Front entrance to the Gasparilla Inn located in Boca Grande on Gasparilla Island, Florida. All photos by Paul Goldfinger © 2014.   Click all photos to get bigger views.

Side view.  Condé Nast rated the Gasparilla Inn among the top resorts in Florida. The Boca Grande beach is number two of Travel and Leisure’s “best little beach towns in America.”

By Paul Goldfinger, travel editor @Blogfinger.  Re-posted from 2014.

If you were a big shot one hundred years ago, like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison or Harvey Firestone, you would have wanted a high-tone place off Florida’s Gulf Coast, where you could rendezvous in the winter with like-minded society people from the northeast who enjoyed the finer things in life.

After all, the weather here in the winter is unsurpassed. Perhaps you enjoyed golf or going deep sea fishing with your friends, but at the end of the day, you would…