Hall City is a ghost town in Florida. It was established in what is now Glades County, Florida, during 1910 by Rev. George F. Hall, a retired Disciples of Christ minister living in Chicago, Illinois. Built and run locally by Rev. Hall's son, G. Barton Hall, from 1910 until approximately 1925, Hall City was to have been a "temperance town" (i.e., free of alcoholic beverages) and was to be the site of proposed "Hall University". However, the town failed and the bulk of the land was purchased by the Lykes Brothers Corporation, which still owns the original site.Rev. George F. HallRev. George F. (Franklin) Hall was born in 1864 in Clarksville, Iowa, the son of farmer, John Robert Hall. George eventually went to college in Des Moines (Drake University) and considered becoming a newspaper reporter, but after the death of his mother in the early 1880s decided to enter the ministry instead. He married the church organist, Laura Woods, at his first congregation in Kansas. After preaching for a few years at a couple of different midwestern congregations of the Disciples of Christ, Hall formed a partnership with his brother-in-law and began holding meetings in various cities for a few years. After falling ill from exhaustion in the early 1890s, Hall, his wife and two sons, Paul and Barton, lived in Chicago during the time of the World's Fair, an event he wrote about in articles submitted to various Disciples-oriented publications, while he pastored a small congregation. Hall left Chicago and took a position in Decatur, Illinois at a Disciples church, where his preaching and methods eventually resulted in a split of the congregation. In 1902, Hall left Decatur and took his family back to Chicago where he preached at what he called the Christian Tabernacle until 1910. Hall was rather unusual in that, while preaching, he spent a great deal of time developing side businesses and investments as well as becoming a published author on Christian themes. As a result, he was able to purchase the large house of a business executive in Chicago and took pride in not taking a salary from his congregation.
