Miami

The Magic City

Seth H. Bramson

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9780738543680
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439633588
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Whether you call it the Gateway to the Americas, the Capital of Latin America, or even the Magic City, Miami is a city that has enchanted millions for many years. The city we know as Miami only came into existence in 1896, but evidence suggests people lived in the area for over 2000 years before Europeans ever set foot on the continent. The land was conquered by the Spanish in 1566, but Florida didn't become part of the United States until 1821. Miami holds the distinction of being the only major city founded by a woman - Julia Tuttle was a wealthy citrus grower who originally owned the land the city was built on. When a prolonged bout of cold weather known as the Great Freeze throttled crops further north, farmers arrived to the area in droves, and Tuttle convinced railroad tycoon Henry Flagler to extend his Florida East Coast Railway to the region, for which she became known as "the Mother of Miami." Miami has weathered yellow fever epidemics, the 1920s boom and bust, two World Wars, hurricanes, and numerous other economic ups and downs to become one of the world's great cities and the growth of South Florida.

Four

A CITY BOOMS—AND THEN BUSTS

The Miami story, from its unlikely beginning through the current era, is completely unmatched by any other place in America and is more suited to a fable than to reality. Perhaps the most incredible part of the story is the great Florida boom of the 1920s, followed by the bust that began in 1926. Though devastating, the bust would lay the foundation for a more solid future.

Miami grew unceasingly almost from the moment of the arrival of the first train on April 22, 1896. People poured in from the United States and the Bahamas. George Merrick’s family first came in 1898, and he developed Coral Gables after building many Miami subdivisions. Carl Fisher would come to Miami Beach—not yet named—in 1911. All of those arriving had one thing in common: they arrived on FEC Railway passenger trains at the Miami depot.

With the conclusion of the First World War, the pulse of business increased daily. New people meant new stores and new businesses, and while the black community grew larger in Overtown and the Jewish community opened more synagogues, people of every color and faith began the process of making Miami the melting pot it remains today.

The hottest commodity available was land, and the binder boys would turn over parcels of land and acreage 8 to 12 times in one day. Flagler Street and the other downtown streets and avenues became jumbles of yelling, screaming young men attempting to interest passersby in buying land. Subdivisions sprang up in all directions, and the Everglades were relentlessly pushed back. A new group of Miamians began to assume power, and people such as Marjory Stoneman Douglas; Frank Shutts, founder of the law firm of Shutts and Bowen and owner of the Miami Herald; Ev Sewell; James A. Cox, owner of the Miami News, formerly the Metropolis; Dr. Bowman Foster Ashe, first and longtime president of the University of Miami; aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss and James A. Bright, partners in the founding of Hialeah, Miami Springs, and Opa-Locka; William J. Rubin and his son of Traveler’s Luggage and Jewelry; Newt Roney, builder of Miami Beach’s Roney Plaza; and D. A. Dorsey, the most prominent leader in the black community, started to exert influence in the growing city.

With the capsizing of the four-masted schooner Prinz Valdemar, blocking Miami’s harbor entrance in January 1926, followed by the FEC’s embargoing due to the immense and almost overpowering amount of freight that took up every single siding on the railroad between Jacksonville and Miami, and finally the September 17–18, 1926, hurricane, Miami’s fate was sealed. Business would not recover until the late 1930s.

“Something Worth While” was the opportunity to buy a lot or a house on the Bay (Biscayne Bay, of course) at Biscayne Heights, one of the innumerable developments that was giving everybody locally and throughout the country the opportunity to buy land or a building in Miami. This was just before the street and avenue numbering was changed in 1921, and what would become Flagler Street is still shown on the card as Twelfth Street.

There were two towers on the Miami River, and both were tourist landmarks in the early years of the century and up until the mid-1920s. Here a small boat is approaching the Car Dale Tower and Landing.

One of the most incredible Miami pictures ever taken, this image, like most in this book, has never before been published. It came from R. E. Coates, who sent it from Fort Meade, where he had moved and opened a business, in 1948. It was taken shortly after the First World War, and with the rumblings of the boom on the horizon, from left to right, Dexter Douglass, Dave Tuten, Monroe Padgett, Gus Haseltine, Fonnie Talbert, T...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• One - THE PIONEERS
• Two - HENRY FLAGLER, THE FEC RAILWAY, AND THE ROYAL PALM HOTEL
• Three - THE TIME OF THE TROLLEY
• Four - A CITY BOOMS—AND THEN BUSTS
• Five - STRUGGLING THROUGH THE DEPRESSION
• Six - WORLD WAR II AND ITS AFTERMATH
• Seven - A WORLD-CLASS CITY MOVES TOWARD THE FUTURE