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The Great Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Fiasco of the 1920's

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Truman Koehn, retired Lake Shore Division Engineer sends us this story about the involvement of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) and the City of Venice, Florida.. Truman calls it The BLE Fiasco and for good reason. This information came from a reproduction edition of “The Venice News,” edition of June 3, 1927, which Truman recently received from Jerry Lopus, retired village engineer for the Village of Ashwaubenon, WI.

For those of you who may be wondering, Venice, FL is on the Florida Gulf Coast, north of Naples and Marco Island. It is a city that was built by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers as a retirement community for members of this union. In the 1920's, the BLE was at its peak and owned a huge building in downtown Cleveland, Ohio known as the BLE Building. The BLE also owned a major commercial bank, the Cooperative National Bank of Cleveland, Ohio. After 1902, assets in their bank were growing at the rate of $1 million per month and this prompted the BLE to look into Florida land investment. In the 1920's, officers of the BLE bought into the Florida land boom, which had taken off with the arrival of the railroad system being built into the state. By the 1920's, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad had been built into Venice and the BLE chose this location for their retirement community because of that.

The goal of the BLE was to build in 3 years a perfectly planned community in the Northern Italian style of architecture. Retirees of the BLE would buy 5 to 25 acre farms complete with homes. By 1926, the BLE Realty Corporation was spending $500,000 a month on this development. The BLE built 6 hotels, a bank, a movie theater, a pharmacy, new train station and a bathhouse. The BLE also built a city water treatment plant, put in sidewalks, 6 miles of paved streets with curb and gutter and storm sewers. They also built a 160 acre dairy farm and a 40 acre demonstration farm. By March of 1928, Venice, Florida had 188 residences, 141 apartment units and 83 retail stores.

At the 1927 BLE national convention, a committee investigating its finances reported the BLE was losing millions in Venice, FL and projected even greater losses. Four top officers of the BLE were thrown out and the BLE then voted to get out of Venice as quickly as possible. By early 1929, all of the BLE people were out of Venice, with the BLE reporting a loss of $18 million dollars. By the end of 1929, the crash came followed by the Great Depression. One can only speculate at the losses the BLE would have suffered had they stayed in Venice beyond 1929.

The reproduction issue of “The Venice News” of 1927 focuses on the BLE divisions in Minnesota and the trip they took via Pullman coaches to Venice to check out the BLE facilities, resulting in glowing comments from the General Chairmen of the Chicago Great Western and the SOO Line Railroads. Only a month after this issue first came out the BLE bubble burst and the entire Venice project began to unravel. It was a great idea, just 40 years ahead of its time. (Submitted by Truman Koehn.)

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Posted: 04/10/08