Naples started here

By Michelle Vachon, staff business writer

For Mary Prince Lipstate, who came to Naples as a baby in the 1920s, the Third Street South area WAS Naples.

Before World War II, there was an airfield at what is now the intersection of Fifth Avenue South and Third Street South. "I started taking flying lessons there when I was 16," said Lipstate.

In the 1920s, her father Jack Prince, who was a pharmacist, opened Naples' first drug store at the corner of Broad Avenue and Third Street South (in the building now occupied by Fantozzi's of Olde Naples).

"They called him Doc Prince - he would get fish hooks out of people's ears and elbows. There was no doctor in town," she said.

At the time, Naples' only grocery store, the Bowling Brothers Store, was also on Third Street South. It was located in the town's oldest commercial structure, dating back to 1919. It is now occupied by the Wind in the Willows.

By the 1950s, the street was synonymous with movies and a soda fountain for the area's youngsters, thanks to Margaret and Arnold Haynes.

They were operating The Beach Store - complete with a menu of burgers and ice cream at the lunch counter, suntan lotion and beach towels - and running the Naples Theater, which was in the Quonset hut - a semicircular corrugated-metal structure.

"I have great memories of The Beach Store,'' said Tony Ridgway, president of the Third Street South Area Association. "I used to go there and get fresh limeade."

When the Haynes sold their business in 1973, the two buildings were torn down to make room for The Corner Building at Third Street South and Broad Avenue.

One business that virtually launched Naples was The Naples Hotel. "My mom's mom used to come down here and stay in the same room every year," said Steve Briggs, co-owner of the Old Naples Pub.

The hotel and the Naples pier were built in the late 1880s by Walter Haldeman and his partners. In those days, the railroad along Florida's west coast stopped at Punta Gorda and the only way to this area was by boat.

From 1889 on, the hotel opened during the winter months. In 1946, the property was purchased by The Naples Company, headed by Henry B. Watkins Sr. Two years later, it began to operate year round.

Throughout the 1950s, the town's celebrations and special events took place at the hotel; religious services were even held there by congregations in the process of erecting their own buildings. In addition, a number of local people either worked for or supplied the hotel for a living.

But by the end of the decade, the property had become a tired building, hard to maintain, said Michael E. Watkins, general manager for the Naples Beach Hotel and Golf Club and grandson of Henry Watkins Sr.

The Naples Company, which was already managing the Naples Beach Hotel at its current location, demolished the old property and sold the land in the early 1960s, he said.

"The area began to change when they tore down the hotel and started building," said Prince Lipstate.

By the 1970s, construction and renovation projects were starting to shape the look of today's Third Street South. One major endeavor, The Plaza, was completed in 1989.

Ridgway, who has been a restaurateur on Third Street South for 25 years - with the Wurst Place in 1971, followed by Chef's Garden in 1976 - said that the area always had its own special atmosphere. "It was a shorter and quieter season."

"But even then, the area was very vibrant," he said.

Third Street South has always been more than a part of town - it's a neighborhood, said Jackie Sloan of the Norris Community Center at Cambier Park, who was here as a child.

Briggs, who moved away and returned to Naples in 1979, said that when he came back he would rarely venture outside of Old Naples. "For months I never went beyond Fifth Avenue South."

"If I couldn't get somewhere by bicycle, I wouldn't go," he said.

"Living in this area, you have the pier and everything at your fingertips."

"It's changed tremendously throughout the years, but it's still a neighborhood," said Sloan.

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