Page 18 Saturday, December 1, 2012

Twenty-three years after the Wright Brothers made their famous first flight, Capt. George Haldeman landed his aircraft on Nassau Street to deliver strawberries to tourists staying at the Hotel Venice.

That day, Jan. 13, 1927, marked the first known flight to Venice.

Eight years later, the Civil Aeronautics Authority and the Works Project Administration built the Venice Downtown Airport. The single grass-strip runway, situated where the Intracoastal Waterway runs behind the high school today, was one of the city’s first economic drivers since

the Great Depression. The field was completed in 1935 and dedicated as the Fred Albee Municipal Airport in 1939.

Dr. Fred Albee, a nation-ally renowned orthopedic surgeon, and his wife, Louella, arrived by train in the Venice area in 1917. With them were Albee’s cousin Lillian Albee Nash and her husband, Ellis. Together, the two couples invested in sev-eral acres of property owned by Bertha Honore Palmer’s Sarasota-Venice Company.

In Venice-Nokomis, they found raw land surrounded by pristine waters. By 1923, the Albees, with their young son, Ted, were moving into their Florida home, Point of

PHOTO COURTESY OF VENICE ARCHIVES AND AREA HISTORICAL COLLECTION

It is believed Capt. George

Haldeman was the first pilot to land

in Venice, arriving

Jan. 13, 1927, to deliver

strawberries to the new

Hotel Venice.

Venice by planeBy PAM JOHNSON

Special to the Gondolier Sun

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