Fort Lauderdale and Jay Mar Cottages - from church suppers to hordes of spring breakers

515 Seabreeze Blvd. Closed

Fort Lauderdale, FL

By Jane Feehan

Jay-Mar  Cottages started out as a pleasant, low-profile, no-frills seaside motel along Fort Lauderdale beach. A different image emerged during the 1960s and 70s.

Sitting on the south side of D.C. Alexander Park and extending to Seabreeze Boulevard, Jay-Mar was probably built during the early 1950s, when it was first mentioned in the Fort Lauderdale News. 

In May 1954 a Baptist Church held a “covered supper” event for 34 attendees. In 1961 “Mrs. Georgia Smith, owner of Jay-Mar” was recognized for hosting her fifth-annual party for her college student guests. She fed and entertained 60-70 visitors “without incident." 

But three months later, the motel became a target of mischief. Jay-Mar was hit by a women’s bathing suit thief: five suits were swiped from clotheslines there and at the nearby Merriweather Motel (still operating as of this post) at 115 N. Atlantic Avenue.

Missing bathing suits was nothing compared to what the ensuing tidal wave of visitors brought to Fort Lauderdale beach.

The movie, Where the Boys Are, was released in 1960, placing Fort Lauderdale on the national radar of places for college students to enjoy their spring bacchanal. There wasn’t much good news for Jay-Mar Apartments (or cottages) in the decades that followed. It was besieged by college kids, as was the entire beach area. 

Student-hosted impromptu parties attracted crowds of underaged locals and college visitors looking to score alcohol— or more—and to meet up with like-minded friends.

Jay-Mar lost its luster as a cute motel by the beach and became a cheap place for the down and out to rent a room. By 1976 it was called an abandoned eyesore by the Fort Lauderdale Beach Advisory Board. The property then was worth about $1 million. Emmett McTigue, owner and spokesperson for the Las Olas Development Company (owners then of the property?) refused to comment on the call to demolish the building.

Jay-Mar remained standing until at least May 1976 when some complained it was a “gutted hulk.” There are no news stories about its demolishment; the name of the motel receded into memory. Instead, the beach-side parcel became the lure and lore of profitable land deals.

Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, May 24, 1954

Fort Lauderdale News, April 4, 1961

Fort Lauderdale News, July 9, 1961

Fort Lauderdale News, April 13, 1976

Fort Lauderdale News, May 25, 1976

Tags: Jay-Mar Cottages, Jay-Mar Motel, Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1960s. Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale Spring Break  

Fort Lauderdale's Spring Break Days: When they were asked to leave

 

Spring break crowd 1962 Fort Lauderdale
Dept. of Commerce
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

By Jane Feehan

College students first came to Fort Lauderdale in 1935 as part of the Collegiate Aquatic Forum held at the Casino Pool during 10 days in December. The city extended an invitation to swimming coaches and students at 23 institutions the first year. By the 1950s, between four and five thousand students made their way to Fort Lauderdale during the annual swimming event and for Spring break; the city welcomed their business.

Things changed in 1961.

The movie, Where the Boys Are, released in December that year, linked Fort Lauderdale and Spring Break in the news and in the national consciousness. Crowds surged and a riot in March spurred Mayor Edward Johns and Police Chief Lester Holt to demand that the students “get out of town.” Miami News reporter Henry Jones wrote that the “students … have given Fort Lauderdale a national reputation as the site of a spring orgy rivaling the exuberance of the Romans.”

Students ignored the order to get out of town and continued to flock annually - at times hundreds of thousands of them - to Fort Lauderdale. In 1982, two Yale graduates, Bruce Jacobsen and Rollin Riggs had a lot to say about Fort Lauderdale in their book, Rites of Spring: Students’ Guide to Spring Break in Florida. (Priam Books, 1982):

Fort Lauderdale is as loose on its morals as it is tight on its laws.

The town deserves its meat-market reputation: people are constantly sizing you up, weighing you and determining how much you cost with all the authority and insensitivity of a butcher.

A popular daytime diversion is to sit in lounge chairs or on a fence and heckle passersby.

Fort Lauderdale has as much dignity as pro wrestling or roller derby but provokes the same illicit sense of pleasure. If you can keep up with the great pace for a few days at a time, you’re bound to return with some great stories.

Jacobsen and Riggs listed places to stay:

Bahama Hotel, Fort Lauderdale Motel, Holiday Inn (Las Olas), Jolly Roger, Lauderdale Biltmore, Wish you Were Here Inn and the Xanadu.  Bar recommendations included: the Button, Elbo Room, Bojangles, Candy Store, and Mr. Pips. For dining they pointed to the Mai-Kai, Yesterday’s, Durty Nellie’s and the Crab Pot.

Most of those places are gone now – and so are the rowdy students. Fort Lauderdale clamped down the annual event in the mid 1980s with open container laws and traffic re-routing. The annual swim meet, the granddaddy of it all, has moved from Fort Lauderdale. The International Swimming Hall of Fame (www.ishof.org), a museum, remains. The new Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Complex opened January 2023.

©2011, 2021

__________ 

Sources:

Miami News, Dec. 24, 1935

Miami News, March 28, 1961

Jacobsen, Bruce and Riggs, Rollin. Rites of Spring: Students Guide to Spring Break in Florida. Priam Books 1982

Fort Lauderdale history, Spring break history, Collegiate Aquatic Forum Fort Lauderdale, college students, Fort Lauderdale spring break