Over a bet during a golf game in 1923, businessman Aymer Vinoy Laughner purchased waterfront property in St. Petersburg and built this magnificent, 375 room hotel that still bears his name. It opened for a gala party on New Year’s Eve in 1925. For the next two decades it served a long list of the social elite. However, by the early 1970s, it had declined into a boarding house and finally closed in 1974. After 18 years of being a haven for the homeless, it received a $93 million renovation and reopened in 1992 to its former glory.
