First African American radio station in Miami is ...

WFEC studio Christened at
the Lord Calvert Hotel,
Overtown, Miami  circa 1950
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Miami radio station WFEC (Florida East Coast Broadcasting Company) launched operations April 10, 1949. Located at that time at 350 NE 71 Street, it promoted itself as the “Whole Family Entertainment Center.”  The station, 1220 on the radio dial, featured news from the communities of Allapattah, Miami Shores, Miami Springs, Little River, 54^th Street, Edison Center, North Miami and Opa-locka. Part of its early schedule included news from the Jewish community.

A day-time operation only, it shifted to “all-Negro programming” by July 1952. By the end of that year the WFEC touted itself as “the only station in Florida featuring all-Negro programming.” One of its disc jockeys, Carlton King Coleman (1932-2010), became a popular Miami radio personality by the late 1950s when the station evolved into WMBM. Coleman later provided some of the vocals for the hit song (Do the) Mashed Potatoes recorded with James Brown’s Band. His career included his own radio shows in New York City and acting in a few films including Bad Boys II.

The station served as an early starting point in the illustrious career of Noble V. Blackwell (1934-1994), known as "HoneyBee" to listeners. He moved on to work as director of broadcasting at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia for more than two decades and as broadcaster for NBN New York City. In 1972 Noble was honored as "Man of the Year" by the National Association of Television and Radio Announcers. He also hosted the popular TV show, Night Train in 1964. His dream of owning a radio station was realized when he bought twin staions WCDL AM and FM in Pennsylvania. He successfully transitioned them into WLSP Hit Kickin' Country. (A recently-launched documentary about Noble Blackwell can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/@noblevblackwell).

Another WMBM personality, Larry King (1933-2021) launched his interview show there in the late 1950s, early 1960s. He later moved to Miami’s WIOD* and syndicated the show nationwide before landing at CNN.

Through a series of license sales, owners, radio dial numbers, frequencies, and locations, WMBM now offers urban gospel programming serving Miami at 1490 on the dial.

Looking back, it could be said WFEC paved the way for ethnic programming with its rhythm and blues and gospel format for Miami’s African American community. The station helped place the city at the vanguard of radio broadcasting before a nationwide increase in station consolidation and decrease in local radio identity became the norm.

Copyright © 2022, 2023, 2024. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

For more on WIOD, see:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2013/07/miamis-radio-610-wiod-wonderful-isle-of.html

Sources:

Miami Herald, April 10, 1949

Miami Herald, Feb. 10, 1950

Miami News, Aug. 8, 1951

Miami Herald, July 21, 1952

Miami Herald, Jan. 15, 1953

Miami Times, Nov. 30, 1957

The Tennessean, Sept. 13, 1994

Wikipedia

NB Production Team/Tracye Blackwell Johnson

Tags: Miami radio history, African American history, Miami in the 1940s, Miami in the 1950s, Miami history, Noble V Blackwell,  Carlton King Coleman, Larry King

Morris Lapidus: Architect with a sense of fun ... ahead of his time?

Fontainebleau today
 Creative Commons
Wikipedia 

By Jane Feehan


Once mocked by critics, architect Morris Lapidus (1902-2001) designed 250 hotels and 1,200 other buildings throughout the world. Among his most noted buildings were the Fontainebleau Hotel (1954), Eden Roc Hotel (1955) and the Americana (1956) - all in Miami Beach.*

Lapidus was a retail architect whose first Miami Beach hotel commission was to complete the Sans Souci Hotel in 1949 (another architect began the work). He was known for his use of whiplash curved facades, bright colors, and heavy adornments. His was a blend of French provincial and Italian Renaissance styles, leading some of his peers to call his work “boarding house baroque,” even “pornography.”

When he saw the Fontainebleau, architect Frank Lloyd Wright exclaimed it looked like an “anthill.” That didn’t bother the Russian-born Lapidus who said, “I’m flattered. An anthill is one of the greatest abodes nature ever perfected.” Critics said he was pandering to the public. “My critic is the masses,” Lapidus answered. “I design for them. Let’s stop educating the human race. Let’s just make them happy.”

Miami Beach 1954 41st Sreet
Florida State Archives

And he did make the masses happy. Among its many “gaudy” features, the Fontainebleau (once called “America’s grossest national product”) was known for its staircase to nowhere. It actually led to a cloak room from which people could descend dramatically in all their jewels and other finery to an admiring audience. His Americana Hotel kept alligators in terrariums to remind tourists they were in Florida. “What I try to do is to create buildings which give people a sense of exhilaration and enjoyment,” Lapidus explained in a 1959 interview.

Architects today take a kinder view of Lapidus. Some call him the first post-modernist architect. He may have been ahead of his time, especially with pedestrian-friendly Lincoln Road Mall opened in November, 1960. Spanning several blocks, the outdoor mall was closed to traffic and accented with pools, fountains, shelters, gardens and tropical foliage.

Whatever critics think of him, Lapidus, who lived on Miami's Venetian Causeway until his death in 2001, will be remembered by his creed: “Even a doghouse or a birdhouse should have an adornment.”

*Fontainebleau Hotel - Listed year 2008 in National Register of Historic Places (as of April 2024 the hotel is owned by Fontainbleau Resorts and controlled by the Soffer family).
Open today

Sans Souci - now the RIU Florida Beach: 

Eden Roc  - now a Marriott Renaissance Hotel 

Americana imploded 2007

Sources:

Miami News, Sept. 3, 1959

Miami News, Nov. 26, 1960

New York Times, Jan. 20, 2001

LA Times, Jan. 20, 2001

Tags: Miami Beach history, Miami Beach architect, architect of Fountainebleau, architect of Eden Roc, architect of Americana, Lincoln Road architect, Miami Beach in the 1950s, Frank Lloyd Wright, Miami Beach hotels of the 1950s, film industry researcher, Morris Lapidus

Bra Brigade and Southern Bell's missing coins -1950

Southern Bell display 1949
Florida State Archives

 

By Jane Feehan

A Miami group made headlines as the “Brassiere Brigade” in 1950 when they reportedly confessed to embezzling $100,000 from the coin counting room of Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company by stuffing rolls of coins into their bras.

  

According to a news account, police accidentally stumbled upon the crime when a woman called to report a chest of missing coins at her home. Betty Corrigan, identified as a friend of the caller and employee of Southern Bell, happened to drive up to the house at the time. Police searched her car and found nearly $4,000 in coins and $1,000 in paper currency.

Corrigan spilled the story, reporters wrote, and implicated her friends. Most of them continued to sing about their complicity in the embezzlement and revealed how they did it.

When boxes of money were dropped off at the counting room for pay phone revenues, news accounts reported that women grabbed rolls of coins before they were counted and stuffed them into their bras. They dropped the money off in a restroom or somewhere else where an accomplice was waiting, making away with up to $150 a day.

The “Brassiere Brigade,” as newspapers called them (or “Silver Falsies”), made prosecution difficult when they refused to sign statements about their crime. Complicating matters was the company’s failure to figure out exactly how much was taken. Police let them go in September 1950; the brigade then took the opportunity to recant their stories.

The gang of men and women did not get away with the theft, which some estimated could have been much more than $100,000. Several among them bought houses and new cars during their coin caper. Weeks later, Southern Bell officials produced records showing $400 was missing one month – enough to charge several with felony theft.

Eleven were charged - three with theft, eight with receiving stolen property. Three women – all under 30 - were convicted of theft by a six-man jury in 24 minutes. They were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay back about $24,000.

At the time of the publicity about the incident, Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph asked Florida’s State Railroad and Public Utilities Commission for a rate increase. The commission placed the request on hold until the telephone company’s accounting practices were clarified.

PICTURES: www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/the_brassiere_brigade

Sources:

Palm Beach Post, Sept. 26, 1950

Miami News, Sept. 29, 1950

Miami News, Nov. 14, 1950

Tags: Miami history, Southern Bell history, Miami in the 1950s, clinking bras, film industry researcher,  historical researcher

Riccio's, Miami mobster hangout, money troubles and ...

 

By Jane Feehan 

Miami was a favorite destination of mobsters in the 1930s to the 1960s.

They frequented many restaurants, including Riccio’s, which was among the best--known mob hangouts in the 1950s.

Located at 991 NE 79^th Street, Riccio’s was opened by namesake Joe Riccio in the late 1940s. Like many of its patrons, Riccio had a checkered past. According to the Miami News, the place was raided for gambling in February 1950 by then-Dade County Sheriff Jimmy Sullivan.

Gambling tables and dice were seized in a back room of the restaurant. Police later staked out the gambler’s hangout hoping for a bigger catch but were unsuccessful.  The Miami News reported Joe Riccio had several arrests for gambling but was convicted only once. Other than attracting gamblers and gangsters, Riccio's also drew city notables including a few judges. One judge was arrested for driving while intoxicated; his partying reportedly began at Riccio's.

The restaurant chugged along but a surge in business occurred in 1953, according to news accounts, after Riccio told authorities he would give a job to notorious Jewish mobster Alex (Shondor) Birns of Cleveland.  

Birns was waiting for an extradition hearing back to Hungary but the Immigration Service gave Birns permission to move to Miami when told about the job. (According to a 1988 Plains Dealer series by Christopher Evans, Don King, later known for boxing promotions, ran numbers for Birns in Cleveland during the 1960s and was known as “The Kid.”)

By November of 1956, the Riccio restaurant entered bankruptcy, reportedly, for the third time in six years. The newspaper reported that the business had established a reputation for stiffing creditors. Riccio’s brother, Anthony, was once tapped as head of the company (incorporated as Greater Miami Italian-American Restaurant in December, 1954) but claimed he made only $50 a week.  Joe Riccio’s wife, Ruth, admitted she and her husband actually ran the eatery. The bankruptcies became the target of a federal investigation.

Riccio’s was shuttered in 1956 but the family had plans to reopen the following winter season. A search of news archives and public documents did not reveal fruition of those plans in Florida.

Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Miami News, Nov. 4, 1956

The Plain Dealer, 1988 (Ohio)

Tags: Miami mobsters, Cleveland mobsters, Don King, gambling in Miami in 1950s, Miami in the 1950s, historical researcher, film researcher

Back to the future of hotels: Conveyor belts, pneumatic tubes and some laughs

Fort Lauderdale's beach hotels

By Jane Feehan

Hotels were springing up all over South Florida during the 1950s, a decade it was deemed one of the most popular vacation stops in the country.  A front-page story in the Miami Herald (Jan. 16, 1956) about a hotel exposition in New York City probably caught the eye of “vacationists” and hoteliers alike. It offered a glimpse into  hotels of the future.

The future is here and some of the predictions were right on the mark … and some may make us laugh.

Hotels would be run by“automatic service controls” or electronic technology. With it:

• Guests would be assigned their room by a computer-staffed registration desk.
• Luggage will be delivered to rooms via conveyor belts.
• Guest rooms will be a “science fiction dream.” A bedside console, nerve center for countless robotic aids, will be used to control temperature and lighting. It will also serve as a control center for radio, TV and a hi-fi sound system. From the console, a guest will  read stock quotes or morning news summaries, including the weather. There, a guest will also retrieve messages, make phone calls and handle dictation, select a time to be awakened, and automatically arrange room service.
• Pneumatic tubes will be used to deliver standard items like ice and food.
• Staffers will still be needed to add an element of friendliness; there will be plenty of that because they won't be overworked, overtired. 

Most of this technology has become part of standard hotel operations but, thankfully for staffers looking for tips, not everything has materialized. And  those pneumatic tubes … perhaps a food replicator is in store?

The American Hotel and Lodging Association sheds light on some actual hotel milestones. Some were anticipated in that 1956 exposition; others never made it to the first rungs of speculation. Reality may be more interesting:

1950s - Quality Courts becomes the first to offer innovations such as wall-to-wall carpeting, daily change of linens, 24-hour desk service, and in-room telephones.

1950s - The first black and white television sets were placed in hotel lobbies or other common areas.

1958 - Sheraton created the first automated, electronic reservations system.

1969 - Westin is the first hotel chain to implement 24-hour room service.

1970 - Sheraton pioneered an 800 number for toll-free reservation calls.

1975 The first extended-stay property, the Residence Inn, was built in Wichita, Kansas.

1991 - Hotel Triton in San Francisco opened doors to the first celebrity suite.

1994 - Promus becomes the first hotel company to provide hotel information via the Internet.

1995 - Choice Hotels launches Choicehotels.com, the first website in the lodging industry to offer real-time access to a CRS.

And no replicators ... yet.

Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Tags: Hotel history, South Florida history, hotels of the future, hotel technology, historical researcher, Florida history