The first of the seaside fantasy hotels, the Murray Hall Hotel was built by John G. Christopher in 1886 at the oceanfront in Pablo Beach where the Lifeguard Station stands today. Christopher had high hopes of starting a tourist industry to rival that underway in Jacksonville. The hotel was a fabulous three story structure with a tower-like section of six stories in the front and cost the then princely sum of $150,000. It had a billiard room, bowling alley, bar, reading room, sulphur water spa, a large reception hall, over 50 fireplaces, steam heat, an elevator, and its own plant to supply the hotel’s electricity. Water came from an artesian well, which provided all of Pablo Beach with water until the 1920s.
Antique furnishings, crystal chandeliers, imported lace curtains and heavy drapes were used throughout the hotel. The hotel advertised that it had a capacity for 350 guests. Guests could travel on the newly developed railway, the Jacksonville and Atlantic Railroad (1885) from South Jacksonville to the oceanfront. They could stroll the elaborately landscaped grounds and partake in a myriad of turn of the century activities.
On August 7, 1890, after only four years of glory, fire broke out in the boiler room consuming all of the wooden structure and its outbuildings leaving Murray Hall as an ephemeral ghost monument to the memory of the founders of Florida Tourism.
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