In its final incarnation, it was the Helen Wilkes Hotel, a residence for the elderly. Its beginnings were more auspicious.
Built for $1 million, it opened in January 1923 as the 160-room El Verano Hotel (opening as the city's premier "fire-proof" hotel) perched on beautiful Lake Worth with 160 rooms, private baths, an elegant courtyard, a large dining room and a bar. The financially troubled hotel was sold to a Daytona Beach man, and eventually to a Jacksonville hotelier who renames it Hotel George Washington. Yes the same owner of the one in Jacksonville where the Beatles did an interview. One of the region’s more colorful, and long discounted, urban legends says it was owned by a German family (the Kloppel’s owned it) and red aircraft warning lights on its roof flashed in a sequence that messaged submarines. In 1946, when the Philadelphia Athletics came to West Palm Beach to train at Wright Field (later Connie Mack Stadium) the players and their manager, Connie Mack, stayed there.
It was the last waterfront hotel in West Palm Beach. It had an intrinsic role in shaping Clematis Street and the waterfront. Back when El Verano opened, it was almost right on the water. Flagler Drive was a narrow road at the time, and fishing boats were docked at the marina across the street. The hotel was known for its buffet lunch. Judges, who favored the spot, often sent jurors there for their county-paid lunches. And after business hours, more than a few courthouse employees could be found there. Just about every social group -- Rotary, Kiwanis, the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches, held their meetings there. It has also long been believed that Palm Beach County's first black architect, Hazel Augustus, served as the local supervisor for the construction, though an Atlanta firm designed the hotel. Some people feel that added historical significance to the hotel.
But this hotel also means something to us. As the Florida Sewage Works Association was completing its organization, a small group sitting together at the Florida AWWA section meeting in Orlando, in just a typical "bull session" common to such meetings, recognized that, in that era, membership of both the Florida Section of the American Water Works Association and the Florida Sewage Works Association was largely plant superintendents, consulting engineers, manufacturers' representatives, community utility officials and similar personnel. Bob Hoy, the representative for the Wallace and Tiernan Company, suggested the state needed a Water Works Operators Association (remember you could count Florida's sewage treatment plants on the fingers of both hands and have fingers to spare). This suggestion was quickly seconded by Dr. A. P. Black, the man who organized the first Florida Water Works Short School and who had been in large measure, responsible for those schools (Dr. Black was known as the man who "invented water" among Florida operators). With this strong backing and the unanimous vote of several operators present, Dick Gibson, then superintendent of the Fort Pierce water plant, was persuaded to be the chairman of the committee to do the feasibility study.
As the operator's organization appeared on the verge of being realized, Mr. Keith Chinn, Superintendent of the West Palm Beach Water Plant, persuaded his company's attorney to draw up a constitution and by-laws. Then in a meeting of five men, Chinn, Gibson, Ghan, Hoy, and Carnahan, in the George Washington Hotel in West Palm Beach in the summer of 1941, the operators association became a reality.
Unfortunately the hotel would not survive. Despite being cherished by so many, the six-story hotel lost much of its architectural significance to changes wrought over the years. That made it unlikely it would be granted designation as a historical building, which could have meant a restoration to its former glory. The original one-story passageway that encircled the front and sides was torn down in 1965. Its arched columns and the decorative medallion over the entrance were replaced with a two-story river rock veneer and concrete canopy. Other interior and exterior architecture elements also disappeared. State officials twice said the building wouldn't qualify for the National Register of Historic Places.