When George C. Blanchard and Francis A. Calhoun founded Blanchard and Calhoun as a residential and commercial brokerage, property management, and insurance business in 1919, it was a reunion of sorts. The two young businessmen had actually joined forces a few years earlier, but world events interrupted the association, sending Calhoun, a decedent of John C. Calhoun (vice president to both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson), to work in the war department and then the U.S. Army. Calhoun soon sold his stake in the company to George Blanchard, although he stayed on as a vice president before relocating to Florida in the 1940s.

And just like the Blanchards, who have enjoyed four generations of leadership in the firm, real estate turned out to be part of the Calhoun DNA as well. Calhoun’s son, Francis A. “Mike” Calhoun, Jr., became a driving force in South Florida real estate soon after he moved to the Sunshine State to be closer to his parents. His home, located on what was once known as Miami’s Millionaire’s Row, boasts an interesting pedigree, owned over the years by an heir to the Maytag appliance fortune, queen of pop Madonna, and, currently, a German shepherd supported by a multi-million dollar trust fund inherited from a wealthy countess. To be historically accurate, the well-heeled hound was most likely a hoax created to generate publicity for the Gunther Corporation, which is the legal owner listed on the deed of the posh Brickell Avenue property once occupied by Calhoun, Jr. His father, the Calhoun in Blanchard and Calhoun, ended his long career in real estate as a broker/partner in a Miami-based firm … also formed in 1919.