other amenity of a successful city.

But, like all of Sarasota County and Florida, the end came swiftly, leaving behind a nearly bankrupt union and what amounted to a ghost town, filled with everything except people. It took another 30 years, when the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus moved its winter headquarters from Sarasota to Venice in 1960, before there was a surge in the city’s population.