Green's Pharmacy in Palm Beach - milkshakes, fries and history

 

Green's Pharmacy
151 North County Road
Palm Beach, FL
(561) 832-4443
Luncheonette and pharmacy

https://www.greenspb.com/
Luncheonette open - Monday-Saturday - 7-3; Sunday 7 am- 1 pm
Pharmacy – closed on Sundays

By Jane Feehan

The idle rich, working poor and all kinds in between rub elbows (well, almost) at this Palm Beach institution. Known for its old-fashioned lunch counter and simple dining room, Green’s is remembered as a place John F. Kennedy visited as a kid for lollipops and later for daily breakfast.

Opened in 1938 by brothers Bob and Murray Green, the Palm Beach 82-seat luncheonette continues to host diners who appreciate its good food, reasonable prices and lively atmosphere. Many also appreciate its history.

For some, walking into a place JFK frequented is reason enough for a visit. Kennedy and brother Bobby breakfasted there frequently as adults. JFK continued to visit the luncheonette as President and remained on first-name status with the owners. There were other famous faces at Green’s. In 1986, co-founder Bob Green told a reporter that Bob Hope, Big Crosby and Ginger Rogers had also been among the famous who stopped by for a meal or purchase.

Bob Green sold the business to Cunningham Drugs in 1986, a few years after brother Murray died. Since that sale, Green’s has been bought and sold a number of times. Bob Green passed away in 1990, but Green’s retains much of its original ambiance, including classic luncheonette fare and its pharmacy.

There are not many lunch counters around like Green’s where history is served with a milk shake, egg cream, malted, or a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. 

Tags: Historic places Palm Beach, breakfast in Palm Beach, lunch in Palm Beach, JFK, Palm Beach history, Palm Beach restaurants

Busy at 12:30

Sources:

Palm Beach Daily News Jan. 4, 1986

Palm Beach Daily News, May 23, 1993

Sun-Sentinel May 4, 1990

Tags: history of Palm Beach, Palm Beach history

Palm Beach: From hotels to a glittering community

 

Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, 1941
Florida State Archives

An article written by Harford Powell, Jr. for Harper’s Bazaar in 1931 offers a glimpse of early Palm Beach. It must have captured the imagination of those shivering “up North” and who, during those drab days of the Depression, could not travel but only read about that glittering place in the sun. No doubt Powell contributed to the glamorous stature of the island. His very brief history of Palm Beach follows.

About traveling to Palm Beach:

He claimed Florida bound railroad trains were on wings : " ... you have no more shaken the snowflakes off your hat before the porter is opening the windows and starting the electric fan."

In Palm Beach

Though there was no air conditioning at the time, he wrote 

"men have really tamed the tropics at Palm Beach." He probably was referring to its hotels.

He claimed Palm Beach’s center of social life was its hotels – the Breakers and the "still more prodigious" Royal Poinciana--until the war. 

Bathing Beach at the Breakers 1930
Florida State Archives

A place to socialize 

Singer built the Everglades Club, and Mizner designed the building, Powell wrote. It was designed as a home for the convalescent war officers. Before it was finished, the war ended and … it was opened as a club.

An astonishing change in Palm Beach, now a place to live

Paris Singer and Addison Mizner, the two responsible for making Palm Beach a winter home community, arrived in 1918. Powell asserted that it was this duo who made the beach-side town a place to live; it was no longer merely a hotel community.

Mrs. Edward T. Stotesbury of Philadelphia saw it, admired the totally new note in architecture which Mr. Mizner had struck [with the Everglades Club] and commissioned him to build a home in similar vein for herself. So began the astonishing change in Palm Beach.

A place in the sun ... 

 

For more on Addison Mizner, see: 

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2021/04/addison-mizners-palm-beach-38-estates.html

Tags: Florida history, Palm Beach history, Palm Beach hotels

Visit: http://www.thebreakers.com

Selling beautiful Palm Beach in 1915

 

Early Palm Beach 1900s
Florida Archives/Florida Memory

An advertisement by Henry Flagler in 1915 would leave most of us chuckling today. Below are Palm Beach "selling points" expected to appeal to Americans at the time:

* Located 500 miles south of Jacksonville on the beautiful and healthful East Coast.

* Lowest death rate in America

*Tropical foliage in the heart of the pineapple growing section. Oranges cocoanuts, grape fruit, 
  vegetables, fish, oysters

*Unrivaled for aquatic sports, motor boat speeding, canoeing, boating, bathing, golf

*Smooth, firm roads for automobiling … cycle wheel chairs with attendants

* Excellent railway and steamship traveling facilities to and from all parts of the United States

Palm Beach late 1800s
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Note: "Wheelchair cycles" mentioned were standard recreational travel around town then, similar to what is seen on Fort Lauderdale beach today: passengers in a chair being pulled by a bicycle rider.

Tags: Florida history, Palm Beach history, tourism history, Florida in the early 1900s, history of Palm Beach 

JFK, the Cuba Missile Crisis and a Florida bunker at Peanut Island

Peanut Island at left, background; Palm Beach
across lagoon. Boat rental c. 1938 in Riviera Beach
Florida State Archives

Peanut Island

6500 Peanut Island Road

Riviera Beach, FL

561-845-4445

http://www.pbcgov.com/parks/peanutisland/

Sail Fish Marina (Palm Beach Shores) tours and shuttle service

https://www.sailfishmarina.com/water-taxi/

By Jane Feehan

Today a county park, Peanut Island literally rose from a 1918 Port of Palm Beach dredging project. The mission was to create Lake Worth Inlet, a shipping channel.  Discarded materials from Lake Worth formed a 10-acre “island” or spoil site.  Ownership and use of the island has been the subject of controversy over the years. The name was attached when Florida gave permission to use the site as a terminal for shipping peanut oil. The plan was abandoned in the 1940s but the name remained.

Of humble beginnings, Peanut Island boasts some lofty history.

The US Coast Guard opened a station on the island in 1936. President John F. Kennedy anchored his yacht,  Honey Fitz, at the station when he visited nearby Palm Beach.  During the 1961 Cuban Missile Crisis, US Navy Seabees built a small bunker on Peanut Island to be used as the nation's command center if the crisis forced Kennedy and his family to seek shelter while visiting the "Winter White House."  After the president was assassinated, some officials suggested renaming the island to honor Kennedy. The motion failed.

JFK delivering ultimatum to USSR
Florida State Archives/

Additional dredging expanded the island to 80 acres during the 1990s. Today, boaters dock at Peanut Island to picnic, take tours of the Palm Beach Maritime Museum (the old Coast Guard station) or to hike. Terms of the lease set by the Port of Palm Beach reserve the right to use the island for inlet and port maintenance and to deposit additional dredged materials.

Shuttle service (for a fee) to the island is offered at Sailfish Marina, 561-683-8294. For county park information, call 561-845-4445.  

Sources:

Palm Beach Post, Dec. 9, 1963.

Palm Beach County History Online at: https://pbchistory.org/

http://www.pbcgov.com/parks/peanutisland/

Tags: Palm Beach County history, Palm Beach County parks, Sailfish Marina, history of Florida, JFK, Peanut Island, Cuba Missile crisis

Palm Beach shipwreck cargo adds to Florida landscape

 

Provendencia by Eldred Clark Johnson
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

By Jane Feehan


Palm Beach might not be the place it is today without its coconut palms. Some say it was the palms that attracted Henry M. Flagler, the Florida East Coast Railway builder, to the island.

In January 9, 1878 (or 1876, depending on the account) the Spanish ship Providencia, en route from Havana to Spain with a cargo of about 20,000 coconuts, wrecked off the Florida coast. The crew and its cargo washed ashore near today’s historic Mar-a-Lago.

A few residents looking forward to salvaging what they could of the cargo (as many Floridians did to make a living) trekked to the beach where they encountered the crew with coconuts, wine and provisions aplenty. Another ship came to the sailors’ rescue but not before they sold the coconuts to the Floridians who knew could they generate a cash crop with them.

Providencia Park sits in West Palm Beach today, in commemoration of the ship, its coconuts, once "one of the city's "chief assets" and their contribution to the Palm Beach area landscape. Species of palm trees come and go with disease and time but they’ve become an iconic symbol of Florida and its tropical lifestyle.

Palm Trees Postcard 1913
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

                             
 

 All rights reserved. ©Copyright 2011 Jane Feehan.


Sources:

Palm Beach Post  Jan. 10, 1938

Historical Society of Palm Beach County
Flagler Museum

Tags: Palm Beach history, Florida palm trees, Mar-a-Lago

Palm Beach not first choice for town name

Palm Beach
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

If not for the decisiveness of voters – all 35 of them - Palm Beach might have been part of West Palm Beach instead of celebrating its centennial in 2011.

West Palm Beach incorporated first as a town in 1894, then as a city in 1903. West Palm officials were moving to annex the island of Palm Beach in 1911 when voters gathered at the Palm Beach Hotel and decided to incorporate their own government. The town of Palm Beach celebrates April 16 as its birthday.

About that name …

The name Palm Beach was settled on in 1887 when the first choice, Palm City, was rejected by the U.S. Postal Service; the name was taken by another town.

Voters tapped Capt. E.N. Dimick as their first mayor. He was well known to locals and visitors. He built and operated the town's first hotel in 1885, the Cocoanut Grove House. Henry M. Flagler stayed at the hotel while building the nearby Royal Poinciana, the world's largest wooden hotel structure, and extending his railway into West Palm Beach in 1894.

Palm Beach 1890s
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Sources:

O’Sullivan, Maureen and  Shpritz, Dianna. Palm Beach: Then and Now. West Palm Beach: Lickle Publishing, 2004.

http://www.pbchistoryonline.org

Tags: Palm Beach Centennial, Florida history, Palm Beach County, Palm Beach history, Florida in the early 1900s