Women in delicate dresses, white gloves and elegant hats were ready for work at a recent Hollywood Women’s Club tea party.
”We’re prepared to do what we have to do,” President Shelly DeMarco said. But first, the afternoon fundraiser of cucumber and butter sandwiches, fruit salad, fancy teas and scrumptious petit-fours fueled the group’s collective fire to raise money. The club, established in 1922 as a charitable organization, needs $150,000 to continue lifesaving repairs on its 1927 clubhouse. The building, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, was damaged heavily by Hurricane Wilma on Oct. 24, 2005. Wind and rain battered the structure’s front walls, but when a team of workers began stripping away damage to estimate repair costs, they discovered the building’s foundation in decay. Concrete beams mixed partially with beach sand — a common 1920s building practice — are eroding. Fundraising efforts began in earnest to save the charming one-story Classical Revival structure built at 501 N. 14th Ave. on land donated by Hollywood founder James W. Young. The group managed to sock away $55,000.
A boost seemed imminent when DeMarco applied for and won a $50,000 grant from the State’s Florida Trust for Historic Preservation program — but the money disappeared with state budget cuts.