IT ALL BEGAN IN 1924 as a very ambitious project wherein the citizens of Dunedin were asked to contribute $100 dollars each for the construction of the hotel along with an extension of Main Street. The realty firm of Grant & Skinner was the main promoter and developer of the project along with several other investors.
The Dunedin Times issue of July 10, 1924 announced that “the hotel will be one that the townspeople will be proud to point out to their friends.”… “It means a new era for Dunedin” and asked each resident to “dig down in your ‘jeans’ and fish out the necessary coin for a share in both.” The project got off to a somewhat hesitant start but funds were gradually being collected.
On August 6, 1925 the Dunedin Times reported that a Clearwater developer named George H. Bowles had paid $250,000 for a controlling interest in the hotel, however, the Fenway was still unfinished and funds were still short. Bowles was also an enthusiastic promoter of that newfangled invention called radio, which in 1925 had only a five-year history of commercial broadcasting. Bowles finally obtained the financing he needed and finished the hotel, and installed transmission towers destined to be used for the first radio broadcast in Pinellas County.
Grand Opening, December 10, 1925. The luxury hotel opened on December 10, 1925, to a roaring success and welcome from the people of the city. A six-hour radio broadcast from the hotel was heard across the nation and to many points in North America from station WGHB. The call letters just happened to be George H. Bowles’ initials. Congratulatory telegrams on the broadcast and the grand opening of the hotel (425 of them!) were received from 36 states, Canada and as far away as Alaska.
In 1929, with the crash of Wall Street and a worsening economy, the hotel ran into tough times and closed for a short time due to financial difficulties and lack of business. James McGill, a wealthy industrialist from the Midwest, bought the hotel, refurbished it and brought in a new management team consisting of his daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Tommy Scanlan, who quickly became very well known and well thought of in the community. They ran the hotel successfully from 1930, with guests arriving from all over the eastern seaboard and abroad. The Fenway became a mecca for tourists, sports celebrities, authors and millionaires alike.
Guests played tennis on the hotel's courts, and croquet was very popular on the huge front lawns, attracting many spectators. A water taxi service transported guests from the long pier owned by the Fenway to local beaches. In all, it was the luxury destination
of choice for a southern vacation.
By the end of the 30s and into the 40s, the hotel had again become a major force in the economy and attracted not just visitors, but also converted many of them into locals. In The Independent, a St. Petersburg newspaper, an article of January 20, 1941 stated that 15% of the guests who stayed at the Fenway ended up becoming permanent residents, buying and building homes in Dunedin.
In 1956, the Dunedin Times reported that Tommy Scanlan, by now the owner of the hotel, had finally decided to sell the Fenway to a Mr. Pauchey, the former owner of the Clearwater Beach Hotel. Mr. Pauchey had several expansion plans in mind and had bought the hotel with the provision that it would continue and expand — but, unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.
The building sat vacant for many years until 1961 when the Fenway became home to Trinity College, also known as Florida Bible Institute.
Schiller International University (with locations in London, Paris, Strasbourg, Heidelberg, Madrid, Leysin and Engelberg) moved into the building in 1991 and has used the Fenway as its local campus to August of 2006. The university relocated to a new campus in Largo, Florida, by the summer of 2007.
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