Last week I received an email from a reader in New England. He found a rare intact Jungle Hotel serving plate at an estate sale.
I previously reported on broken pottery found in Jungle Country Club Creek and now on display at Admiral Farragut Academy. This is the first intact Jungle Hotel plate that I have seen.
Stanley D. wrote: Hello, hope all is well with you. We came across this jungle country club hotel dish at an estate sale here in New England. Do you have any information on it. What was it used for? What it is called. Is there a resale market for it? We looked all over the internet and could not find any information on it. Except for your website. Lots of information about the hotel, any information you can give would be appreciated. Below are two pictures of the dish.
Later, he sent a picture of the manufacturer's name on the back of the plate:
I replied:
I'm glad you found my website. The plate looks like a serving platter, depending on the size. The hotel hosted many banquets, especially in its first few years of existence before the Great Depression. On the west side of St. Petersburg, two luxury hotels opened in 1926, both are still standing - The Jungle Hotel is now Admiral Farragut Academy and the Rolyat is now Stetson College of Law.
A Rolyat service plate was recently sold at auction and I was able to find information about it here: https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/79681560_rolyat-hotel-st-petersburg-dinner-plate. ... the plate sold for $150.
The Jungle plate has an interesting history - how did it make its way to New England? Stolen, perhaps?
...
This was a very good estate sale find. Thank you for sharing and good luck to you.
Here is the Rolyat plate that sold for $150:
After further discussion, this author purchased the plate and it now resides in my home, just six blocks from its previous residence at the Jungle Hotel (now Admiral Farragut Academy).
I asked for the full story of how the plate was discovered in New England.
Stanley replied:
Here is our story: We were at an estate sale here in Rhode Island. It was in Warwick. We arrived at the sale to find a hoarder situation. There were boxes full of things all around the yard, front and back. The house was also full. My wife was searching from box to box, when she came across the dish. Being resalers, she tried to find information on it on the internet, but to no avail. At that point she placed it in the bag she was carrying to research it when we got home. When combined with all the other things we bundled together, we paid next to nothing for this plate. At home we came across your website. And now it’s is on its way back to St. Petersburg and to your collection.
The plate is nearly a century old. It was born in 1925 in Syracuse, NY, spent some time at the Jungle Hotel and then was taken to Warwick, RI before returning to the Jungle. It has traveled about 4,000 miles and yet, miraculously, it is still intact. How it found its way to the bottom of a box at a Rhode Island estate sale is a mystery. Just as strange is the fact that this author was located and the plate was returned to the Jungle. Many banquets were held at the hotel while this plate was in service. Who knows how many dignitaries and celebrities of the Roaring Twenties this plate served? It probably held a hot dog on more than one occasion for the great Babe Ruth.
