Fort Lauderdale's first department store - Pioneer Department Store

By Jane Feehan 

Frank Stranahan’s New River trading post, opened in Fort Lauderdale in 1895, served as antecedent to the Pioneer Department Store.  Reporters established this lineage through Pioneer’s purchase of stock (or goods) of Oliver Brothers Company, a store started by Stranahan.

Pioneer,  “not merely a name but a description” was organized in 1922 or 1923 with $50,000 in capital (some reports indicate $100,000). It first operated on Brickell Avenue not far from the original trading post.

In 1925, another pioneer, Tom W. Bryan, sold a corner lot at Las Olas Boulevard and Osceola Avenue (later 1^st Avenue) to Pioneer for a reported $70,000. In August that year, Pioneer announced plans for a three-story structure on the lot with a construction price tag estimated to run nearly $112,000 (later claimed to cost $150,000). The architect listed was A. Ten Eyck of Atlanta and Miami; the builder was the Florida Building Company. Executives mentioned were Dr. J.A. Stanford, president; J.S. Hinton, vice president, and Lamar Thistlewaite, secretary/treasurer and store manager.

It was reported that thousands showed up for the opening May 13, 1926 “at the magnificent three-story, modern building.” Reporters and store executives claimed “a new epoch begins in the commercial history of Fort Lauderdale…”

The new and expanded Pioneer Department Store featured two Otis elevators, glass counter tops, mahogany fittings, five large display windows and a “Lampson Cash Tube to reach all floors.” 

About 50 employees served customers who shopped a variety of sections including men’s and boy’s wear, women’s dresses and underwear, a beauty salon (the Permanent Wave Shop), luggage, kitchenware and more.

Indeed, a new paradigm in shopping began in Fort Lauderdale—a mere 30 years after trading post days. Boom times in land sales and population growth of the 1920s drove innovation and demand right through the Great Hurricane of September 1926, months after the department store opened.

“Pioneer Department Store still stands,” their newspaper advertisements claimed less than two weeks after the storm. It was “a monument to faith built on public confidence.” By November 1926 the store was ready for Christmas sales of toys and gifts.

Pioneer weathered the hurricane but not the ensuing decline in the economy.

The store closed in 1939. By this decade there were new owners, Field and Company, with evolving plans. 

There was also new competition. Sears opened blocks away on Andrews Avenue in 1937. 

The Great Depression yet lingered. Pioneer’s claim of being “exclusive but not expensive” was not enough to keep the sales engines running.

 

Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale Evening Sentinel, April 17, 1925

Fort Lauderdale Evening Sentinel, May 7, 1925

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 8, 1925

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Aug. 6, 1925

Fort Lauderdale News, Feb. 4, 1926

Fort Lauderdale News, Feb. 22, 1926

Fort Lauderdale News, May 12, 1926

Fort Lauderdale News, May 13, 1926

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Sept. 26, 1926

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 24, 1926

Fort Lauderdale News, Sept. 25, 1939

Fort Lauderdale News, Sept. 26, 1939

Fort Lauderdale News, July 15, 1939

Tags: Fort Lauderdale retail history, Pioneer Department Store, Fort Lauderdale in the 1920s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s, Frank Stranahan

Pioneer Frank Stranahan all business in romance

Stranahan House 1901 (replaced the original trading post)
State Archives of Florida 

Fort Lauderdale pioneer and trading post owner, Frank Stranahan (1865-1929) met Ivy Julia Cromartie, (1881-1971), a young teacher who had moved to his area from Lemon City (where Little Haiti is in Miami today) in 1899.

In an excerpt from a letter Frank wrote to Ivy (www.iamlasolas.com/pioneer-women-of-the-boulevard/) about their pending marriage in August 1900, it was more business than romance.

Wish to ask  you a question that I should have done a few days ago. I am getting the license. How do you wish your name to appear in it and age? I will see you Wednesday. This is the last letter that we will write to each other so will close with the last girl I kissed goodnight.

Frank

P.S. This has been written in a rush. Overlook the grammar.

Ivy served as the town's first teacher and contributed to the lives of local Seminoles through her foundation, Friends of the Seminoles.

See index or use search box for more posts on Frank Stranahan.

 ------ 

Frank Stranahan, born 1865, died by suicide in 1929:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2021/01/fort-lauderdale-pioneer-frank.html

Sources: 

http://www.iamlasolas.com/pioneer-women-of-the-boulevard/

Florida International University, Historical Museum of Southern Florida

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale pioneers, Ivy Stranahan, Frank Stranahan, film researcher

A tradition begins: Fort Lauderdale's first party boat and its famous visitors

 

First Belonged to Charles Cory
 Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

It could be said that Fort Lauderdale’s first houseboat, the Wanderer, launched the city’s reputation as a party place, especially among boaters.

The vessel (above in 1917) a refurbished Mississippi River packet boat with 12 bedrooms, several recreation rooms and a piano, was brought to the Stranahan New River Camp and Trading Post in 1896 by wealthy ornithologist, Charles B. Cory* (1857-1921).  Four years later, he purchased land near SW 15^th Street, dredged a canal for the Wanderer and continued to host the Stranahans and their camp visitors. Among guests were former President Grover Cleveland and actor Joe Jefferson.

Partying went on for days at a time. The tradition continued when Cory transferred ownership after he lost his fortune in 1906. Title to the Wanderer was transferred to a succession of owners, including Jefferson, until it was destroyed by the hurricane of 1926.

*Cory wrote Birds of Haiti, Birds of the Bahamas, Birds of the West Indies – and many more. He was also a golfer, competing in the 1904 Olympics. After he lost his fortune, he took a salaried position as curator of zoology for the Field Museum in Chicago where he remained for the rest of his life.

Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

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Sources:

  1.Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale, Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.

  2. Miami News, Jan. 3, 1925

 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_B._Cory
  4. McIver, Stuart. Glimpses of South Florida History. Miami: Florida Flair Books, 1988. 



Tags: New River history, Fort Lauderdale history, Charles. B. Cory, Joe Jefferson, New River, party boat, Frank Stranahan

Stranahan Park: Of Indian burial mounds and shuffleboard

Shuffleboard 1946
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Stranahan Park
10 E. Broward Blvd.
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

By Jane Feehan

Shuffleboard, with roots traceable to 15th-century England, was big in Fort Lauderdale beginning in the 1930s, especially after Stranahan Park was carved out of land deeded to the city. It was the site of games hosted by the Fort Lauderdale Shuffleboard Club with members from more than 30 states. The park was reportedly built with dirt from Indian burial mounds. Stranahan Park was a "cypress swamp" deeded to the city by Frank Stranahan in the early 1900s. 

In 1928, it was reported that construction of a "novel game" was to be completed at the park and expected to draw a large crowd of players because so many watched its installation. A croquet court was also to be opened. Stranahan Park was already a popular spot with its concerts, checkers and chess tables, and busy horseshoe courts to "make it one of the most beautiful and useful parks along the East coast." 

Today, Stranahan Park remains downtown off Broward, but without shuffleboard.

See index or use search box for more posts on Frank Stranahan.

Today, the 1.6-acre park consists of a pavilion, benches and an open play area. 

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News Jan. 15, 1928

Miami News , March 10, 1934

City of Fort Lauderdale parks

Copyright © 2013, 2021 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Tags: Fort Lauderdale shuffleboard club, Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s, Fort Lauderdale historian, Miami historian, Frank Stranahan

Two cousins, a stage line, and early Fort Lauderdale

By Jane Feehan

Ohioan Guy Irwin Metcalf (1866-1918) started up the first newspaper along the southeast coast of Florida, The Indian River News, in Melbourne in 1887. The legacy of this enterprising pioneer includes much more, including a connection to the founding of Fort Lauderdale.

Metcalf moved south to Juno with his family and renamed the paper The Tropical Sun in 1891. For a time, it was the only newspaper serving Floridians from Melbourne to the Upper Keys, most of which then was Dade County.  Metcalf sold the paper to the Model Land Co., owned by Henry Flagler, in 1902.

A community builder who saw potential in South Florida, Metcalf established a real estate company that built a rock road from Lantana to Lemon City (today the Little Haiti section of Miami). 

For travel on that road, completed in 1892, Metcalf started up a stage line of mule-pulled wagons – Bay Biscayne Stage line or Palmetto stage line - to make three trips a week from Lantana to Miami. 

The route included a stopover at a tent camp he set up at New River. The wagons did not cross New River, making the stage line the first transportation from Lantana to Miami entirely over land. Passengers and supplies were ferried across to waiting wagons. He hired his cousin Frank Stranahan, a Ohioan who was living in Melbourne at the time, to run the camp and its ferry at New River.

Stranahan expanded operations to include a trading post nearby and hung a sign there with the name “Fort Lauderdale” for its U.S. Postal Service designation. As a Fort Lauderdale pioneer, Stranahan served as its political, social and economic focal point for decades. (Lauderdale was Major William Lauderdale who came to fight the Seminoles in the 1830s.)

Each cousin contributed significantly to the South Florida story. In his short life, Metcalf also served as postmaster for West Palm Beach from 1913-1915 and as superintendent of schools for Palm Beach County. 

See index or use search box for more posts on Frank Stranahan.

Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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Sources:

1. Lake Worth Pioneers’ Association

2.http://www.pbchistoryonline.org/page/the-miami-connection

3. McIver, Stuart. Glimpses of South Florida History. Miami: Florida Flair Books, 1988.

Tags: Frank Stranahan, Guy Irwin Metcalf, Fort Lauderdale history, early roads of South Florida, Palm Beach County history, Florida stage line, New River, historical researcher