Realtors in 1950s: move to Florida, it's safer from A-bomb

By Jane Feehan

A building boom hit Fort Lauderdale after World War II. According to realtors in 1951, the growth was fueled by American fears of an enemy A-bomb hitting the industrial Northeast.  South Florida wasn’t important enough to attract military interest, some realtors suggested, so investments would be safer here.

While that notion could be debated, the economic boom was at full throttle. Investors would buy a piece of property and within a week were offered considerably more than what they paid. Most sought improved parcels – lots with buildings—to avoid high war-time taxes on vacant property. If such lots were unavailable, investors poured foundations or partially constructed buildings before a deal was closed. Mindful of the war-driven materials shortage that caused a post-war housing crisis throughout the U.S., investors began construction with what was available. Lots with nothing but foundations were a common sight in 1950-51 Fort Lauderdale.

Conventional military wisdom of the day: South Florida wasn’t necessarily safe from an enemy incursion. The state’s coastline provided plenty of strike opportunities but an attack would most likely occur north of Cape Canaveral to avoid the Bahamas and its dangerous shoal waters. In such an event, South Florida would be isolated and its hotels likely filled with the enemy.

South Florida growth exploded during the 1950s but A-bomb fears could not be credited. For the real reasons behind the boom, see:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2020/07/three-big-reasons-for-floridas-growth.html

For info about the fallout shelter craze, see:
https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2020/06/fallout-shelters-miami-growth-biz-in.html

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Jan. 1951.


Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s. Post war Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale boom,  historical researcher

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.

---
* 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

Rough start for Fort Lauderdale's first doctor

 

Thomas Simpson Kennedy (1859-1939), a North Carolinian, made his way to Florida after service with the U.S. Army during the Spanish American War.

“During my army experience … Florida was more talked about as a pioneer state for young men to go to than the old phrase ‘go west young man, go west,’ ” wrote Kennedy in his memoirs.

With army experience, two years of schooling in pharmacy and high hopes, he traveled south from Georgia by boat, rail and foot. After stopping in Titusville, then Jensen where pineapples were grown commercially, and Stuart, Kennedy couldn’t find work. The hard freezes of 1894 and 1895 had dealt farming an icy blow. His friend, John Mulligan, had purchased land south of Fort Lauderdale to grow citrus. He persuaded Kennedy to move to the outpost to try his hand at farming. Kennedy arrived in October 1899.

He began his life near the New River growing tomatoes (near current day Southwest 9th Street) but a yellow fever epidemic soon broke out, affecting all in the area, including Kennedy. He tended to patients – and his tomatoes – until the fever ran its course through “every man, woman and child … black and white.”

In 1900, before the epidemic ended, two doctors from the Federal Bureau of Health visited Kennedy to investigate his practicing medicine without a license. The tomato farmer told them there were no doctors there during the epidemic and that none had been allowed into the area, which was under quarantine. Satisfied after examining his patients, the federal agents arranged to pay Kennedy for his services. That money, plus proceeds from his farming efforts, provided the would-be doctor funds to complete his medical degree. He graduated from Sewanee Medical College in Tennessee January 1902.

With degree in hand, Kennedy resolved to “practice medicine full blast without a horse, without anything but my feet to walk on.” And that he did, from Miami to Stuart. If people couldn’t pick him up with horse and buggy, he’d take a train to visit patients. One steamy hot July day he took a train from Fort Lauderdale to Deerfield to tend to a family with typhoid. When finished, he began walking the 15 miles back to Fort Lauderdale and collapsed. A man with a hand car (small railroad car) came to his rescue. From that time on, if travelers were found ill, Dr. Kennedy was summoned. He eventually traveled with his own horse and buggy.

Successful tomato farmer and popular country doctor, Thomas S. Kennedy is counted among Fort Lauderdale’s colorful – and vital – early pioneers. 

Copyright© 2010. Jane Feehan. All rights reserved. 

Sources:

Broward Legacy, Vol. 6, No. 1-4. Thomas S. Kennedy: an autobiography of a country doctor.

http://fulltext10.fcla.edu/DLData/SN/SN01480340/0006_001/file71.pdf

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 28, 1979

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, First doctor in Fort Lauderdale, Dr. Kennedy, Dr. Thomas S. Kennedy

 

About that name Publix ... and its link to Paramount Studios

 

By Jane Feehan

George Jenkins opened Publix Food Store in Winter Haven, Florida Sept. 6, 1930. In 1940 he launched Publix Super Market; the rest is history and part of everyday life for the millions of us who shop there. But the provenance of the name Publix goes back to Dec. 21, 1925 and it’s linked to show business.

That’s the year the two largest movie theater groups in the world—Famous Players Lasky and Balban and Katz Theatres of Chicago and the Middle West—merged to form Publix Theatres, Inc., an affiliate of Paramount Studios (formed 1912 and led by Adolph Zukor). From that date, Sam Katz president and Harold B. Franklin, vice president, oversaw operations of 700 theaters throughout the nation, including those in St. Petersburg, Tampa, West Palm Beach, Jacksonville and a list of others in Florida.

The film industry was an expanding and relatively new form of entertainment in the 1920s, especially after the first “talkie” with Al Jolson in the Jazz Singer released in 1927. There was still an attachment to live theater or vaudeville, so it was common to see a movie paired up with an extravagant live revue before a film started (much like latter day Radio City Music Hall).  

Revues included scores of entertainers. One newspaper in Buffalo claimed $2 million was spent to provide for “the greatest in picture and mammoth stage production.” Publix Theatres built a reputation for operating lavish theaters with plush carpeting and luxurious seating. Their reputation also included maintaining a well-trained staff.

The Buffalo Times exclaimed Publix Theatres entertained on a “scale so elaborate that no single theatre could afford it.”  The New York Daily News billed one of the Publix Theatres, the Paramount in the Paramount Building in Times Square, as “New York’s Newest Wonder.” A reporter for The Middletown Times Herald in New York state wrote “as Publix goes, so goes the rest of the show business. Expect everything in a Publix Theatre because you won’t be disappointed.”

The stock market crash of 1929 changed the course of Publix Theaters, Inc. Debt piled up. Bills went unpaid. The company restructured in 1930 but filed for bankruptcy and went into receivership in 1933. By 1935 the company reorganized as Paramount Studios.

The Publix theaters were failing so George Jenkins "borrowed" the name. He liked the name for his new business; its reputation was tops – and remains so to this day--though for a different business with a much longer history.

 

Sources:

Yonkers Herald, Dec. 21, 1925

Buffalo Times, Jan. 14, 1926

Buffalo Times, May 27, 1926

Yonkers Herald, Sept. 21, 1926

New York Daily News, Nov. 28, 1926

Middletown Times Herald, June 10, 1930

New York Daily News, July 20, 1933

Library of Congress

Florida State Archives/ Florida Memory: https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/321985

Tags: Movie theaters, Florida in the 1920s, Paramount Studios, Publix Theatres, Inc.

Snapshot: Fort Lauderdale during the Great Depression

Federal aid to community development 1933
Fort Lauderdale
Florida State Archives

Fort Lauderdale experienced a devastating hurricane and land bust that sent it spiraling into the throes of the Great Depression two to three years before the rest of the nation. Tourists visited but spent little money. Land sales plummeted to a halt.

Some facts about those depression years:

        •  An estimated 25 percent of homes were foreclosed for taxes and other liens; about 80 percent of  lots and non-farm lands were likewise lost. 

        •   Fort Lauderdale’s population reached nearly 8,700 (it doubled by 1940).

        •  The average assessed value of homes in 1934 was about $4,500.

        •   Illegal gambling, and bootlegging (until 1933) flourished.

        •   Grits and Grunts topped menus at homes and restaurants. An inexpensive meal,  it included small fish or grunts caught off nearby reefs fried in oil and served with grits.

For more about Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s, see index.


________________
Sources:
Weidling, Philip J. , Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/03815512v1ch03.pdf
Miami News, March 9, 1934




Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s, Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale during the Great Depression, film researcher

Seminole Chief Billy Bowlegs: King of Florida, buried treasure, a harem or ... ?

 

Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

A few modern-day Seminoles have taken the name Billy Bowlegs in honor of Chief Billy Bowlegs of the second and third Seminole Wars (from about 1835 to 1842). Over the years, truth and myth serve as canvas and paint brush for today’s portrait of this colorful character.

Holatta-Micco, as he was known to his people, assumed leadership of the Seminoles after other chiefs lost power or died. At the end of the Second Seminole War, the U.S. government informally agreed with Chief Billy Bowlegs that his people stay south of the Peace River (south of Charlotte Harbor in west Florida) and maintain harmony with white settlers.

It was a tough agreement to follow, especially when it seems the government was intent on moving Florida’s Seminoles to Oklahoma and Arkansas. Seminoles were blamed for murders of settlers in the years following the end of the war. Negotiations to remove the Indians continued.

One attempt at persuading the Seminoles included a trip to Washington to carry on discussions. “Mr. William B. Legs,” as the chief was registered in hotels along the way, ordered and was given, a pair of pants, a pair of half-sewed boots, one handkerchief, six bottles of French brandy, six bottles claret and one tumbler. Discussions were for naught; Chief Billy Bowlegs disappeared into the Everglades upon his return.

In 1858, baffled by the “energetic efforts of our army to effect their subjugation and removal,” Secretary of War Jefferson Davis approved payment to the Seminoles. Bowlegs was offered $6,500, four lesser chiefs $1,000, warriors $500 a piece and women and children $100 each. About 160 Seminoles set sail for New Orleans on their way to be resettled in the west. One warrior committed suicide on the trip.

The money Bowlegs and his people received is probably basis for a myth that he left treasure - piles of coin and jewels – near Santa Rosa Sound. Myth also claims Bowlegs set himself up with a harem and declared himself king of Florida in 1810. What is known is that he died not long after resettlement, perhaps 1858, chief of his exiled people.

Bowlegs and his band of 160 were not the last of the Seminoles. About 200 remained, deep in the recesses of the Everglades. The Seminoles, today a Federally Recognized Indian Tribe, never signed a peace treaty, the only tribe never to do so.

Who are the Seminoles' heroes? Among them are Seminoles Sam Jones, who never left Florida, and warrior Osceola, who was captured and sent to South Carolina (d. 1838).
____________
Sources:
Douglas, Marjory Stoneman. The Everglades: River of Grass. Miami: Banyan Books, 1978.
Miami News, Jan. 12, 1923
Palm Beach Post, April 14, 1946
The Seminole Tribe: http://www.semtribe.com

www.wikipedia.com

Tags: Florida history, Jane Feehan film researcher, Seminole history, Seminole Wars

FDR escapes assassination in Miami; would be assassin dealt justice in six weeks

Jailed Zangara 1933
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

 By Jane Feehan

A look back at the assassination attempt on Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Miami’s Bayfront Park shows how things have changed - or not – since 1933.

After a pleasure trip aboard Vincent Astor’s yacht, President-Elect Roosevelt planned to speak briefly to a gathering at Bayfront Park on February 15. His itinerary, published in newspapers, attracted the attention of 33-year-old Italian immigrant Giuseppe Zangara who had planned to target President Herbert Hoover months before until he realized his term was about to end. Suffering from what was later determined as gallbladder disease, he moved from New Jersey to the kinder, warmer weather of Miami. Zangara, now a naturalized citizen, blamed his loss of a job and health problems on rich capitalists, presidents and kings.

FDR had just ended a two-minute talk from the back seat of an open car at Bayfront when Zangara climbed a chair to better aim at him with a gun he had purchased at a Miami pawn shop. A woman standing nearby jarred his arm when the chair started to wobble. His shots struck five people, including visiting Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. FDR escaped injury. Zangara was immediately arrested saying he was “sore at the government.”

The would-be FDR assassin was brought to trial five days later in Miami and sentenced to 80 years. But on March 6, Mayor Cermak, who had been recovering, suddenly died. Zangara was brought to trial again and then sentenced to death.

Wounded Mayor Cermak
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Zangara died in the electric chair at Raiford prison March 20, 1933. His only regret: not having his picture taken in the chair. “All capitalists lousy bunch – crooks,” he reportedly said when hearing there would be no photographers.

Security for presidents has greatly improved since 1933 but unfortunately, nuts still abound. Arrest, trial and execution of Zangara all occurred in less than six weeks. Today, in most cases, justice has slowed to the speed of a Burmese Python’s crawl.
_________

Sources: 

Brands, HW. Traitor to His Class: The privileged life and radical presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. New York: Anchor Books (2008), p. 277-281.

Miami News, Nov 2 1950, p28 at:

Palm Beach Post, Mar 20, 1933, p 1

Palm Beach Post, Mar 21, 1933, p. 1.

Tags: Florida history, FDR in Florida, FDR assassination attempt, Miami history,  film researcher, Franklin Delano Roosevelt