Early Fort Lauderdale visitors stay at the floating hotel - the Amphitrite

Amphitrite circa 1930
Florida State Archives

 

By Jane Feehan

Greek mythology deemed Amphitrite a sea goddess and consort to Poseidon. In the 1930s, the former warship USS Amphitrite served as a floating hotel and restaurant in Fort Lauderdale.

Decommissioned in 1919, the 262-foot-long Amphitrite was purchased by A.L.D. Buckstein who converted it into a hotel berthed at Beaufort, South Carolina. Ownership and location of the iron-hulled ship changed over two decades and included dockage and operations near Dunbar Road in Palm Beach (1927). Two years later, the Miami city council rejected a proposal to host the ship. Amphitrite found another home at Fort Lauderdale’s Port Everglades in January, 1931. The vessel was moved near the Casino - now near the location of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

SS Amphitrite at 
Boston Navy Yard
Creative Commons, Wikipedia

The floating 75-room-hotel and two-floor restaurant drew local guests and tourists (and rumored gambling) until the Hurricane of 1935. The storm washed it across the waterway to the cove at Idlewyld off Las Olas Boulevard where it remained in legal limbo for several years. In July, 1942 the Amphitrite set sail north where it later served as home to workers on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The vessel was scrapped in 1952.

Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

Sources:
Moses, James. “The Amphitrite,” Broward Legacy, Vol. 1, October, 1976.
Palm Beach Daily News, Jan. 31, 1927
Miami News, Dec. 13, 1929
Photo at boatyard from wikipedia.org



Tags: Amphitrite, Florida history, Fort Lauderdale history, tourism history, Fort Lauderdale hotels, floating hotel, history of Fort Lauderdale

Prohibition: Daring women of the rum-running empire

 

Miami liquor raid 1925
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Women played a part (or tried to) in rum-running from the Bahamas to South Florida during Prohibition (1920-1933).

Gloria de Cesares, 29, reportedly born in Argentina and educated in England, founded the Gloria Steamship Company to run her illicit enterprise. An accomplished navigator, she bought a British five-masted schooner, the General Serret, and loaded it with liquor for a trip to the Bahamas.  She didn’t get far. The cargo of the General Serret was discovered, perhaps by a tip from its unhappy captain, before the ship left port, ending de Cesares’ rum-running career.

“Spanish Marie” Waites was far more successful; she headed up a “rum-running empire” after her husband was killed during one murky mission. Some say he was shot, others say he drowned after Marie pushed him overboard.

The tall, darkly attractive woman “strutted with a revolver strapped to her waist, a big knife stuck in her belt and a red bandana tied round her head.”  Spanish Marie commanded a fleet of 15 to 20 radio-equipped speed boats that outran U.S. Coast Guard vessels for years. She delivered rum from the Florida Keys to Palm Beach. In 1928 she was caught unloading liquor with the help of her crew in Coconut Grove. A $500 bail was posted then raised to $3,000 when she failed to appear in court. She disappeared leaving no other traces to history.

By Oscar E Cesare, Puck Magazine 1915
Criticizing alliance of women's suffragettes 
and Prohibition advocates

Gertrude Lythgoe, a Californian who went to New York and then worked for a London liquor distributor, became known as the “Bahama Queen” for her efforts. At the behest of her employer, she set up shop in Nassau where she became the only woman to hold a wholesale liquor license.  Lythgoe’s reputation as a comely, well-read, tough (she threatened to shoot one of her critics), liquor distributor grew. She later wrote about her exploits in Bahama Queen: the Autobiography of Gertrude “Cleo” Lythgoe. Copyright © 2011. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Tags: Prohibition, women's history, Florida history

Sources:

Behr, Edward. Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996.

Ling, Sally J. Run the Rum In: South Florida During Prohibition. Charleston: History Press, 2007

Willoughby, Malcom F. Rum War at Sea. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964.

South Florida filmmakers held high hopes for local studios in the 1920s

By Jane Feehan

The motion picture industry in the U.S. was launched in the early 1900s by D.W. Griffith and a few other filmmakers. Of acclaim was his controversial Birth of a Nation filmed in California in 1915. Four years later, Griffith came to Fort Lauderdale to make Idol Dancer*. By the early 1920s, a few industry hopefuls opened studios in Florida.

Miami Studios, Inc. was built in Hialeah, eight miles from downtown Miami in 1921. Its two buildings contained two studios each with stages configured 125 by 60 feet for interior shots. Construction progressed “just as though a permanent building is being erected except using plaster board instead of plaster and it was being painted more carefully than a hotel,” reported the Miami Daily Metropolis  (Jul. 28, 1921).

The first movie out of the studio was  Outlaws of the Sea (1923). It was based on Filigree Flask, a story about rum runners written by Miami area resident EH Lebel (Prohibition had been underway since 1920). John Brunton produced the action film shot on Miami’s streets and waterfront. Jack Okey, who went on to have a long career in the film industry, directed the project starring Marguerite Courtot, Pierre Gendron, Gordon Standing and HH Patlee. 

Another movie released the same year was Where the Pavement Ends based on a novel by John Russell. It was directed by Rex Ingram and starred Edward Connelly, Alice Terry and Ramon Navarro. A desert scene was filmed on the beach near today’s Fontainebleau Hotel. Part of the movie was also shot in Cuba. Unfortunately, the film is lost.

Studio principals also hoped to produce a movie about Thomas A Edison’s life to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of his invention of the incandescent light bulb. It’s doubtful this came to pass; no record exists of such a film produced by the company. No other films are mentioned in news of those years about the studio, the “largest motion picture plant in the South, where the greatest personages of filmdom have operated.” D.W. Griffith shot White Roses in Florida and Louisiana but it wasn't a production of Miami Studios. Newspapers of 1923 show attempts to sell lots owned by the company. By that time, Hollywood was the place to be in the film industry and Florida’s chances as a movie production center were all but a dream. Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

 Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

*For DW Griffith and other early filmmakers in Florida, use search box or index

Additional Sources

Miami Daily Metropolis, Feb. 2, 1923

Miami Daily Metropolis, Mar. 5, 1923

Miami Daily Metropolis, July 8, 1922

Tags: Miami history, film industry history in Miami, film industry history South Florida, 

DW Griffith, movies made in Miami, Miami movie studio,  Hialeah movie studio, film studios in Miami, 

First WWII Medal of Honor awarded Fort Lauderdale grad who made the most of his opportunities.

By Jane Feehan

 Lt. Alexander (Sandy) Nininger, Jr., a graduate of Fort Lauderdale High School (1937) and West Point (1941), was killed in action January 12, 1942 on Bataan, a little more than six weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack. 

For his valor in attempting to thwart a Japanese assault, Nininger was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first of World War II. Nininger was laid to rest in a church cemetery at Abucai, Province of Bataan, the Philippines.

Nininger had been an honor student and star football player at Fort Lauderdale High. His father, Alexander R. Nininger, Sr., once manager at the Sunset Theater and later a theater in Lake Worth, said Sandy decided when he was 11 years old that he wanted to attend West Point.

"He never quit anything he started," said Nininger, Sr. while  awaiting the medal to be posthumously awarded in 1942. It was an honor recommended by Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Sandy was invited to a Rotary Club meeting in Fort Lauderdale months before he died. There, he explained he volunteered for service in the Philippines because it offered "the best opportunity for an officer eager for action and hard work."

He also volunteered for the battle that ended his life. His body was found well within Japanese lines with those of a Japanese officer and two enemy soldiers. He had been wounded three times.

Among many tributes was the naming of a drive off Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale to the War Memorial Auditorium as “Sandy Nininger Drive,” and the establishment by the Kiwanis Club of the "Sandy Nininger Medal" to honor high school students who have made the most of their opportunities. 

 Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

Official site of the Congressional Medal of Honor: www.cmohs.org

Read these links about his burial controversy:

 http://bataanmissing.com/2020/05/05/medal-of-honor-goes-mia/

https://www.stripes.com/news/family-suing-for-dna-testing-of-possible-remains-of-wwii-medal-of-honor-recipient-1.470367

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 29, 1942

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan 30, 1942

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

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

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, history of Fort Lauderdale,  Medal of Honor, WWII in Florida, WW2 history, Fort Lauderdale World War II

What happened when barbers raised haircuts 25 cents in 1951 SOFLA

Barber pole by
  Sakurambo*

By Jane Feehan

A 25-cent increase in barber shop haircuts sent Fort Lauderdale men into a hair tizzy in 1951, motivating one resident to rejoin the Navy.

A post-World War II booming economy with its pent-up demand spurred inflation during the 1950s. Barber shops were not immune. When shops – many of them union at the time – announced a jump from $1 to $1.25 for a haircut, it nearly caused an open rebellion.  A “loudly wailing majority felt they had been badly imposed upon,” reported the Fort Lauderdale Daily News (Jan. 2, 1951).

Men threatened to buy shears to have wives cut hair at home. Others declared they would stretch out time between visits to barber shops. One even declared he’d had his last haircut. Others felt a price increase was in order but smaller than 25 cents. A minority, including the barber shop union, thought higher prices on nearly everything else – rents, supplies, license fees – warranted a hair cut price increase.

The 25-cent boost persuaded Fort Lauderdale resident Harvey Ingalls of NE 17^th Way to rejoin the Navy. He left the Navy in 1949 and thought about returning but did not make a move until the haircut price increase flap. When a national emergency was declared because of the Korean conflict, and the government called for enlistees, he acted swiftly. The price increase “motivated” him to rejoin, Ingalls said.

But Pompano’s four barbers held firm at $1. “There are two types of people in Pompano – rich and poor,” declared an identified barber. “We must go along with those who would find it a hardship to pay more than $1.” Pompano barbers expected a jump in business with price increase refugees from Fort Lauderdale.

Barbers in Hollywood, Dania and Hallandale had yet to meet that month to make their decision. Prices had already gone up to $1.25 in Miami and Miami Beach. In 1943 the price of a haircut “jumped” from 50 to 65 cents in South Florida, raising eyebrows. They should see prices today – especially where most men get their hair coiffed – at unisex hair salons.

Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s, hair cut prices after World War II, South Florida during the 1950s, history of barber shops in Florida

*Created by Sakurambo Barber pole gif by CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/> via Wikimedia Commons

For world barber history, see:

http://thehistoryofthehairsworld.com/barbers_history.html

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale Daily News Jan. 2, 1951

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Jan. 5, 1951

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Jan. 8, 1951

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history

Oakland Park's Studio City ... SOFLA attempts at film industry in the 1920s

Proposed Screen Talent Studios 1922
Florida State Archives

During the 1920s, the film industry flourished in Hollywood, California while South Florida land sales boomed. Some thought movies and Florida would make a good match. In 1922 Miami-based Barkdull Investment Company advertised lots in the Fort Lauderdale Herald (October 3, 1922) for a development that would house Screen Talent Studios. A ten-acre piece of land was purportedly bought for $3,000,000  (not verified) where a “Greenwich Village” was to house a production crew. Many residential lots sold for $50 each but the movie studio didn’t materialize in Oakland Park, now bordered by Fort Lauderdale. South Florida may have rivaled Hollywood in film making … or maybe not.

Tags: film industry Florida, Florida film industry research, early film makers in Florida, film, Fort Lauderdale history, Oakland Park history

Hotel Champ Carr - known today as the Riverside Hotel - opens in 1936

 

New River at Champ Carr Hotel, now Riverside Hotel
Florida State Archives

Riverside Hotel

620 E. Las Olas Blvd.

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

954-467-0671

www.riversidehotel.com

By Jane Feehan

The Riverside Hotel, currently the only hotel on Las Olas Boulevard, attracts locals who appreciate its history as well as tourists who seek the cultural, entertainment and business center of Fort Lauderdale.

The Riverside opened as Hotel Champ Carr Dec. 17, 1936. Preston and John Wells, wealthy Chicagoans, met Champ Carr when he worked on a fishing boat they chartered, the story goes. They liked him so much that when they decided to build the hotel, they named it after Champ Carr, who they tapped as its first manager. The hotel was designed by Fort Lauderdale’s leading architect, Francis Abreu, and constructed by contractor George Young. The "Monterey-style," three-story, 80-room hotel drew business types and tourists in its early days, including a member of the DuPont family and Ronald Reagan. Carr left in 1947 and the name was changed to the Riverside Hotel.

Hotel Champ Carr, 1936
Florida State Archives

Today, the hotel has expanded to 214 rooms. It maintains that old Florida feeling with Spanish tiled floors in the lobby, dark wood molding and doors, and a mix of blue, dark green and orange hues throughout many of its hallways and attractive guest rooms.

Preston’s Lobby Lounge once hosted a happy hour with a piano player Monday through Friday. A short walk across the lobby sits the sophisticated Wild Sea restaurant. Another eatery, Indigo, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week (check first, check dining room names; they also change). 

For some, food is secondary here; tradition, atmosphere, and people watching from its sidewalk dining area and now the dock, is what Riverside is all about.

Today

Meeting rooms are available to accommodate business functions, and special events, including weddings. Service: very good.
_____
For Francis Abreu, see, https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2020/08/fort-lauderdales-first-architect.html

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 16, 1936
McIver, Stuart. Glimpses of South Florida History. Miami: Florida Flair Books, 1988.




Tags: Fort Lauderdale dining, breakfast in Fort Lauderdale, pre-theater dining in Fort Lauderdale, hotels in Fort Lauderdale, Las Olas Boulevard hotel and dining, restaurants in Fort Lauderdale. Indigo, Fort Lauderdale