Opened in the heyday of the Gatsby Era in 1928, The Don CeSar has been welcoming travelers for nearly a century.  From high society's playground to starring on the silver screen to being a Gulf Coast icon, The Don CeSar boasts a rich and glamorous history.

With a sugar-find beach, radiant sunsets, a world-class spa and a vibrant food scene, you really can have it all.  More than a landmark, The Don is epic in style.

.. Timeless .. Majestic .. Cool ..

Real estate descendant, Thomas J. Rowe opens The Don CeSar on St. Petersburg Beach.  Built as tribute to his lost love*, Rowe's opulent resort soon became a popular destination for some of the most famous and notorious figures in the day such as the "sophisticated country lawyer" Clarence Darrow as was mob gangster, Al Capone. Rumors persist to this day that Capone who was known to have business interests in St. Petersburg loved The Don CeSar. Indeed, the guest roster in those early years included captains of industry, department store moguls and oil barons with their families in tow.  F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald enjoyed a week at the Don in 1930.  Other guests were Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe, Henry Kissinger, Harrison Ford, Franklin D. Roosevelt and even Mike and Frank from American Pickers!

Baseball great, Joe DiMaggio visited The Don Cesar as a Yankee during Spring Training.  He loved the hotel and the area so much he and his new bride, Marilyn Monroe spent their honeymoon there.  

Like a Who's Who of politicians, statemen, actors, musicians and celebrities before and after, they've all set their suitcases down at The Don Cesar, that great pink wedding cake of a resort hotel that has towered over St. Petersburg Beach since 1928. 

 The hotel opened, to much fanfare, on January 16, 1928 in time for the winter visitor season.  The just-completed Boca Ciega Causeway, replacing an earlier hand-cranked bridge, lead motorcars to the front door where a stone plaque read:  

"Come all ye who seek health and rest, for here they are abundant."  

A staff of 200 served hotel guests and whatever well-heeled locals could afford the night out.  The cost for dinner and dancing was $2.50 per person.  As the local paper breathlessly reported:  

St. Petersburg spread the light and gaiety of midwinter appeal to the far western limit of her pines and palms on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico and the gulf took on a new illumination, a music to rhyme with the endless roll of the surf and 1,500 dancing feet to set new echoes in the southern skies when the $1,500,000 Don Ce-Sar Hotel on Long Key opened the first page of its history in the brilliant scenes of Monday night. 

Thomas J. Rowe

At the center of  it all was Thomas J. Rowe, always dapper and well-dressed, seeing to each and every detail.  Rowe was an architect from New York who came to Florida for his health in 1924 at the height of the Florida "land boom" of the 1920s.  He paid $100,000 (the equivalent today of nearly $1.3 million) for 80 acres of the barrier island off St. Petersburg, hired an architect, a building contrator and began designing the sandcastle of his dreams.

Rowe, who suffered from asthma and had a weak heart, smoked tiny cigars though did not drink.  In fact, alcohol was only available at the first-floor bar and not in the grand dining room on the fifth floor. He was estranged from his wife, the former Norfolk Symphony violinst Mary Lucille Rowe who remained in the couple's downtown home and rarely, if ever, visited the hotel.  Rowe lived in several rooms on the Don Ce-sar's first floor.  

"It seems that he was more passionate about the hotel than he was about the relationship with his wife, but who's to say, really?"

Todd Gehrke, Director of Marketing for the Don CeSar Resort

Sometimes it seems as if the Don CeSar Hotel, the great pink castle that separates St. Pete Beach from Pass-a-Grille has always been there.  Like the St. Pete Pier and the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, the Don is both iconic and hard to miss .. a landscape feature so distinctive that even longtime residents can scarcely remember a time without it.  The Don was a product of the 1920s Florida land boom and a victim of the Great Depression that followed.  And for 25 years, it served the American military in various capacities. 

Today, the Don CeSar Resort, with the restored opulence of the hotel's 1920 heyday, is No. 5 on the Southern Living ranking of "Best Florida Beach Hotels".

St. Petersburg Times 

January 17, 1928

On May 2, 1940, Thomas Rowe suffered a heart attack in the Don Ce-Sar's expansive lobby of the hotel and died in his room three days later.  His estranged wife, Mary inherited the hotel.  Eventually, Mary lost the Don CeSar to the United States government when they planned to convert the aging hotel into an Army hospital.  Mary was given $440,000 and told to "go away".  It was wartime and she had no say in the matter!

After another $200,000 in renovations, including tearing out guest room walls to create wards, remaking the grand ballroom into a movie theatre and turning the 8th floor suites into operating rooms, the Don Ce-Sar Hospital opened in the fall of 1942.  Eventually, in early 1972 the City of St. Petersburg Beach purchased the Don and in a pre-arranged move, handed the keys to a gentleman by the name of William Bowman.  His purchase price was $460,000.  One of his first gestures, as owner, was to remove the hyphen from the building's name.  The Don Ce-Sar would henceforth be the Don CeSar.  It would take Bowman 18 months and more than $3 million to restore the hotel to its former opulence.  Bowman gave pretty much everything he had to get the hotel up and running as he was committed to getting it back to what it once was and everything that the hotel represented.  Bowman had his workers take out every single pane of glass and repair every single wooden window and restored things that were traditionally in place. Bowman air conditioned all the floors and replaced the plumbing.  He put in balconies, a tennis court and a swimming pool.  He had al the woodwork restored or replaced, the grand staircase, the lobby fountain, brass fittings, metalwork, tiles, sconces, chandeliers, fabrics and carpets.  

It took 12,000 gallons of fresh pink paint (Rowe called Rouge) to cover the hotel.

Bowman was also responsible for building a 152-foot overpass above Gulf Boulevard, conveniently connecting guests with the parking lot he had installed.  Opening day was Saturday, November 24, 1973 and dinner was served for 600 guests.  A spendid time was had by all.  In 1974, the Don CeSar was addedto the National Register of Historic Places.  In 1989, The Don CeSar was named to the National Trust's Historic Hotels of America.  

Today, the hotel is owned and operated by Pivot Resorts and Hotels which has completed more massive upgrades and renovations which includes significant work on Bowman's 1973 Gulf Boulevard overpass and front drive.  It's yet another step on a very long and ongoing journey.

I do not want my hotel slapped together hurriedly to meet this winter's demand.  I do want it to be distinctive and different and I want the work executed properly.  If it is completed for the season of 1926, I shall be satisfied.

Thomas J. Rowe

St.. Petersburg Times

August 23, 1925

 The grand re-opening took place on November 24, 1973. 

Another famous pink hotel is the Royal Hawaiian in Honolulu, Hawaii.

In 1982, Robert DeNiro, James Woods, Joe Pesci and Tuesday Weld starred in Once Upon a Time in America featuring scenes on the beach and the majestic pink palace in the background.

*The Lost Love of Thomas Rowe is presented in a follow-up story on this blog.