All aboard the Orange Blossom Special to Florida - a movable hotel

 

Postcard 1939 - Orange Blossom Special
Public Domain

By Jane Feehan

Some called visitors to Florida during the 1920s “the sunshine seekers.” Many hoped to cash in on the booming Florida real estate market. Most arrived by train.

Travel by train was also booming. Solomon Davies Warfield (1859-1927), president of Seaboard Airline Railroad (SAL) envisioned a formula for success in the Sunshine State: join service from the west to the east coast of Florida, provide premier, luxury services, and publicize.

Service from New York to Florida was provided along the tracks of several rail companies. But it was the train, the Orange Blossom Special, that received high praise.

“Travelers have become so sensitive and particular that they flutter with indignation if they can’t have their bath and their barber, hothouse strawberries and other such luxuries while on the train,” wrote The Miami Herald in early 1926.

The Orange Blossom Special operated as a “hotel on wheels” with maids, valets, manicurists, barber shops and hairdressers.  Also featured: a ladies’ observation car. Some Pullman cars used by SAL offered accommodations with bathtubs or showers. Service included bellhops (many Filipinos), and chef-inspired, fine dining in a car with paintings of orange blossom branches and other fruit on a background of gray paint.

Orange Blossom Special service officially connected the two coasts, terminating in West Palm Beach, January 28,1925 after a brief weather delay (reported The Miami News and The Miami Herald). Dates seem to vary on inaugural service depending on sources; accounts may have confused initial service to Miami in 1927. 

That first trip in 1925 involved six Pullman cars filled with representatives of Miami, including Coral Gables developer George E. Merrick, and West Palm Beach and SAL executives.

The Miami Tribune described the Orange Blossom Special as “one of America’s finest trains” traveling to and from New York in 35 hours with its trip through the Scenic Highlands {sic] of Central Florida. 

In August 1926, The Miami Herald reported the “Orange Blossom Special has become a famous train almost overnight.” 

Orange Blossom arrives in 
Miami 1927,
Florida State Archives

Whether by popular demand or seeking increased profits, Warfield arranged for the Orange Blossom Special to make its first through-trip from West Palm Beach to Miami on January 8, 1927. 

The train stopped in Fort Lauderdale that day for about 20 minutes. Mayor John Tidball greeted Governor John Martin, SAL’s Warfield and several hundred dignitaries at the train station off West Fourth Street. 

Big  crowds awaited the Orange Blossom Special in Miami: 15,000 residents were on hand at the Miami station and another 10,000 at Royal Palm Park, near the Seaboard Airline Railway office in the Lorraine Arcade on Southeast First Street.

Rail lines connecting
Orange Blossom Special (Florida State Archives) 1936

The winter-service only Orange Blossom Special hummed along for several decades. Service was suspended during World War II to accommodate military efforts. The train, originally a heavy steam-driven locomotive, was not fast. Nor was it economical to maintain with yearly interior and exterior painting. Travel times, however, improved to fewer more than 24 hours before its final trip April 13, 1953.

Today, the romance of the Orange Blosom Special lives through the lyrics and music of the bluegrass song by Ervin T. Rouse (1917-1981), the Orange Blossom Special (https://genius.com/Johnny-cash-orange-blossom-special-lyrics).  

Ride the train and lose those New York blues, to paraphrase the song. Contemporary lyrics might say “get to Florida any way you can to lose those New York, Chicago or Los Angeles blues."

 Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

The Miami News, Dec. 30, 1924

The Miami News, April 25, 1925

The Miami Herald, Jan. 17, 1926

Miami Daily News, Jan. 24, 1925

The Miami Herald, Jan. 26, 1925

The Miami Tribune, March 17, 1926

The Miami Herald, Aug. 20, 1926

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Dec. 7, 1926

The Miami Herald, Jan. 9, 1927

The Miami Herald, Oct. 21, 1941

CorridorRail.com

TransportationHistory.org

Wikipedia

Tags: Orange Blossom Special. Florida railways, Seaboard Airline Railroad, Seaboard Airline Railway, S, Davies Warfield, 

Mar-a-Lago's Past and Present in Palm Beach

Mar-a- Lago 1973
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

 By Jane Feehan


Addison Mizner wasn't the only architect to leave an imprint on Palm Beach. Several others were commissioned in the 1920s to build expansive, over-the-top-mansions on the island.

Mar-a-Lago 1920
Florida State Archives

Among them were Marion Sims Wyeth (1889-1982) and Viennese architect and production designer Joseph Urban (1872-1933). They designed Mar-a-Lago (ocean-to-lake) for Edward Hutton and his wife, cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Sims drew up plans for the structure; Urban designed its interior.*

The opulent estate, with 115 rooms, a nine-hole golf course, 15th century tiles, and a 70-foot tower, took four years to build at a cost of $8 million. Completed in 1927, it still stands today. Hutton and Post divorced but the heiress continued to live at the mansion. Her parties and charitable functions at Mar-a-Lago were legendary, drawing national attention to Florida. When Post died in 1973, she left the estate to the U.S. government as a national landmark. Nearly seven years later, Mar-a-Lago was returned to the Post Foundation because maintenance costs were too high.

                                                                                  

Mar-a-Lago circa 1930
Florida State Archives

In 1985, Donald Trump purchased Mar-a-Lago as his residence. A few years later, he was granted permission to run it as a private social club. Mar-a-Lago sits across from the Bath and Tennis Club, at the southern end of town. It is now included in the National Register of Historic Places.

*Wyeth also designed the Florida Governor’s Mansion and the Norton Museum; Urban helped write several children’s books and was production designer for the Ziegfeld Follies and Metropolitan Opera.
_________________________________

Copyright © 2021. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

Sources:

Historical Society of Palm Beach County 

O'Sullivan, Maureen. Palm Beach Then and Now. West Palm Beach: Lickle Publishing, 2004

Tags: Palm Beach, Palm Beach history, Mar-a-Lago

One of the state's "Great Floridians," Col. E.R. Bradley

 

Bradley's Beach Club, Palm Beach circa 1920
 State Archives of Florida

By Jane Feehan

Honored as one of the state’s Great Floridians, E.R. Bradley (1859-1946) was a significant player in Palm Beach history.

Bradley, born in Pennsylvania, started out as a steelworker but went on to make his fortune through gambling and horse racing. He came to Palm Beach a few years after Henry M. Flagler brought the Florida East Coast Railway to the town.

Colonel Edward Bradley
Florida State Archives

Bradley and his brother, John, built the Beach Club in 1898. Attracting wealthy patrons from around the world (membership open only to non-Floridians), the club became the social nexus in Palm Beach. The Beach Club, which did not serve alcohol, was soon known as the “most exclusive casino in the world,” igniting the glamorous reputation of the island community.

A horse breeder who won the Kentucky Derby four times between 1921-1933, Bradley donated the Beach Club property to the Town of Palm Beach provided it would be demolished and the property be used as a park. Bradley Park lies east of the Lake Trail on the north side of Royal Poinciana Way. A wall of the Bradley house remains in the park. He was also one of the donors of the West Palm Beach Country Club to be used as a municipal course.

Bradley's Beach Club 1920
(also called a casino)
Florida State Archives

Bradley, who took on the title colonel, was a teetotaler who would not be comfortable with his name attached to today's E.R. Bradley’s Saloon, a popular restaurant and bar at the east end of Clematis Street in West Palm Beach. He would have been more impressed with the Colonel E.R. Bradley Handicap, a horse racing event held each January in Louisiana.

Copyright © 2021. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

Sources:

Palm Beach County Historical Society. Palm Beach, Then and Now. West Palm Beach: Lickle Publishing, 2004.

Palm Beach Post, April 11, 1929

Palm Beach Post, April 25, 1971

Tags: Palm Beach history, Palm Beach, West Palm Beach restaurants, Kentucky Derby history, Palm Beach County history, E.R. Bradley

Paris Singer, Singer Island and the failed Blue Heron Hotel

 

Singer Island - mid-century
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan             

Paris Singer (d. 1932), of the sewing machine family and fortune, was a key player in the early days of Palm Beach. He and friend Addison Mizner collaborated on the Everglades Club in 1918.   Boom times eventually beckoned both to separate projects. Mizner’s next phase awaited him in Boca Raton. Singer set his eyes on a piece of land north of Palm Beach, known to us today as Singer Island. 

Singer, once paramour of American dancer Isadora Duncan, had big plans for his new development. “He was destined to make the north end of Palm Beach another Coney Island,” newspaper accounts claimed in 1925. “Eventually he will present to Palm Beach and the world a popular playground where the common folk may enjoy the advantages offered by Coney Island, Brighton Beach and other watering places throughout the country.”

Work began on a $2.5 million hotel, the Blue Heron. It was half-finished when the bottom dropped out of the land market in the late 1920s.  A skeleton of a developer’s dream-turned-nightmare, the Blue Heron, which was to include an 18-hole golf course, stood as mournful reminder of the collapse until it was finally demolished during World War II.

Paris Singer
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

A bridge from the mainland to Singer Island was completed in 1926. A second one replaced it in 1949. By 1976, the Blue Heron Bridge, named for the long-gone Singer hotel, opened. A taller, grander one than its predecessors, this bridge (and boulevard of the same name) serves as a salute to Singer Island, a somewhat different version of the original Paris Singer dream.

___________ 

Sources:

Palm Beach Post, Dec. 11, 1925

Palm Beach Post,  March 17, 1925

Tuckwood, Jan, ed. Palm Beach County at 100.  Jupiter: Palm Beach Post, 2009.

Tags: history of Florida, Palm Beach County history, Singer Island history

Tried and not true: a Florida attempt at Mardi Gras

 

Seminoles dancing on Clematis Street
West Palm Beach 1916
State of Florida Archives

We all know about the dollars and attention Mardi Gras generates for New Orleans, but few remember West Palm Beach once vied for a similar event in the early 1900s. The business community was eager to elevate the profile of this new South Florida city; New Orleans was its inspiration.

With an idea and vague plan, a committee of businessmen in 1916 set out for the Everglades to solicit the participation of Tony Tommie (1889-1931), a young Seminole they thought was chief.

A caption underneath a photo of Tommie used to promote the event read:  “Tony Tommie is the newly-elected Chief of the Tommie tribe of Seminoles who has agreed to bring his tribe to the Palm Beach Seminole Sun Dance.”

Tony Tommie and wife Edna John Tommie 1926
State of Florida Archives/Florida Memory

The first Seminole to attend a white school, Tommie was never chief but often spoke unofficially for his people. He did agree to bring other Seminoles to the first event, named the Seminole Sun Dance.

Seminole traditions never included a Sun Dance but that didn’t bother anyone. The first event, launched with $1000 and high hopes, was held in the spring of 1916 and continued each year until 1923.  It included Seminoles in their traditional dress marching side by side with costumed white participants in a parade.  A beauty contest, baby parade, marching bands and other elements were added over the years. 

After 1923, the fest was held intermittently until the 1950s.  In 1959, some called for the event to be made permanent, but it never came to pass. Needless to say, nor did an event comparable to the New Orleans Mardi Gras ever materialize.

Today, Sunfest (sunfest.com), an annual three-day music festival, offers no similarities to its Seminole Sun Dance predecessor.  

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Sources:

Palm Beach Post, Feb. 17, 1916 

Palm Beach Post, May 3, 1955 

Tags: Florida history, West Palm Beach history, West Palm in the 1900s, Tony Tommie, 
film researcher, Palm Beach County history