Venerable Realtor Focuses on Marco’s Early Model Homes

When he stepped up to the lectern, respected Marco Island Realtor Marv Needles appeared to be taking a page from the popular comedy Caddyshack. As he started his presentation on Mackle-Built homes, a close-up of a gopher flashed onto the widescreen display in Rose History Auditorium. But the subject of Needles’ Thursday, March 20 talk to a nearly full house had nothing to do with the 1980 comedy classic.

Needles explains why he leads off his presentation with a picture of a gopher by explaining that the gopher actually represents a youthful version of himself at the beginning of his career with Deltona Corporation, the developers of modern Marco Island. Needles said he was indeed hired as a go-fer.

“When I first was hired by Deltona Corporation, they said, ‘We're going to pay you $90 a week for this job. When we tell you to go-fer something, you go-fer it.'” Needles deadpans. “Two weeks later, my wife was given a job as a receptionist for $95 a week. So, she was the breadwinner."

Needles is used to waxing philosophical about the early days of the modern development of Marco Island - although the size of Thursday’s audience caught him a bit by surprise.

"I've never had so many people, though I do this fairly frequently,” Needles said. “I've done it for church organizations, and I've done it for the Board of Realtors. I do a historic program, which is different from what you're going to see here.”

Needles had his attentive audience hooked and kept them on the line for the better part of an hour with his deep dive into the subject that is all the talk of the Marco Island Historical Museum these days - the initial model homes designed expressly for Marco Island by architect Herb Savage for the Mackle Brothers, the leaders of the Deltona Corporation.

The gregarious Savage, who came to the Island with the Mackle Brothers, Elliott, Robert, and Frank Jr., lived to just weeks short of 100 years old on Marco and was viewed as a local treasure by many of its residents. Savage also designed the original Marco Beach Hotel (now the JW Marriott), country club, and yacht club for the Mackle Brothers. His impressive model home designs are the subject of the museum’s current exhibit, The Florida House: Marco Island’s Mackle-Built Model Homes, on display through June 7.

On modern day Marco, Mackle-Built homes - or Mackles are disappearing as property owners are opting to tear them down in favor of larger, more lavish homes. Needles’ talk provided his listeners with a firsthand account of how Mackles came to be.

Needles laid the groundwork by touching on the Island’s deed restrictions.

"I think this is an important factor of it,” he said. "If you have never seen this before, it is very simple. It's monitored and enforced by the Civic Association. The docks were only allowed to extend five feet into the water. Today, I don't think anybody has a dock that’s less than 20 feet in the water.”

Home sizes were also part of the Island’s deed restrictions. 

"Certain areas of the island had a minimum size of 1,000 square feet (SF). There were other areas that were 1,200 SF. Others that were 1,500 SF. The highest was 2,000 SF.”

Interestingly, many of the Mackle-Built homes were advertised with numbers well below 1,000 SF. Needles focused on the 1968 models.

"The Tartan was one of the 1968 models,” Needles said, "it was 838 SF. And you say, ‘what?’ It's a minimum of 1,000 SF. The deed restrictions identified that you would get certain credit for the front porch. You'd get a certain amount of credit for a screen porch on the back. And you get certain credit for a garage. You literally could build a 400 or 500-SF air-conditioned area as long as your garage and patios were big enough. The next one is the Century model. Both of these are on Collier Boulevard, by the way. They're still there.”

Needles wrapped up his presentation with a lively question-and-answer session that found him circulating through the curious crowd, microphone in hand. Afterward, a number of audience members lined up to further quiz Needles on Mackle built homes and other remembrances from his 55-year real estate career on Marco Island.