Florida tent camps, tourism and housing shortages

Florida tourist camp 1928
 Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

By Jane Feehan


Florida tent cities served as lodging for workers, refugees, survivors of storms, and criminals in the past but they also housed tourists who wanted to vacation on or close to the beach or who couldn’t find a hotel room. 

Hotels (and housing) were scarce in early 20th century South Florida, but locals wanted tourists’ business and encouraged them to stay at tent camps in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and other communities. 

Frank Stranahan constructed a tent camp near his trading post on Fort Lauderdale's New River. His camp provided housing made of "palmetto constructed homes" for visitors in 1925. Another Fort Lauderdale camp housed 700 during that winter. Las Olas Inn across from the ocean provided "luxurious" tents for guests when rooms were were filled.

Below is a description of a popular tourist camp in Miami.

Tent City Gainesville, 1922 
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Miami Beach boasts a “tent city” second to none. This “city” is located on the oceanfront between Smith’s Casino* and the government reservation. There are 20 tents or more, all well floored and comfortable.

Between 40 and 50 persons – men, women and children – compose this happy little community, where ceremony and etiquette has been abandoned and all live as one great, big family, enjoying life in all its fullness. All these people are tourists and all amply able to afford the luxuries of hotel life, but they prefer to spend their vacation in a tent by the seashore.

Last Saturday night these people chartered one of the ferry boats and enjoyed a moonlight ride to Cape Florida and return. Light refreshments were served and music indulged in.

But camps were also constructed to cope with a housing shortage. In July of 1925, a proposal was voted in by Fort Lauderdale to set aside an area in Progresso for 150 camp lots. Another camp was approved near "the Dixie" [highway] for  construction workers. 

People came to Florida and stayed at camps for various reasons. Some stayed while they looked for work or opportunity. When one visitor was asked in 1926 why he came to Florida and stayed at a camp, he answered "because this is where the money is." 

Most however, stayed at camps for inexpensive vacation lodging. Today, we call these RV parks.

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* Smith's Casino was a popular beach side pool in the 1920s that sat on the south end of Biscayne Boulevard. 

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale Sentinel, Jan. 6, 1925

Fort Lauderdale Sentinel, July 23, 1925

Miami Metropolis, Feb. 7, 1920

Fort Lauderdale Sentinel, Feb. 7, 1925

Fort Lauderdale News, Feb. 23, 1926

Tags: early Florida tourism, early tourism in Miami, Florida tourism in the 1900s,
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