Irwin Arthur Yarnell and Josephine Yarnell

The Casa De Josefina (also known as the Irwin Arthur Yarnell House) is a historic home near

Lake Wales Lake Wales is a city in Polk County, Florida, United States. It is part of the Lakeland-Winter Haven, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 16,361 at the 2020 census. History Early history A survey by W.A. Williams and J ...

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

. It is located two miles southeast of Lake Wales off U.S. 27. On June 10, 1975, it was added to the

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

Architectural description

The house is built of stucco-covered

coquina Coquina () is a sedimentary rock that is composed either wholly or almost entirely of the transported, abraded, and mechanically sorted fragments of mollusks, trilobites, brachiopods, or other invertebrates. The term ''coquina'' comes from the S ...

in an eclectic Florida Boom style, a blend of Spanish, Italian, and Gothic, and is E-shaped with a corner tower. A porch at the rear connects the rooms in the three wings. The grounds comprise 18 acres. Irwin Arthur Yarnell, a banker from Minneapolis who helped develop Florida communities including Highland Park, built it for $1.5 million in 1923 and named it for his wife, Josephine; above the front door is a stained-glass window with her name in the grillwork, and there is a sculpture of her profile on a parapet. There were originally gardens including 2,000 species of palms. The house was built by European craftsmen and furnished with antiques bought abroad, and the couple hosted lavish parties there until the Florida bust of 1926 and the stock market crash of 1929 ruined them.

History

Irwin Yarnell died in 1936; Josephine Yarnell continued to live in the house until her death in 1967. She sold antiques, jewelry, and much of the land. Part of the house served at one point as the Ponce de Leon Hall for Convalescents, and it has also been a boarding house and housed a community center. It was open to the public for tours led by the Yarnell grandchildren in the 1960s. Later on, The Miami bank foreclosed on the property and requested that Jacques Gauthier and Beverly Gauthier of Cocoa, Florida purchase the property. They finished the condo developments and moved on. From 1981 it was owned by the Louwsma family, who modified it; it has sometimes been mistaken for a hotel. Contrary to local legends, Josephine Yarnell's family attests that Josephine never believed the house was haunted, but she never refuted such claims because such nonsense kept out trespassers. The family was amused when people later believed Josephine haunted the house, and one claim was her ghost was seen dusting the house, an idea her family thought creative but completely out of character for Josephine. Jean Louwsma said in the 1980s that she thought it was haunted by Josephine herself.

References

External links

* Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Florida Buildings and structures in Lake Wales, Florida National Register of Historic Places in Polk County, Florida Houses in Polk County, Florida {{PolkCountyFL-NRHP-stub