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

Fort Lauderdale Motel Memories

Some of these photos may jog memories. Most were not significant destinations but part of our landscape growing up in Fort Lauderdale. All are gone. Most, even along Federal Highway, were jammed during college Spring Break days and were sites of some wild college parties.

*Marina Motor Inn 1973  -  Florida State Archives/Florida Memory
east side of Intracoastal, south of 17 St Causeway

*1135 S. Federal Highway, 1960s  Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

*Natchez Plantation Inn 1961 - A1A  Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

*Lauderdale Hotel SW 1st Avenue and adjoining building Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

*Coral Plaza Motel 2701 N. Federal Highway Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

*Bahama Hotel 401 N. Atlantic Boulevard opened 1956 Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

*Anchor Motel 1400 S. Federal Highway Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

                                                              

*Bougainvillea Hotel  1947 downtown, converted into apartments
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

* From Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Tags: Fort Lauderdale motels, Fort Lauderdale history, history of Fort Lauderdale

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.

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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

Antioch College, Hugh Birch and Fort Lauderdale

 By Jane Feehan

Hugh T Birch circa 1920
Florida State Archives

Fort Lauderdale residents and visitors are familiar with the name Hugh T. Birch because of the Hugh T. Birch State Park along A1A near Sunrise Boulevard. 

A Fort Lauderdale pioneer, Birch (1848-1943) bought three miles of property at the turn of the 20th- century between the Intracoastal and ocean for $500. Those who know Birch State Park probably drive on nearby Antioch or Orton avenues without realizing they are also connected to the Birch legacy.

In the early 1940s, just before his death at 94, Birch bequeathed 180 acres to the state for the park, 35 acres to his daughter and the rest – the bulk of his estate - to Antioch College in Ohio. He didn’t graduate from Antioch but he attended the liberal arts college and played baseball there for three years until 1869.

Birch bought property in honor of his daughter near this Ohio school founded by American educator Horace Mann and built a mansion on the spot in 1931; he referred to it as Glen Helen (now Birch Manor). He spent summers at the glen and winters in Fort Lauderdale.

According to Algo Henderson, president of Antioch College from 1936-1948, Birch’s gift turned into “a Cinderella kind of venture.” The school developed and sold bequeathed property in Fort Lauderdale for considerable profit. They named some streets after former Antioch presidents (Orton Avenue for Edward Orton, president 1872-73) and distinguished graduates. Street names have changed over the years, but Antioch and Orton avenues and Birch Road remain. Antioch also donated a piece of the beach to the City of Fort Lauderdale.

But, just as in the Cinderella fairy tale, there were dark moments in the relationship between the college and beach town. Antioch filed a lawsuit in 1987 to gain ownership of the Hugh T. Birch State Park (then valued at a half billion dollars). They argued the park had fallen into neglect. Antioch College lost the suit in 1993.

A few interesting notes about Antioch College, founded in 1853: It was the first college in the United States to admit women to the same curriculum as offered to men and it was among the first to accept African American students. Horace Mann’s call to students to “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity,” remains the foundation of the school’s mission. 

Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:
Miami News Dec. 23, 1945
New York Times, Nov. 15, 1987
Antioch College




Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Hugh T Birch, Antioch College

Bay Mabel Harbor, now Port Everglades, opens with a mishap

 

Lake Mabel/early Port Everglades, 1928
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

By Jane Feehan


Port Everglades opened as Bay Mabel Harbor in 1928. Joseph W. Young visualized a “world class seaport” as part of his Hollywood-by-the-Sea development of the 1920s.

The body of water was known many years as Lake Mabel but some pointed out that the “lake,” which sat in both Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale, was actually a bay with ocean access. The really curious may ask about the Mabel part of the name.

It was reported in a 1926 Miami News story that a Jacksonville resident made a survey of the area in 1870 and named what’s now Port Everglades as “Bay Mabel” for either the mother or wife of Arthur T. Williams. Who is Arthur T. Williams? He is the first to have platted a parcel of land for sale in Fort Lauderdale in 1887; it was to be called “Palm City.” The surveyor of Bay Mabel was his father.

When Bay Mabel Harbor opened in February, 1928, President Calvin Coolidge was supposed to hit a remote button to set off an explosive to clear final access to the ocean but for some reason he didn’t. Local engineers, to the disappointment of the crowd on hand for the occasion, set off the explosive instead.

Soon after, the Fort Lauderdale Woman’s Club held a contest to re-name the port. Port Everglades took the prize. And what happened to Joseph Young? He continued to develop Hollywood but because of the land bust and expense to dredge Bay Mabel, personally dropped out of the harbor project. Funding was left to the cities of Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood (acting as the Broward County Port Authority) and the federal government.

Harbor Inlet with condos 1989
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Copyright ©2010, 2021. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan
______________

Sources:
Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale, The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.
Weidling, Philip, and Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966.
Palm Beach Post, Sept. 21, 1925
Miami News, Apr. 18, 1926


Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Port Everglades history, waterway history, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood history, Lake Mabel, Florida in the early 1900s

"The American Shooting Season" of WWII: HMS Tanker "Eclipse" torpedoed off Florida

HMS Eclipse (Creative Commons)

By Jane Feehan       

German U-Boats were not an uncommon sight off Florida's coast during World War II, especially during early 1942. That was before  residents were required to turn off lights, pull shades closed or partially tape car headlights to lower odds of being targeted by the enemy. Germans discovered much of the U.S. coastline illuminated early that year, calling it the "American Shooting Season."

For the same reason, Allied ships sailed the Atlantic with a blackout policy. For protection they traveled in convoys as did British steam tanker Eclipse (9,767 tons). The tanker separated from its convoy in the Bahamas May 3, 1942 to continue to Port Arthur, Texas. The next day, in broad daylight, German U-Boat 564 (Type VII sub) sighted the tanker off Florida’s coast between Boynton Beach and Fort Lauderdale and torpedoed it, killing two. The stern of the Eclipse settled in shallow waters but the ship was salvageable and was later towed to Port Everglades.

What’s interesting about this incident is crew members reported the torpedo coming from between the tanker and land; the Eclipse was only a mile and a half to two miles from the coast, well within U.S. territorial waters.

Considering the record of U-Boat 564 - 18 ships sunk, one war ship sunk and four damaged – the Eclipse fared well. Considering the proximity of enemy ships to the coast, South Floridians fared even better.

Temporarily repaired, the Eclipse was towed to Mobile for more maintenance and re-entered service December, 1942. U-564 was sunk by British aircraft June 14, 1943.

_______

Sources:

Weidling, Philip and Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966.

Palm Beach County

UBoat.net

Tags: Florida in WWII, Fort Lauderdale history, South Florida during WWII, U-boats off Florida coast, German U-Boats

Fort Lauderdale's Woodlawn Cemetery restored to dignity for African Americans, migrant workers and indigent

 

By Jane Feehan

Since the early 1900s Woodlawn Cemetery was the final resting place for Fort Lauderdale’s African- Americans, migrant workers and indigent.  As segregation receded into the chronicles of history and caretakers died, the cemetery fell into disrepair. For years it served as a place to dump trash, sell drugs and conduct other illicit activities.

The cemetery is located at NW 9^th Street off Sunrise Boulevard, adjacent to Interstate 95. Many of Woodlawn's headstones have disappeared over the decades. Infants interred in graves without markers added to identification issues. The section dedicated to them was eventually taken over by I-95 construction.

The 1990s heralded change. First, Woodlawn was brought into Fort Lauderdale’s network of city cemeteries in 1996. Then  the Woodlawn Cemetery Revitalization Committee was established and raised $250,000 in donations. Funds were used to build walkways and install landscaping, fencing and signage. The cemetery was rededicated and restored to dignity October, 2002. Work continues ...

The number and identities of those buried at Woodlawn may never be known. It’s the resting place for many of Fort Lauderdale’s pioneers, including some who came from the Bahamas to help build Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway. It’s also the final home to lynching victim Rubin Stacy* (d. July 19, 1935). 

Sources:

Sun-Sentinel. “A cemetery’s revival,” Jane Feehan, Oct. 20, 2002.

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, African-American history, cemetery history,history of Florida, Fort Lauderdale Black history, history of Fort Lauderdale