No need for fish tales in early Fort Lauderdale ... only a fish count

 

Deep Sea Fishing advertisement
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory circa 1930

 

By Jane Feehan

Visitors knew before Fort Lauderdale was officially established it offered great fishing.  Fishing yarns would be exchanged in the late 1890s and early 1900s at the Stranahan Trading Post on the New River and aboard the settlement's first party houseboat, the Wanderer.* 

In 1930, the Fort Lauderdale Daily News praised the city's fishing opportunities:

People fish everywhere in Fort Lauderdale--from any of its countless bridges, from city docks in the heart of the business section, from the jetties--and with equal success, property owners of waterfront homes have been known to make record catches ... standing in their own front yards.

There were few tales about the fish that got away because they didn't. The fish count was the story.

Amidst the city's growing fishing reputation, which included the tale of a whale**, deep sea fishing charters emerged as a viable and growing business during the 1930s. Advertisements for deep sea fishing on the "Cruiser Joy" first appeared in Fort Lauderdale in 1939.  

The vessel, docked at the Andrews Avenue Bridge, was owned and operated by Captain Darcy Willis. Several hours fishing aboard a boat for $2 with bait and tackle ... a bargain even then. Willis was already known as a sports fishing guide in Morehead City, North Carolina where he won a few fishing tournaments. His name and his next boat, Joy II, also appeared in local newspapers in 1940. News acccounts track his fishing exploits from Fort Lauderdale to the Saint Lucie River. He and his fishing passengers caught kingfish, amberjack, sailfish and at one time a reporter wrote, a 322-pound sunfish. By the late 1940s it appears Willis was operating once again in Morehead City. He seems to have droppd off the Fort Lauderdale radar after that. 

Another popular charter fishing boat of that decade, the Reel Lucky, owned and operated by Captain Reuben Munroe, garnered media attention in the late 1930s with news about several large "hauls" of fish. 

From informal fishing trips to charter fishing excursions, to rodeos that drew competing anglers during the 1930s (and today), fishing in Fort Lauderdale remains a popular pastime and sport. The fish, however do not remain as plentiful, but hope for a good catch springs eternal. 

* For more on the Wanderer, see:

 https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-tradition-begins-fort-lauderdales.html

** For the whale tale see:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2015/09/whaling-off-fort-lauderdale-really.html

Sources: 

News and Obsever (Raleigh), Aug. 20, 1930

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Dec. 1, 1930

Fort Lauderdale News, March 25, 1935

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, March 4, 1939

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Feb. 22, 1940  

News and Observer, April 26, 1948

Tags: About Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale fishing, Fort Lauderdale history, History of Fort Lauderdale

Why History? It's about identity.

Postcard circa 1960s - Bahia Mar and South Beach  
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

By Jane Feehan

Many who spent their school years hating history are the same who seek social media sites or reunions reliving their own. They look for high school and college alumni and other groups for "remember when" discussions about concerts, musicians, oldie goldies tunes, favorite movies or nightclubs, hangouts or memorable characters from their past.

Why? What's so great about our past? It's history, after all. Everyone has a history. 

It's not only about reliving shared experiences. One's past experiences are woven into the fabric of who one is now. It's parallel to the nurture side of the nature/nurture equation of human development.  

The same can be said about a city, state, region or a country, which are more than geographical boundaries. People are probably more familiar with an area's accents or colloquialisms, foods or ways of cooking--even clothing--than its borders. These are elements of an identity, a personality, a common culture. If one digs deep enough, they'll discover the history behind each element including boundaries.

Postcard -Miami Biltmore, Coral Gables 1937
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Students dislike school room history because of how it was (and still is) taught. Teachers make history unrelatable when they present in a brittle-dry, lifeless, formulaic style. Today it may come with an agenda-driven overlay. Thankfully, many adults return to history when they can read on their own about what they find interesting. There is something to be said for this "free-range history."  

A reminder for those who blog: keep it short. History is for everyone, not just for researchers and scholars. Long missives discourage the casual reader, the non-historian.

Without history some say there is no future. Its ancillary could be the oft-repeated "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."*  

History should breathe and live; it's foundational to everyone's identity, to a country's identity.

__

Postcard - a Bit of  Old Spain in Miami, 1949
Florida State Archives/ Florida Memory

______

* Variously attributed to Irish-British writer Edmund Burke (1729-1797) or British stateman, writer and historian Winston Churchill (1874-1965) but most likely written by Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952). 

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Florida history, Miami history, Palm Beach history, Jane Feehan

About that name Publix ... and its link to Paramount Studios

 

Tampa Theatre -
Florida State Archives

 By Jane Feehan

George Jenkins opened Publix Food Store in Winter Haven, Florida Sept. 6, 1930. In 1940 he launched Publix Super Market; the rest is history and part of everyday life for the millions of us who shop there. But the provenance of the name Publix goes back to Dec. 21, 1925 and it’s linked to show business.

That’s the year the two largest movie theater groups in the world—Famous Players Lasky and Balban and Katz Theatres of Chicago and the Middle West—merged to form Publix Theatres, Inc., an affiliate of Paramount Studios (formed 1912 and led by Adolph Zukor). From that date, Sam Katz president and Harold B. Franklin, vice president, oversaw operations of 700 theaters throughout the nation, including those in St. Petersburg, Tampa, West Palm Beach, Jacksonville and a list of others in Florida.

The film industry was an expanding and relatively new form of entertainment in the 1920s, especially after the first “talkie” with Al Jolson in the Jazz Singer released in 1927. There was still an attachment to live theater or vaudeville, so it was common to see a movie paired up with an extravagant live revue before a film started (much like latter day Radio City Music Hall).  

Revues included scores of entertainers. One newspaper in Buffalo claimed $2 million was spent to provide for “the greatest in picture and mammoth stage production.” Publix Theatres built a reputation for operating lavish theaters with plush carpeting and luxurious seating. Their reputation also included maintaining a well-trained staff.

The Buffalo Times exclaimed Publix Theatres entertained on a “scale so elaborate that no single theatre could afford it.”  The New York Daily News billed one of the Publix Theatres, the Paramount in the Paramount Building in Times Square, as “New York’s Newest Wonder.” A reporter for The Middletown Times Herald in New York state wrote “as Publix goes, so goes the rest of the show business. Expect everything in a Publix Theatre because you won’t be disappointed.”

The stock market crash of 1929 changed the course of Publix Theaters, Inc. Debt piled up. Bills went unpaid. The company restructured in 1930 but filed for bankruptcy and went into receivership in 1933. By 1935 the company reorganized as Paramount Studios.

The Publix theaters were failing so George Jenkins "borrowed" the name. He liked the name for his new business; its reputation was tops – and remains so to this day--though for a different business with a much longer history.

 

Sources:

Yonkers Herald, Dec. 21, 1925

Buffalo Times, Jan. 14, 1926

Buffalo Times, May 27, 1926

Yonkers Herald, Sept. 21, 1926

New York Daily News, Nov. 28, 1926

Middletown Times Herald, June 10, 1930

New York Daily News, July 20, 1933

Library of Congress

Florida State Archives/ Florida Memory: https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/321985

Tags: Movie theaters, Florida in the 1920s, Paramount Studios, Publix Theatres, Inc.

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.

_______

Sources:

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

  2. Miami News, Jan. 3, 1925, p. 5.

 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

Fort Lauderdale High Flying L's: Fun facts and notables through the years

FLHS 2022, a retro look

By Jane Feehan

The cornerstone of Fort Lauderdale High School, known first as Fort Lauderdale Central, was laid in 1915 on land donated by the pioneer Stranahan family. A Mediterranean Revival structure designed by Miami architect August Geiger, the school drew students from Pompano Beach, Davie and all the unnamed rural areas that are named municipalities in Broward County today.

More interesting facts:

Track team uniforms of 1918 served as inspiration for the school’s student body nickname, the 

Flying L's. Uniforms with the Flying L logo were provided free to students beginning in 1922. In 1934, during one year of the Great Depression, there were only 16 members of the graduating class. Times were so tough that they were unable to publish a yearbook. 

During World War II, diplomas were given to male students who completed one semester and enlisted in the military. 

The school band, before Castro took over Cuba in 1959, made yearly trips by boat to Havana (see photo at right from a 1948 yearbook). The school building closed in 1962 and relocated to the current site on NE Fourth Avenue. The Class of 1962 laid a commemorative plaque at the old site, now the site of a bank.

Notable graduates:

C.M. Newton, former athletic director of the University of Kentucky; 
Sandy Nininger, the first soldier of World War II awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor; 
Rita Mae Brown, author and women’s rights activist; 
Peter T. Fay, senior judge of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta 



Sources: 
Sun-Sentinel. Telling Tales Out of School by Jane Feehan. April 11, 2004
Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia (2004). 
For more information about Fort Lauderdale, visit: www.oldfortlauderdale.org


Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Florida in the early 1900s, Fort Lauderdale High School history

Fort Lauderdale and its last direct hurricane hit - the year may surprise you

Hurricane aftermath
Andrews Avenue 1947
State of Florida Archives

By Jane Feehan

Fort Lauderdale gets hit by a hurricane every 2.85 years, according to Hurricane.com. With that frequency, it’s worth noting the last direct hit on this city from the Atlantic was in 1947. There has been significant damage from hurricanes over the years (Wilma 2005, Cleo 1964, Betsy 1965, see below)* but none since 1947 have taken a direct swipe at Fort Lauderdale from the east.

Before the September 1947 hurricane, South Florida had already experienced an unusually wet rainy season; it couldn’t take much more precipitation. And then came the September ‘cane.  

The storm probably developed over French West Africa before its track was picked up in the Atlantic on its way to the Bahamas and Fort Lauderdale (satellite tracking first available in 1967). On September 17, winds were measured at 155 mph at the Hillsboro Lighthouse. Damage was light compared to the 1926 storm but problems were generated by eight inches of water the storm left atop an already saturated water table. New River came over its banks and sat … and then a second hurricane hit.

Though milder, an October hurricane dropped another 11 inches of rain in three hours. Knee - to waist-deep water settled in downtown Fort Lauderdale, flooding businesses and homes. By air, South Florida appeared to be a lake stretching from the ocean west to Collier County.   Some said they could take a boat from Fort Lauderdale to Naples for six weeks. Farm lands were devastated, highways were closed. The water finally receded by Christmas that year.

Part of the legacy of the flooding of ’47 was the South Florida Water Management District created in 1948.  Some note that since it was established, there hasn’t been a major flood of the scope of the 1947 event. Nor has there been a direct hit on Fort Lauderdale (now overpopulated, overdeveloped) from a powerful hurricane with catastrophic storm surge. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. 

Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

* Wilma came from the west; Cleo and Betsy from the south. In 2017 the large Hurricane Irma hit Florida's southwest coast and moved north; its large wind field grazed Fort Lauderdale.

 _____

Flooded neighborhoods after Fort Lauderdale 1947 hurricane
State of Florida Archives

Sources:

Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia (2004).

Weidling, Philip J., Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/centennial/fl-100-anniversary-1940s-20110318,0,1548618.story

Tags: Hurricane history, Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s, last direct hurricane hit Fort Lauderdale, history of Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale's day of infamy: the 1935 lynching of Rubin Stacy

By Jane Feehan

I first wrote about this day of evil as a student at Virginia Commonwealth University during the 1970s. I had read about it in a book from their library and then presented the story in class. In 2010 I first posted this piece.

Amazing how after all these years, the city finally acknowledges the lynching. Times have indeed changed; published "news" stories about this dark day now abound.

Old (and not so old) histories of the city failed to mention Fort Lauderdale’s day of infamy, July 19, 1935. 

On that day, African American Rubin Stacy (published also as Reuben Stacey, or Rubin Stacey) 37, was seized by a mob from the custody of six Broward County deputies as they were transporting him to a jail in Dade County for “safekeeping." He had been accused by a 30-year-old white woman of a knife attack in her Fort Lauderdale home, 

The mob, estimated by deputies to be about 100 men with faces covered and license plates hidden, took Stacey, kneeling in prayer, to an area near the house of accuser Marion Jones. There, they hanged and then shot him 16 times.  

Jones claimed Stacey knocked on her door asking for a glass of water and then followed her inside where he pulled a knife to her throat. Her screams, she said, frightened Stacey off. She later recanted the story. Some say Stacey was a homeless tenant farmer going from house to house asking for food.

It was widely believed that deputies, then led by the notorious Sheriff Walter Clark, were in collusion with the mob. They were, the story goes, angered by the slow legal proceedings of another case involving an African American.

Pictures of the lynching were shown to President Franklin Roosevelt in hopes of swaying him to support a federal anti-lynching law.  It didn’t have the impact hoped for; Roosevelt did not endorse the law because he feared losing Southern votes.

Rubin Stacey is buried in Fort Lauderdale’s Woodlawn Cemetery. He was born in Georgia.

Copyright ©2010, 2020, 2022 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

                      

Sources:                                                                    

Palm Beach Post, July 19, 1935

Miami News, July 21, 1935

Palm Beach Post, June 13, 1937

www.findagrave.com

July 21, 1935

Tags: Fort Lauderdale lynching, Fort Lauderdale history, 

Rubin Stacy, Reuben Stacey, Fort Lauderdale black history, history of Fort Lauderdale, Jane Feehan

Las Olas Inn, long gone and mostly forgotten Fort Lauderdale

Las Olas Inn - postcard
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

    

By Jane Feehan

During the late 1800s, pioneer Frank Stranahan’s activities centered on his trading post along the New River in what became Fort Lauderdale. But others came who discovered the beach and were to have an equally important place in the city’s history and development.

In 1893 Chicagoan and counsel to Standard Oil Hugh T. Birch decided to pass on an invitation from Henry Flagler to visit Palm Beach and decided to head south; he set sail on a boat lent to him by Flagler. With only a vague notion of where he was headed, Birch sought refuge from a storm in what was referred to at the time as New River Sound, today the site of Bahia Mar. He liked what he saw and soon bought up beachside property for a reported 75 cents an acre.

Birch introduced fellow Chicagoan J. McGregor Adams to the beach area by 1896. Adams, a brass manufacturer, also became a heavy beach investor. One news story reports a beach cottage was built at Las Olas and the ocean by Adams; other reports say both Birch and Adams had the two-room structure built but they later split, dividing holdings. The house was constructed by pioneer Ed King who mounted the building upon molded concrete blocks he made in the sand. Whatever the genesis of ownership, the structure launched another legacy.

Las Olas Inn
State Archives of  Florida

Adams played host there, it was reported, to an interesting lineup of guests that included author Theodore Dreiser and Senator Robert Follette. In 1904, less than 10 years later, Adams died. His estate sold the beach house and property in 1906 or 1911 (depending on account) to Thomas E. Watson, one-time Georgia senator and interestingly, author of a noted history of France.

1955 demolition, Courtesy of 
State Archives of  Florida,
Florida Memory

What ensued was a chain of owners of the picturesque inn and property; its story spanned several decades

Watson sold the property and rambling structure a few years later to D.C. Alexander (a park in his name lies a block south of Las Olas). He then sold it to G.E. Henry for a reported $30,000—after the Las Olas bridge was built in 1917. Henry, who built the Broward Hotel, was annoyed by the sound of surf. He rented the building, known by then as the Las Olas Inn, to Captain and Mrs. J.B. Vreeland who converted the structure to hotel use. 

Henry reclaimed the inn in 1920 for Broward Hotel staff housing, but sold the package to George Simon around 1923. Simon didn’t hang on to the property and hotel for long. In new hands, the Las Olas Inn went into foreclosure in 1926 after the historic hurricane. Ownership reverted that year to Simon. It proved to be a fortuitous stroke of luck; Simon’s son, George Jr., ran a successful hotel there for 22 years.

In 1925, a tent colony, popular vacation housing in South Florida at the time, was set up at the Las Olas Inn. Tents—25 of them—were advertised as “ventilated and luxurious” offering showers, bathtubs and with the same service that was available in the main wooden structure. In 1939 the inn, with several cottages by then, advertised rooms in the main building having an ocean view facing east and a view of the “New River Sound on the West.” Dining was available on the veranda.  

The Las Olas Inn and its three acres went through several owners and iterations until 1955, when it was demolished to make way for the Las Olas Plaza. Many will remember the popular Forum restaurant in the plaza. In 1967, a 243-room Holiday Inn was built on the site, later home to the Button Lounge.

The property is now the city's Las Olas Oceanside Park, or LOOP, a site for beachgoers and community events.

Note: In March 2018, the Sun-Sentinel reported land owners Lior Avidor and Aiton “AJ” Yaari, could be looking into selling nearby property for a huge redevelopment project. They’ve amassed a string of properties on the beach-facing block just north of Las Olas Boulevard that includes the historic Elbo Room.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-sb-beach-tower-lasolas-20180316-story.html

Las Olas Inn, first beach hotel in Fort Lauderdale
Florida State Archives

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, Aug. 15, 1925

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 30, 1928

Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 1, 1930

Fort Lauderdale News, March 29, 1930,

Fort Lauderdale News, May 20, 1931

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 29, 1939

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov 16, 1943

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 16, 1953

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 16, 1953

Fort Lauderdale News, Oct. 26, 1954

Fort Lauderdale News, Aug. 31, 1955

Fort Lauderdale News, March 4, 1967

Sun-Sentinel, Oct. 7, 1982

Sun-Sentinel, Aug. 8, 1991

Sun-Sentinel, March 8, 2018

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale in the 1800s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s, Fort Lauderdale hotel history, Fort Lauderdale Beach history, Jane Feehan, history of Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale in the news - 1964

Kenann Building

By Jane Feehan

Below are Fort Lauderdale news tidbits from 1964 ...

Sky Harbor East  -The first high-rise condominium in southeast Fort Lauderdale opens adjacent to Port Everglades. The second co-op building, Breakwater Towers, opens nearby.

Jim Bouton, a New York Yankee, signs a contract for $18,000 in Fort Lauderdale  March 12 after being threatened with a $100-a-day-fine. He was the league’s first contract holdout in 25 years. Bouton had the league’s best earned-run average that year. He had demanded $20,000, a 100 percent increase in salary over the prior year. Mickey Mantle signed a $100,000 in 1964.

Kenann Building – Ken Burnstine opens the seven-story round building designed by architect Louis Wolff. Named for Ken and wife Ann, the Kenann Building remains a landmark at the corner of Oakland Park Boulevard and Federal Highway.

Hurricane Cleo, Aug. 26 – The storm moves north from Miami and hits Fort Lauderdale as a Category 2 hurricane. It was the only day the Fort Lauderdale News was not published.

Hugh Taylor Birch State Park – More people (about 500,000) visited this Florida park than any other in the state in 1964.

Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater – The Fort Lauderdale News endorses the senator for president of the United States.

Commercial Boulevard Bridge – After protest by some in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, the $1 million bridge opens Oct. 16.

Brian Piccolo –Fort Lauderdale resident and Wake Forest football team full back named by the Associated Press as back of the week. Piccolo was 20 years old.

College Students – More than 15,000 students spend spring  break on Fort Lauderdale’s beach. (This number seems low for those who were there).

Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1960s, Florida historical researcher, film researcher, Fort Lauderdale history, Florida sports history