HISTORY
Thanks to Pirate Coast Magazine/Becky Paterson and David
Futch, we are able to bring you this article as it was written in
the May, 2004 edition. It was written only as David Futch could
write it, and we wouldn’t change a thing. Futch is currently a
writer in Los Angeles.
We left off in our last edition with the fi re that almost destroyed Hotel Hell –
and the ghost that may have saved all of its occupants.
Porter Goss, R-Sanibel, visited Boca Grande a
number of times to get a handle on what to
do with downtown, and with Hotel Hell.
“There are a lot of fl avors on Boca
Grande,” Goss said in a 1983 article in the Fort
Myers News-Press. “The diffi cult part is trying to
fi gure out what those fl avors are. The whole
community is cockeyed when it comes to conforming
to existing regulations. Nearly every building in
the community somehow violates existing
regulations. The buildings are too close together.
They cover too much of their lots. The property isn’t
zoned correctly. The list goes on and on.”
When Rick Thurkow purchased Hotel Hell he
renamed it Hotel H, as a concession to Lee County
offi cials. What he couldn’t have imagined was the
care Hell needed to return to her Quick glory of the
1930s, 40s or 50s. Instead of demolition, Thurkow
and his worker bees spent more than a year sanding,
painting, rewiring, putting up new interior walls and
light fi xtures, installing bathrooms and ceilings, and on
and on and on.
“It was in pretty bad shape,” Thurkow said. “What
I salvaged was the outer walls, which were cypress
siding – so old and hard you couldn’t drive a nail in
them. We took the walls down to bare wood and
there must have been 40 or 50 coats of old paint
on the outside. Most of the pine fl oors inside were
covered in paint. It took my crew and me hundreds
of hours using a big, circular sander to strip the
fl oors.
“I made some changes, like fi ve loft additions,
and used the attic area from the old building to
Reprinted from Pirate Coast Magazine
Written by David Futch • Copyright David Futch
create offi ce space. A circular staircase to my offi ce
replaced a rickety one. Most of my stories about the
place aren’t so funny. I had problems with people
who didn’t pay their rent, evictions. One tenant who
went to jail for whatever reason was a pack rat and
it took me days to get his stuff out of the place.”
In the early1980s, Lee County building codes
created many roadblocks that stopped owners from
saving non-conforming structures such as Hotel Hell,
the train station, the offi ce building behind Fugates,
the Old Theatre Building, or houses on Banyan
Street or Park Avenue.
Without Hell, and architect Rick Thurkow’s
perseverance to save what most people in Boca
Grande considered an eyesore, downtown would
look much different. There would be no renovated
train station, no fi xing up Rachel’s Dress Shop
(Where Gasparilla Outfi tters is now), no new bay
for the fi re department’s new ladder truck and little
chance of preserving Boca Grande.
Hotel Hell was at the center of a fi ght with Lee
County that would lead to the creation of the fi rst
historic district in the county, a move to preserve
historic buildings and lifestyles.
Eventually, the late Hank Browne and his wife,
Suzie, bought Hotel Hell.
“Suzie and I bought Hotel Hell because we love
old buildings and, of course, real estate in this area is
a good investment. I came down to look at a house
for a friend I had known for 20 years. I said to myself
that my friend was right about Boca Grande and we
moved here,” Hank was quoted as saying.
64 GASPARILLA MAGAZINE May/June 2020