"Crescent Lake Apartments, 605 24th Ave. N., were once home to baseball greats such as Babe Ruth." That sentence appears on the Crescent Heights Neighborhood Association's history page, alongside two other neighborhood stories: a fruit-loading chute on a 27th Avenue North garage and a winter home on Seventh Street North built by Mrs. Mueller of Mueller Macaroni.
The CHNA's Fall 2026 newsletter has the theme "Hidden Crescent Heights," and it repeats all three stories, this time with the word "reportedly" attached. The hedge fits. The Ruth story rests on an address where no documented stay by Ruth has turned up. The baseball history that is on the record sits about ten blocks south, on a field that the state says was custom-built for him, and that field explains why the legend has lasted.
Three stories from an orange grove
The neighborhood association says Crescent Heights began as an orange grove in the 1920s and was built out over about 40 years starting in the early 1920s. In the fall newsletter, Crescent Heights resident and Astral House Interior Design founder Orshi Hajnali adds that many early houses were built as winter homes. Their deep porches and wide roof overhangs did the cooling work before air conditioning existed.
| Story | Where | What the record shows |
|---|---|---|
| A fruit-loading chute angled from a garage's second story | 27th Avenue North | Recorded only as "reported" on the CHNA history page; fits the orange-grove start |
| Mrs. Mueller's winter home | Seventh Street North | Matches the winter-home pattern the newsletter describes |
| Babe Ruth and other ballplayers as tenants | Crescent Lake Apartments, 605 24th Ave. N. | Players renting rooms is part of the building's story. Ruth staying there is described as a rumor |
The chute and the Mueller house fit the neighborhood's agricultural, seasonal beginnings. The apartment story is the one that grew past its evidence.
What happened at 605 24th Avenue North
The most detailed history of the building comes from SPIRITS of St. Petersburg, a local paranormal research group. Its account says the property started as a house bought by F.W. Van Dusen, who moved in during 1924 and rented spare rooms to ballplayers from the Yankees' spring training field. According to the group, he added rooms, opened the Crescent Lake Apartments in 1928, and by 1933 had expanded it into a three-story building with 53 efficiency apartments and a shuffleboard court.
That account says Babe Ruth "is sometimes rumored to have stayed here." It also says the apartments closed in 2001, were torn down in 2004, and were replaced by four townhomes finished in 2005. If that sequence is accurate, the "hidden" landmark in the newsletter isn't hidden anymore. It's gone, and the Ruth story is all that's left of it.
The 24th Avenue block still has a protected landmark of its own. The Clyde Remington House at 602 24th Ave. N., across the street from the old apartment address, was added to the St. Petersburg Register of Historic Places in October 2002. Its historic status is on file at City Hall.
The field the rumor depends on
Ballplayers renting rooms on 24th Avenue makes sense because of where they worked. When the Florida Department of State announced the field's National Register listing in 2019, it described Huggins-Stengel Field, now part of Crescent Lake Park, as "custom built for Babe Ruth." The field opened as Crescent Park Field and was renamed in 1962 for Yankees managers Miller Huggins and Casey Stengel.
The state lists these spring tenants:
- New York Yankees: 1925 to 1941, 1946 to 1950, and 1952 to 1961
- New York Giants: 1951
- New York Mets: 1962 to 1987
- Baltimore Orioles: 1992 to 1995
According to the state, 17 World Series-winning Yankees teams and the 1969 and 1986 Mets trained there. The field saw Joe DiMaggio's 1936 debut as a Yankee, and the Mets held their first spring training there in 1962 under Stengel. The city named it a local historic landmark in 2018, and it was added to the National Register in 2019.
The Yankees arrived in 1925. The Van Dusen house started taking in players in 1924, according to SPIRITS, and became a full apartment building in 1928. The neighborhood association says Crescent Heights started filling in during the early 1920s. A winter-home neighborhood was going up just north of a ballpark that brought a famous team to town every February. It isn't surprising that the neighborhood's best-known story combines the two.
The field still has a public use, at 1320 5th St. N. The state's 2019 release says local baseball leagues use it. The City's fall events guide listed the TASCO teen program's "The Haunting of Huggins" there for Oct. 30, with a historic-site ghost tour on the schedule.
Ruth's longest home run was hit downtown
Another Ruth story gets attached to the lake, and it belongs elsewhere. In 2014, the Northeast Journal traced Ruth's claimed longest home run to the old Waterfront Park downtown. It named March 25, 1934, as the most likely date, and said the ball reportedly reached the West Coast Inn at the southwest corner of First Street and Third Avenue South. The same article says a 2008 measurement put the inn's nearest point 624 feet from the old home plate, and it cites baseball historian Bill Jenkinson's view that the hit may be the longest ever against major league pitching.
Ruth trained at Crescent Lake, but his most famous St. Pete swing happened about two miles away, near the bay.
See the record from a trolley on Nov. 14
Anyone who wants the documented version, with sources, can take the St. Petersburg Museum of History's A Century of Baseball History Trolley Tour on Saturday, Nov. 14, from 9 to 11 a.m. The Society for American Baseball Research curated the tour, which covers the city's spring training fields and facilities going back to 1914. Tickets range from $35 to $45, with non-members paying $45 on the registration page, and the museum is at 335 2nd Ave. NE. The museum says seating is limited.
Who keeps the neighborhood's history now
The Ruth rumor has lasted because people in Crescent Heights keep retelling it, and the CHNA is how they do that. According to the fall newsletter, the association's events committee has more than 15 volunteers, chaired by Events and Communications Director Jordan Postma, and plans both of the neighborhood's block parties. The first was the Halloween Block Party on Oct. 24, on Seventh Street North between 25th and 26th Avenues, the same street as the Mueller winter home. The second is coming up:
- Lights in the Heights: Saturday, Dec. 5, 5 to 7 p.m., on 8th Street North between 25th and 26th Avenues North. The association says more details are coming.
- CHNA Mahjong Club: Started in 2026 by Membership Director Darlene Asselin. It meets the third Monday of each month, 12:45 to 3 p.m., at Roberts Recreation Center, and neighbors are asked to register through the club's Signup Genius.
- Book clubs: The newsletter lists four, including a new thriller-themed fiction club. Its first pick was Beautiful Lies, the debut novel by St. Petersburg author Lisa Unger.
The park the ballplayers once crossed is also changing. Neighbor Dana Wood Schoenbeck reports in the newsletter that the Crescent Lake Park tennis courts are being rebuilt as part of the City's Crescent Lake Park Improvement Project. The old surface has been removed, earthwork has started, and work that began June 1 was expected to take about six months. Her headline estimates the courts will be ready for play by early next year. Pickleball stays on the six existing asphalt courts along Crescent Lake Drive. She points to a City Council proposal for Fiscal Year 2023 that estimated the rebuild at $300,000.
The fruit chute on 27th Avenue North is still on the to-do list. In the same newsletter, Hajnali calls the reported chute one of her favorite clues and says she wants to find it.
At Plotkin Homes, we pay attention to the history behind a house, from a porch built for cross-breezes before air conditioning to a landmark across the street on 24th Avenue. If you own a 1920s home in Crescent Heights and want to know what its age and history mean for its value, we're happy to walk the block with you. Contact Us.
