HISTORY - Francis Boardman Crowninshield - continued from pg 51
By 1923 Frank and Louise had become
Florida citizens. They were among the
earliest Boca Grande beachfronters, and
eventually would become the social leaders
of the island.
According to Bayard Sharp, during the
winter they missed their friends, so they
bought fi ve or six houses on the other side
of Gilchrist Avenue and fi xed them up. Then
they would ask their contemporaries to
come down and enjoy the special aspects
of the island – its beaches, birds, fi shing and
tropical beauty. Eventually many of their
friends, as well as Louise‘s brother, Henry F.
du Pont, would buy houses in Boca Grande,
adding an understated but sophisticated
winter colony to the early fi shing community
and phosphate port.
From these beginnings the Crowninshields
became major benefactors of the island,
and Frank would create his special legacy
of watercolors depicting their house and
gardens – images that now offer a virtual tour
of their compound. Although modernized
today, their Florida-style wooden bungalow
with a panoramic view of the Gulf of Mexico
was originally a small fi sherman’s shack that
they bought in the late teens, and changed
over the years.
In time, Louise and Frank landscaped
their grounds with gardens, paths, statuary,
a beautiful swimming pool and a Spanishstyle
poolhouse and studio. Frank’s paintings
trace all of these changes. Mac Griswold
and Eleanor Weller’s “The Golden Age of
American Gardens” called Frank and Louise
“those redoubtable garden makers … who
had a small, enclosed garden at their Gulf
Coast house.” Their garden, while not the
equivalent of Hugh Sharp’s or many in Palm
Beach, it was one of only four gardens in
Florida listed in the “1925 Garden Clubs of
America Visiting Gardens Directory.”
Frank was also involved with Rodney Sharp
in forming the Boca Grande Yacht Club,
sometimes called the “Big Mouth Yacht
Club.” According to Malabar Hornblower’s
article in the Boca Grande Historical
Society‘s journal called “Connections,”
Bayard said that “it all started in the onceupon
days of 1928 or 1929, when fi ve big,
grand yachts arrived in Boca Grande waters.
The rendezvous was not planned, it just
happened. There was Mr. Haskell‘s Placida;
Frank Crowninshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge;
and Alfred P. Sloan’s Rene; Julius “Junky”
Fleischman’s big boat Camargo; and J.P.
Morgan’s 343-foot Corsair. Sharp went on to
say that, “My father had a dinner party for the
group, and right then and there they formed
the yacht club. They designed a triangular
burgee with a black cannon (lateral) and a
black dirk or saber (vertical) with a rum bottle
forming part of the hilt on a white fi eld, with
a gold Star of David (which was Junky’s
idea) where the two cross in the middle of
the burgee. The original club was chartered
and registered with Lloyds; however, the
founding group never met again.”
Sam Whidden of Whidden’s Marina was
Frank’s guide for both his fi shing and his
hunting for over 25 years. Later, Captain
Tom Ammidon became his fi shing guide
and would moor his boat across from the
Crowninshield boathouse next to Whidden‘s
Marina. As well as fi shing trips on his
motorboat, Casuarina, Frank leased land that
extended from Placida almost to Englewood
for hunting quail. Sometimes Sam, Frank,
and Bayard would go out two or three times
a week. But Frank did not just hunt – he also
cared about renewing the bird population
and proper conservation. He hired Raymond
Conway, an Englewood resident, to raise
and release quail, and also to manage the
property.
Frank’s watercolors show much about his
beloved outer world of the Boca Grande
house and gardens, but little of his inner
world. In many ways Frank and Louise‘s
personalities were completely opposite.
She – the more public and outgoing – was
involved in many charities, garden clubs,
gardening, historic preservation, collecting
decorative arts, and providing Boca Grande
with many fi ne institutions. Frank, in contrast,
what is the more private and personal. He
cared little for Louise‘s parties, and more for
nature and outdoor sports. In many ways he
mirrored Teddy Roosevelt‘s love for manly
virtues and physical development. But his
painting refl ects a more sensitive side –
and artistic side that glorifi ed his beautiful,
natural world in Boca Grande.
Frank died in Montchanin, Delaware, in
1950, eight years before his beloved wife.
86 GASPARILLA MAGAZINE • May/June • 2021