Not to be forgotten: architect William J. Carpenter

By Pat Hatfield
BEACON STAFF WRITER

posted Feb 3, 2009 - 11:38:06am

The name William J. Carpenter is not familiar to many. He's the man who designed a number of distinctive buildings in West Volusia, including schools and the Putnam Hotel. He will not slip forgotten into the mists of time, due to the dedication of his grandson.

John "Jack" Carpenter of St. Augustine, a retired electrical engineer, grew up in a home filled with his grandfather's art and architectural drawings. His taciturn grandfather said nothing about his career, and, as a child, Jack took the watercolors and drawings for granted.

After Jack retired, he began delving into the life and work of his Grandfather William, who immigrated to the United States from England in 1878, at the age of 16. Jack has about 50 of his grandfather's watercolors and most of his architectural designs.

Jack described his grandfather as "a man of vision with the ability to turn dreams into functional designs to meet long-term community needs."

How much William had trained as an architect in England is unknown, but he declared architecture as his profession when he reached the shores of the United States, Jack said.

After stints in Spokane, Wash., Pittsburgh, Safety Harbor and St. Petersburg, William Carpenter and his family arrived in DeLand in 1922. William came to West Volusia because he got a contract to design the Putnam Hotel.

"He was only here for six years," Jack said, but in those short years, William created a wealth of design.

The Putnam, which was a grand place to stay in its heyday, was the first of many projects William undertook, including designing the Cassadaga Hotel in 1927.

In 1925, William designed a building for attorney Joe Scarlett Jr. It was built on the east side of the Volusia County Historic Courthouse. That building was demolished last year to make way for Chess Park, scheduled to open in February. William Carpenter's artistic embellishments, including a coat of arms from the Scarlett building, are not gone — they now adorn Chess Park architecture.

Joe Scarlett Jr. was just one West Volusia leader with whom William collaborated to design state-of-the-art buildings that incorporated classic and Mediterranean designs. William, who spent some time in Mexico, also included Spanish-mission style in some of his designs.

William Carpenter worked with Vince Gould, Earl Brown, Bert Fish, Cary Landis, George Marks, and others, designing buildings in West Volusia. Just east of the Scarlett building, William Carpenter put his touch on the Landis-Fish building. At the corner of North Woodland Boulevard and West Rich Avenue went the Givens building.

The Masonic Temple building at the corner of West Howry and South Woodland Boulevard, designed in 1927, is now home to The Mix salon. Proprietors Jim Carey and Randy Felix, who have been renovating the building, featured William Carpenter's works, gallery-style, at their Jan. 3 opening reception.

Seville Elementary School, though closed now as a school, is still a centerpiece of its rural community, as is Enterprise Elementary School. William designed both in 1923. In 1924, he designed Port Orange and Holly Hill elementary schools. In the remainder of the 1920s came Dempsey Brewster School, Pierson Elementary and others.

William raised his family in DeLand. Three sons attended Stetson University; one graduated, and two transferred to other schools.

When boom went bust

Recent Florida construction woes and economic bad times aren't the first.

William Carpenter's work was thriving in the mid- and late 1920s. He designed an eight-story hotel for a proposed DeLand Country Club project, and a similar hotel to be built in Orlando. Then, Florida's land boom suddenly ended, and construction projects screeched to a halt.

"When the bust came, he lost everything," Jack said. In 1929, the stock market collapsed, and William Carpenter's investments, like those of many others, disappeared.

William began to shrink into himself. He got a studio in Daytona Beach, where he continued to sketch and paint watercolors. Later, he moved to Palatka, where he died in 1953.

His architecture is his legacy, and so is his art.

The subject of one of William's watercolors is the 1933 The Forgotten Man — a down-on-his-luck hobo, like many who drifted to Florida in the 1930s.

Jack Carpenter is determined his grandfather will not become a forgotten man. He is compiling information on William and his work, which Jack hopes will become a book. Contact Jack Carpenter at (904) 471-8656, or send him an e-mail at chrisnjack@bellsouth.net.

— pat@beacononlinenews.com

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