BLET Feature

Fall/Winter 2004
Volume 111 - No. 3& 4

The Brotherhood reconnects with

Venice

National President Don Hahs, First Vice President Ed Rodzwicz and National Secretary-Treasurer Bill Walpert pose next to the plaque donated by the Brotherhood as part of the Venice Train Depot rededication project. The Brotherhood originally built the depot in 1927.

The BLET Executive Committee returned to Venice, Fla., in March 2004 to help rededicate the train depot that the BLE had built there nearly 80 years before.

The Brotherhood donated an impressive bronze plaque as part of the rededication ceremony.

The Venice Train Depot was originally dedicated on March 27, 1927. In 1925, the BLE officials began using its considerable resources to develop a city in Florida, which they wanted to be modeled on Venice, Italy. Venice was a carefully planned community. The BLE hired renowned architects and city planners to build the project. The BLE was doing something that no labor organization had done before - develop an entire city for its members and members of the general public.

The BLE meant for Venice to be a home for its engineers, and advertisements in the Locomotive Engineers Journal portrayed the city as a retirement haven for railroaders. Many engineers did buy homes in the area and continued to live there long after the BLE ended its formal relationship with the city.

As part of its efforts in Venice, the Brotherhood paid $48,000 for the construction of a train depot to service the Seaboard Air Line Railway. The Brotherhood also funded construction of Hotel Venice, the city's first public building, which opened on June 21, 1926.

When the depot was opened in 1927, the Mediterranean Revival style terminal included waiting rooms and ticket windows, baggage and freight rooms, and a 400-foot long roofed platform. The building featured a campanile tower, but a clock face was never installed.

The good times for the BLE in Venice ended abruptly with the stock market crash in 1929. In addition to the Venice project, the Brotherhood had ventured into the banking business. After the crash, the BLE had to foreclose on many of the loans it made to individuals and corporations. The burden of these debts was too much for the BLE to bear and the holdings in Venice were eventually sold.

Gradually, the resort city of Venice became a ghost town. By the late 1920s, sales prospects had vanished, business closed, and guests no longer came and went at the Brotherhood's train depot.

The depot had fallen into disrepair when Sarasota County purchased the site in 1999. The $2.3 million construction project was funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Florida Department of Transportation, Sarasota County and the city of Venice.

Painstaking measures were taken to restore and preserve the depot's original look and feel. Whenever possible, elements of the old depot were restored rather than replaced. The building once again has a tower, almost identical to the one that disappeared from the building's rooftop more than 30 years ago. It will remain a public facility and will now serve as a bus terminal instead of a train depot. However, it is still known as the Train Depot to everyone who lives and works in Venice.

The depot is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

When the Executive Committee visited the depot, they donated a plaque to the city that commemorates the BLE's involvement in its construction.

Text of the plaque is reproduced below ·

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers

Founded on May 8, 1863, the International Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers is the oldest labor union in North America. In the 1920s, the BLE was one of the richest and most powerful unions in the world. Using its considerable resources, the BLE began the task of founding and developing the city of Venice, Florida, in 1925, at the height of the Florida land boom. As part of that effort, the Brotherhood paid $48,000 for the construction of this depot, which opened on March 27, 1927. The depot was designed by Walker and Gillette, at the time a prominent architectural firm in New York City.

The Brotherhood pulled out of its Venice project after the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. Today, the International Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, remains one of the largest and most influential railroad unions in North America.

Photo caption: An exterior view of the Venice Train Depot following its renovation in late 2003.

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