Abandoned and Haunted Harder Hall Hotel in FL

Harder Hall Hotel, Sebring Florida

Date added: August 08, 2023 Categories: Florida Hotel

Harder Hall is one of the finer hotels constructed in Sebring and South Central Florida prior to 1930 during the Florida Land Boom Era of the 1920s. It was designed by prominent Florida architect, William Manley King in the Spanish Colonial Revival style.

In May, 1925, a Sebring newspaper reported that a major hotel and resort community development, financed by the Biltmore interests, was planned for Sebring. Under the name of Lakewood Terrace, a development company headed by Vincent Hall of West Palm Beach began construction of a 1.5 million dollar facility on the western shore of Lake Jackson. The entire project, which the newspapers advertised as Sebring's "$30,000,000 development," included construction of a golf course, other recreational facilities and, at minimum, forty houses surrounding the hotel facility. Construction began in November, 1925.

Harder Hall, which the facility was eventually named, stands as a prototypical Boom development. Grandiose in conception, Spanish in design, and almost wholly out of scale with reality and commercial possibility, the building raised local expectations to new heights but soon fell victim to the real estate bust of 1926 in Florida. The company went bankrupt and, although the hotel itself sputtered to completion, few if any of the promised houses appeared. Empty roads and platted lots around Harder Hall stood as testimonials to the great Boom of the 1920s.

Harder Hall and other Boom period construction projects stimulated an intense demand for the talents of architects and builders. The architect of Harder Hall was William Manley King of West Palm Beach. King was born at Macon, Mississippi and studied architecture and engineering at the Georgia School of Technology, Atlanta. His first professional position was with Harry B. Wheelock at Birmingham, Alabama. He quickly advanced in the firm from chief draughtsman to full partner. Wheelock and he were responsible for the design of a variety of buildings in Birmingham during their ten year association.

King came to South Florida in 1920 and the following year established his practice in West Palm Beach. In addition to Harder Hall, King designed a number of the finer residences in Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. Among his other commissions were the West Palm Beach High School; the Royal Danelli Hotel, Palm Beach; the Billows Hotel, Palm Beach; and the Hibiscus Apartments, West Palm Beach. He also designed a number of the public school buildings in Palm Beach County. King's work can be found in every section of Florida. He designed the city halls at Belle Glade and Pahokee, an addition to the Florida State Sanitarium, and several buildings at Florida State University.

Harder Hall was one of south central Florida's finest hotels. It was a natural successor to the Ponce de Leon and Alcazar in St. Augustine and the Tampa Bay in Tampa among the state's finest resort hotels. It and other buildings of its type were essential to the development of Florida's tourist industry, now the lifeblood of the state.

Resort hotels were places to escape. As a result their designers were allowed a certain poetic licence. Many were designed based on regional stylistic trends which often evoked historical and exotic settings. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Spanish influenced hotel design was particularly common in California, the southwest and Florida. Harder Hall is associated with the history of American resort architecture in Florida during the 1920s Land Boom Era.

For decades Harder Hall has been passed down to many owners, the last owner going bankrupt and unable to maintain the building.

Building Description

Harder Hall is a large Spanish Colonial Revival style building located at 3300 Golfview Drive near the city limits of Sebring, Florida. The building is situated on 13.2 acres adjacent to a small lake and across the main highway from Lake Jackson. The original property included two gateways at the entrance to the main highway.

The hotel building contains a seven story central block topped by a hip roofed belvedere. Two, five story, one bay wings flank the central block. A three story hip roofed wing at the north elevation and three and one-half story hip roofed wing at the south elevation then flank this central massing. Three story entrance blocks at the east and west elevations each contain two round cartouches, a second story pedimented entranceway above two spiral columns and an arcaded loggia. A two story kitchen wing is reached through a three story gabled wing on the west elevation.

Eaves are boxed and display round arched friezes at various areas on all elevations. Fenestration is irregular with varying sizes of 2/2, 4/4 and 6/6 double hung arched and rectangular wood sashes. Much of the original clay barrel tile roofing has been lost and replaced with rolled composition.

Harder Hall displays many features associated with the Spanish Colonial Revival style. Among them are the rough stuccoed finishes, arcaded loggias at various elevations, clay barrel tile roofing, arched fenestration and entranceways, arched friezes, multipane fenestration with arched lintels and transoms, fanlights, nine light porthole windows, wrought iron balconies and interior iron work, capped chimneys, and unglazed ceramic tile flooring.

Alterations are limited to the use of replacement aluminum windows and a small one story flat roofed addition at the west elevation.

The spa building is a one story hollow clay tile structure with a hip roof and stuccoed exterior. The small building originally housed changing rooms and a steam room. Today, the structure has been altered internally to accommodate offices, but retains its original exterior configuration.

The pool was constructed in conjunction with the main hall and the spa in 1927 and retains its original configuration.

The small one story gabled structure adjacent to the entrance road was constructed c. 1980 to accommodate a sales office for the Harder Hall Golf and Country Club. The building is constructed of concrete block and has a small shed roofed porch at the west elevation.

The property contains twelve tennis courts, eleven of which are contiguous. The courts are located in a flat area to the west of the main hall. It is probable that the courts are located where the original tennis and lawn bowling areas were located.