An Excerpt from The Story of Highland Park Club by Robert H. Wilson 1987:

Money filled Yarnell's bank account. By 1923 he had enough to pay off the Bullard mortgage which enabled him to become the owner fo Highland Park. That same year he moved from his former home at Crooked Lake and settled his family in the extravagant 25-room mansion which he had built on a slight hilltop overlooking the entrance to Highland Park.

His residence, named Casa de Josephina in honor of his second wife, today is listed in the National register of Historic Places as an example of Florida Boom architecture.

Mrs. Yarnell, The former Josephine Sullivan, came originally from Richmond. She and Yarnell married in Minneapolis. Their family included a son and four daughters plus Yarnell's daughter by his first wife, Lillian Fairchild. Their elaborate new home in Highland Park provided rooms for themselves and each child plus a large, vaulted entrance hall, billard room, servants quarters and a four car garage.

The lifestyle of the Yarnell family soon matched the extravagance of the residence. Irwin employed a chauffeur to drive him the mile or so uphill each morning to his real estate office. Josephine and the children rode in a limosine for shopping and other errands in Lake Wales. On vacations, the family and their friends arranged for private railroad cars.

The Casa was soon the focus of society in Lake Wales as well as in Highland Park. The Yarnells earned a wide reputation for generous and expansive hospitality. She enjoyed the role of hostess quite as much as he did that of a host. They used to stand together on the Casa's broad front terrace to welcome guests and escort them ceremoniously inside while uniformed attendants took care of valet parking.

Author Dorothy Kaucher includes this account of a festive evening at the Casa in her history of Lake Wales called They Built a City:

"On a summery moonlit night the Yarnells invited guests to a reading of Romeo and Juliet by an eminent professor from the University of Chicago. The Casa never looked more fairy like. Guitars played soft music, the fountains splashed in the moonlight, Japanese lanterns cast their bewitching light on the paths asn tall, majestic trees swayed gently in the evening air...It was a world of young lovers in Verona beneath an Italian night sky of centuries ago."