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| Riviera Isles 1996, State Archives of Florida |
By Jane Feehan
To some, Fort Lauderdale is known as a modern Venice. Finger islands bordered by canals off Las Olas Boulevard gently suggest images of that beautiful city in Italy. The area was the vision of early Fort Lauderdale developer W.F. Morang who began the dredging process during the early 1920s.
Where he left off other developers continued. One of those
islands, Idlewyld, adjacent to the Las Olas Bridge, was successfully developed in
1924-25 by pioneer M.A. Hortt, his business partner Bob Dye and new man in
town, Thomas Stilwell.
Encouraged by the success of Idlewyld, Stilwell headed the Fort Lauderdale Riparian Company and bought a few parcels of land near that project. His company placed 270 lots for sale in March 1925 in what became Riviera Isles: Flamingo Drive, Solar Isle Drive and Isle of Palms Drive or Southeast 25th Avenue. Lots were priced from $4,000 to $15,000. Every lot offered a waterfront vista, newspaper ads declared.
All 270 lots,
according to the Fort Lauderdale Daily News in May 1925, were sold in less
than two months. Resales ensued. One real estate speculator advertised a cash offer
for three lots in Riviera Isles.
With $1.4 million in total sales of those lots, work began
on dredging. They pumped two feet of sand onto the Riviera finger islands to
raise each to the level Idlewyld sat—five feet above the high tide mark. They
then installed roads, lighting and other infrastructure.
Perhaps the most interesting chapter in the Riviera Isles
story was the one about Hotel Riviera or Riviera Hotel. With an estimated cost of $500,000, the 200-room guest accommodation was to be
constructed in the Dalmatian style of architecture with small bricks and dome-like
roofs featured in Romanesque churches. The ornate structure would face Las Olas
Boulevard and its Sunset Lake. The hotel was expected to open October 1, 1926.
What wasn’t expected was the Great Hurricane of September 1926.
Stilwell and his company tried to regain financial footing in the months and few
years that followed. Hotel plans never reached fruition. Properties throughout
town were auctioned off to pay taxes during the late 1920s and into the 1930s. The
real estate boom went bust.
By the 1940s a few Riviera Isles houses built in the slow
years sold for $21,000 to about $40,000. A building and development boom followed
in the 1950s with very little slowdown since.
Houses today in this exclusive area (most all the Las Olas
isles) run as high as $20,000,000, or more. Let’s hope these land-filled islands with
their beautiful homes survive a Cat 5 hurricane; some predict they won’t.
Sources:
Hortt, M.A., Gold Coast Pioneer. New York: Exposition Press, 1955.
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, March 19, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, May 20, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, June 2, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Aug. 12, 1925
For Lauderdale Daily News, Oct. 31, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Nov. 21, 1925
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Feb. 23, 1927
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, April 20, 1928
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, June 25, 1930
Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1920s, Las Olas Boulevard, Las Olas isles, Riviera Isles, Fort Lauderdale communities
