There were two Walter Fullers, both were visionaries and the Jungle neighborhood is their lasting legacy. H. Walter Fuller (1865-1942), the Jungle’s founding father, was the first person to promote the Jungle as a special place to live. He extended the streetcar line to the Jungle, developed a plan for the Jungle's streets and residential lots, and was the driving force behind the Jungle golf course.
Walter P. Fuller (1894-1973) continued his father's vision for the Jungle by building the Jungle Country Club Hotel, the Jungle Prado shopping complex and Piper-Fuller Airfield.
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| Walter P. Fuller at the Jungle Hotel. St. Petersburg Times, March 21, 1926. |
“The true legend of Walter Fuller cannot be told merely in terms of properties bought and sold, bridges built or books published. It must also describe a life of good humor and high ideals during which the abiding goal was the building of a better community to be shared, in good times as well as bad, by poor and rich alike.” – St. Petersburg Times. October 16, 1973
In 1915, after graduation, he returned to Florida and became a partner in his father's many ventures in the St. Petersburg area, including the streetcar line, electric power plant, a steamship line, orange groves, hotels, and real estate companies engaged in developing west St. Petersburg.
He somehow found time to become St. Petersburg High School's first football coach in 1920 and to write articles for the St. Petersburg Times. That's when he met Eve Alsman, a recent graduate of Indiana University who had accepted a position at the newspaper. They wed in 1923.
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| St. Petersburg Times, April 12, 1925 |
Fuller made a fortune during the land boom of the 1920's and invested heavily in the Jungle, buying the Jungle golf course from the initial group of bondholders, then building the Jungle Country Club Hotel right next to the first tee.
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| St. Petersburg Times, October 4, 1926 |
A few blocks north on Park Street, he built the Jungle Prado shopping center, which included the profitable Gangplank Night Club as well as shops that catered to winter tourists and year round residents. Fuller Flying Field, the first airfield in St. Petersburg, was built by Fuller at the north end of the golf course.
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| The Orlando Sentinel, July 11, 1926 |
No sooner had Fuller invested his fortune in the Jungle properties, the Florida land boom ended. There was profit to be made from the winter tourists who visited during the final years of the Roaring Twenties, but when the stock market crashed in 1929, there were few tourists and Fuller lost everything.
He continued to sell real estate during the Depression and wrote for the St. Petersburg Times and other publications. He became a state legislator.
Then he made another fortune in real estate in the 1950's, but lost it to the 1959 recession. He wrote two books about the history of St. Petersburg, "This was Florida's Boom" (1954) and "St. Petersburg and its People" (1972).
In 1959, the St. Petersburg Planning Board recommended that the acreage at the city-owned Piper-Fuller tract in Jungle Terrace be used for a public park which would extend south to include the existing Azalea Park, making it the largest park in the city. The chairman of the planning board was Walter P. Fuller, who favored building a new 18-hole golf course on the land. There might have been a Jungle Country Club version 2.0, but the plan was rejected due to recent changes in St. Petersburg's golf course policy, "based on race relations." (St. Petersburg Times, August 21, 1959).
It was decided to not combine Azalea Park with the new park and in 1960 a contest was held to name the park. The winning name was "Walter P. Fuller Park." It has since come to be known as Walter Fuller Park. It is fitting that the park's name honors both father, H. Walter, and son, Walter P., who were the Jungle's biggest boosters.
