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Lost History Uncovered: Exploring WPB's Forgotten Past · Inside West Palm Beach

10:34:28
Welcome to the City Center podcast. I'm
10:34:30
Jerry Marceau. Every city has its
10:34:33
secrets. West Palm Beach has lots of
10:34:35
little-known facts and stories dating
10:34:37
back to its establishment in 1894. Today
10:34:41
we'll talk to a local historian and
10:34:43
writer about the West Palm Beach you
10:34:45
never knew existed. That's next on the
10:34:48
City Center podcast from West Palm Beach.
10:34:54
And joining us today is Janet Naughton, a
10:34:56
faculty, librarian, and history professor
10:34:58
at Palm Beach State College in Lake
10:35:00
Worth. Janet,
10:35:01
welcome. Good morning. First
10:35:04
question, you know, we know that there's
10:35:06
a great deal of history even though the
10:35:09
area hasn't been around for a whole lot
10:35:11
of time. It's like we've been here for
10:35:12
thousands of years or hundreds of years.
10:35:14
You know, the city of West Palm Beach is
10:35:16
just a little hair over 130 years old. Is
10:35:21
it natural or normal for a town like
10:35:23
this to have so much history available?
10:35:26
There is so much history here. You just
10:35:29
have to look for it. The people, the
10:35:30
places, the events, all of those are
10:35:34
history. Each time you look at a building
10:35:36
or you look at the way the streets go,
10:35:39
all of those tell a story of our history.
10:35:41
You know, and West Palm Beach is a kind
10:35:43
of a place where, you know, we see a lot
10:35:45
of our, a lot of growth, a lot of
10:35:47
buildings going up, and sadly some
10:35:49
buildings coming down. You know, I guess
10:35:51
part of what you do, and it's a great
10:35:54
thing, is to preserve the history before
10:35:57
it is lost to time and space. Right.
10:36:00
Anything that's preserved, whether it be
10:36:02
through a story, a photograph, a postcard
10:36:05
or something, then it's really not
10:36:07
forgotten. Right, right. Well what we
10:36:09
have here, you were
10:36:10
kind of to bring us a list
10:36:11
of little known things about the area
10:36:14
that we're going to talk about today.
10:36:17
And I know you have some pictures here
10:36:19
that we're going to be able to share.
10:36:20
Now first of all, I see before you this
10:36:22
real interesting collection of postcards.
10:36:27
What kind of role does
10:36:28
postcards play in capturing history?
10:36:31
So I am what they call a deltyologist. So
10:36:35
a deltyologist is simply someone who
10:36:38
collects postcards. But I started getting
10:36:40
into collecting postcards when I wanted
10:36:43
to find pictures of some of the things
10:36:45
that were here and that weren't here.
10:36:48
So I started looking for them, and you
10:36:50
can get them on different internet sites
10:36:52
or at postcard shows or by networking
10:36:54
with other people, but each one of those
10:36:57
is like a little snapshot in time of
10:37:00
history. And so a deltyologist, did I say
10:37:03
that correct? Yes. So I say if I'm
10:37:06
interested in finding
10:37:07
images or parts of the history of
10:37:10
Save My Community, I would could go to
10:37:12
various auction sites and
10:37:14
collecting places and see if,
10:37:16
oh look there's a picture of the old drug
10:37:17
store that used to be there.
10:37:19
You can. You would be surprised at what
10:37:22
you could find. And with
10:37:23
this, I was able to see different
10:37:25
things like Clamata Street and Flagler
10:37:27
Drive all through the ages, all the way
10:37:29
back into the 1890s.
10:37:31
That's really neat. And that's one of the
10:37:32
things that I've already
10:37:34
noticed doing a little bit of
10:37:36
historical digging around. Clamatus is a
10:37:39
street. It's been shot
10:37:41
through every decade,
10:37:42
every moment of its existence. You can
10:37:44
find pictures all the way
10:37:45
back to the 1890s, I guess,
10:37:47
and all the way forward. And you can
10:37:49
really see how the
10:37:50
streets changed over time.
10:37:52
And how it hasn't.
10:37:53
That's right. That's right. Sometimes
10:37:55
you'd be surprised what's
10:37:57
still there after a long time.
10:37:58
But we're going to be talking about so
10:37:59
many interesting things
10:38:00
here. And you brought us a
10:38:01
wonderful list. And some of these things,
10:38:03
honestly, I've never
10:38:04
heard about. I'm really
10:38:05
interested in finding out about it. We're
10:38:07
going to jump right
10:38:08
in here. First of all,
10:38:09
let's talk a little bit about the
10:38:10
Seminole Sundance
10:38:12
Festival. What was that?
10:38:13
Okay. So the Seminole Sundance Festival,
10:38:15
it was thought of by the
10:38:17
different merchants here in
10:38:19
West Palm Beach. The idea was that after
10:38:23
many of the tourists left
10:38:24
for the tourist season at the
10:38:26
end of February, they wanted to have
10:38:28
another festival. So it
10:38:29
was a three-day festival. And
10:38:31
it occurred from about 1916 to the
10:38:35
mid-20s. But it was a
10:38:37
little bit like Mardi Gras.
10:38:39
So they would have parades. They would
10:38:41
have dress-up contests.
10:38:43
They would have the prettiest
10:38:45
baby contest. It would be decorated all
10:38:49
up and down Clamatus
10:38:50
Street. And it was just like made
10:38:52
for a great time. And of course, it
10:38:54
brought a lot of business to
10:38:56
the city of West Palm Beach.
10:38:58
So the idea was sort of like to almost
10:38:59
extend the tourist season.
10:39:02
Pretty much, right. So after what we call
10:39:05
President's Day back
10:39:06
then was George Washington's
10:39:08
birthday. That pretty much signaled the
10:39:10
end of the season. But again,
10:39:12
there were people that could
10:39:13
stay longer. It's still very nice here in
10:39:15
March. Absolutely. Well, that's
10:39:17
interesting. So it was
10:39:18
basically like a West Palm Beach Mardi
10:39:21
Gras of sorts where fun and
10:39:23
parades and all kinds of stuff.
10:39:25
Picture those big brass bands and
10:39:28
marching and the red, white, and blue
10:39:30
ribbons and just a lot of
10:39:32
gaiety and festivities. Never heard of it
10:39:34
before. So interesting
10:39:36
that that even took place. And
10:39:38
it's part of our history. Now another
10:39:41
name that's on your
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list. And I'm really curious.
10:39:45
Sculptor Augusta Savage. So Augusta
10:39:48
Savage is someone that
10:39:50
lived in West Palm Beach during
10:39:52
her formative years and ended up becoming
10:39:54
a very important figure
10:39:56
in the Harlem Renaissance
10:39:59
and other things. So she was born in
10:40:02
Green Cove Springs. Her family moved here
10:40:05
in about 1910 or so.
10:40:08
And the idea was that they were getting
10:40:11
jobs in the town of West
10:40:12
Palm Beach. So she loved to play
10:40:15
in the dirt and sculpt. And over in Green
10:40:18
Cove Springs, they have
10:40:19
that red brick clay. But here
10:40:22
they didn't have that red brick clay. So
10:40:25
she was sad about that. But
10:40:27
one day when she was writing
10:40:29
to school, she, as the story goes, she
10:40:32
saw a place where they
10:40:34
would make things like the red
10:40:39
barrel tiles for the Addison Meisner type
10:40:41
homes and other things. So
10:40:43
she ran out and they ended
10:40:45
up giving her two buckets of red clay. So
10:40:49
she actually started to
10:40:52
teach after school for a
10:40:54
dollar a day to teach other students how
10:40:57
to do sculpture. And then
10:40:59
she met a person here who was
10:41:01
another artist and many other things in
10:41:04
West Palm Beach. And his
10:41:05
name was George Graham Curry.
10:41:08
He saw her talent. And so when the South
10:41:12
Florida Fair came
10:41:13
around and incidentally,
10:41:14
he was the one who started that South
10:41:16
Florida Fair. He allowed
10:41:19
her to exhibit. So he set her
10:41:21
up with a table. And she was actually the
10:41:23
first black person to
10:41:25
exhibit at the South Florida Fair.
10:41:27
So she brought all of her little
10:41:29
sculptures and things. And she won the
10:41:33
blue ribbon and $25.
10:41:37
And she sold every piece that she brought
10:41:39
with her. So after that,
10:41:42
Curry pretty much mentored her.
10:41:44
And he arranged for her to go to school
10:41:47
in Harlem, to go to art
10:41:49
school. She ended up going to school
10:41:51
in France. She opened up her own school
10:41:56
in New York City during the New Deal
10:41:59
after the Great Depression
10:42:02
in Harlem. And then she exhibited at the
10:42:05
1939 World's Fair in
10:42:10
Chicago. So here she went from
10:42:12
Palm Beach County Fair to World's Fair.
10:42:16
And her exhibit, her
10:42:17
piece was called "The Harp."
10:42:20
And it was huge. And it pictured a choir
10:42:24
of people and then a harp.
10:42:27
And at the end of the fair,
10:42:30
it ended up being busted up because she
10:42:32
didn't have the funds to
10:42:35
get it bronzed. So that's what
10:42:37
would happen. It was just made of clay.
10:42:39
So a few of the replicas
10:42:41
exist because they sold them as
10:42:43
souvenirs. And actually somewhere I have
10:42:45
a postcard of the harp. But it would be
10:42:48
wonderful if somehow
10:42:49
the city of West Palm Beach could
10:42:52
actually bring that replica back as an
10:42:54
homage to this important
10:42:56
artist who lived here. Do we know where
10:43:00
the replica exists anywhere?
10:43:04
That would be a good question.
10:43:05
I'd have to find out. I'm not sure. It
10:43:08
would be fabulous to get it
10:43:10
to come here, to put it on
10:43:11
public display here. It's part of our
10:43:13
history. That would be
10:43:14
fabulous. But she's one of those
10:43:16
people that were a little bit forgotten
10:43:18
to history. She's actually
10:43:20
coming back into her own right.
10:43:23
Someone wrote a children's book and then
10:43:24
an adult book on her. And just a
10:43:27
fascinating person who
10:43:29
faced a lot of adversity but kept going.
10:43:33
And she received her break
10:43:34
here from the kindness of the
10:43:35
people of West Palm Beach. That's really
10:43:37
great. And you touched on
10:43:39
something that I've thought
10:43:41
about is that we do have, especially
10:43:45
throughout the entire history of the
10:43:47
city, but especially
10:43:48
in the early days, there was a sense of
10:43:51
creative freedom where we've
10:43:53
seen artists that came here
10:43:56
and either painted landscapes or did
10:43:59
their art here. And it's wonderful to see
10:44:03
one artist give another artist the
10:44:05
opportunity to grow. Exactly. That's
10:44:08
really fantastic. And I did
10:44:10
not know about this wonderful artist.
10:44:12
There are so many stories out there.
10:44:14
Yeah, this is what's
10:44:15
so great. Architect and school board
10:44:19
superintendent Agnes Ballard, which is
10:44:22
associated with women's
10:44:23
suffrage. Right. So think back that it's
10:44:27
the late 19 teens and women
10:44:30
are trying to get the right to
10:44:32
vote. Prohibition is going on. All these
10:44:35
different things are
10:44:36
happening. And finally, the 19th
10:44:39
amendment gets passed. She runs as
10:44:42
superintendent of the Palm Beach County
10:44:44
Board of Instruction
10:44:46
and she wins. So hence she was the first,
10:44:49
there was one other woman
10:44:50
at the same time that won at
10:44:51
the same time, Mrs. Stickman, Clara
10:44:54
Stickman, but she became the first
10:44:57
elected official in Palm
10:44:59
Beach County. And it was, you might say,
10:45:02
some people would say more
10:45:03
of a man's world. And she
10:45:05
went to architect school in Wisconsin and
10:45:09
then she's down here and
10:45:10
she's designing houses. She
10:45:12
was associated with Addison Meisner. And
10:45:15
for the folks who are
10:45:17
listening and you don't know
10:45:19
about Addison Meisner, give a thumbnail.
10:45:22
So Addison Meisner was
10:45:24
one of the architects that
10:45:25
were here in the boom time of Florida. So
10:45:28
this is during the 1920s
10:45:30
when they're starting to design
10:45:31
houses that are not the simple cottage
10:45:34
frame vernacular style
10:45:36
houses. So he brings with this
10:45:38
European influence. He had been from
10:45:41
California, but he would
10:45:42
build the larger houses and they
10:45:45
would have Mediterranean revival
10:45:47
elements. And those are
10:45:49
the houses that you still see
10:45:50
in many of our historic neighborhoods,
10:45:53
those stately two story
10:45:54
homes. I suppose you'd be
10:45:56
seeing those down like an L.Cid. Right.
10:46:00
The boom time neighborhoods
10:46:01
that still exist around here.
10:46:03
You have Northwood, Flamingo Park, you
10:46:07
have Grandview Heights,
10:46:09
L.Cid. There are so many of them.
10:46:12
And this was a crazy time in history
10:46:14
where you think we have
10:46:16
a land boom going on now.
10:46:18
This was another one of those that was
10:46:20
unprecedented. People
10:46:22
were buying the land up.
10:46:25
You had land speculators. You had dealers
10:46:27
that were trying to promise
10:46:30
you the moon sight unseen.
10:46:33
But they were also selling houses and
10:46:35
building houses that were
10:46:36
much larger and more extravagant
10:46:39
than the other ones. So we have some
10:46:42
unique neighborhoods
10:46:43
here in West Palm Beach.
10:46:45
And those boom times, as soon as you're
10:46:47
talking about the early 1920s,
10:46:50
what brought the boom to an end?
10:46:53
So the boom came to an end because of
10:46:55
several different
10:46:56
things. Obviously what goes up
10:46:59
must eventually go down. But there was an
10:47:02
embargo on transportation
10:47:04
and there was two hurricanes
10:47:07
that came. They weren't able to get the
10:47:09
materials in. So not only to
10:47:12
not be able to repair the homes
10:47:15
that were damaged from the 1928
10:47:17
hurricane, but then also to, you know,
10:47:21
why bring in to build new ones.
10:47:23
But then you also had the stock market
10:47:25
crash of 1929. And after that, the
10:47:29
depression. So while
10:47:30
houses were being built, there were a lot
10:47:33
of them that were
10:47:33
actually sold for back taxes
10:47:36
on the courthouse steps. Now, some people
10:47:39
will say that the
10:47:40
destinations like West Palm Beach,
10:47:42
which are more of a tourist and resort
10:47:46
kind of community, were a
10:47:48
little bit depression proof or
10:47:50
recession proof. Was that the case in
10:47:52
1929 or did this area
10:47:54
really suffer during that period?
10:47:55
So it did suffer. I've interviewed and
10:47:59
talked to quite a few people
10:48:00
and some people said, well,
10:48:01
you know, we were poor and we really
10:48:03
didn't know anything different. Of
10:48:06
course, in Palm Beach,
10:48:08
people still came down for the season.
10:48:10
And then you also needed the
10:48:12
people to work at the hotels
10:48:14
and the restaurants and other things. But
10:48:16
building did slow down
10:48:18
for quite a bit of time.
10:48:20
And there were programs that were
10:48:21
implemented through FDR's
10:48:23
New Deal. And yeah, and then it
10:48:27
didn't really recover until World War
10:48:29
Two. And there's a whole another story
10:48:32
about the prosperity
10:48:34
stemming from World War Two. But before
10:48:36
we do that, a name that's
10:48:37
standing out on your list that
10:48:39
really captures my curiosity, Nurse Rosa
10:48:42
Brown. So Nurse Rosa Brown
10:48:44
is someone that most people
10:48:46
here would have never heard of. This
10:48:47
actually goes along with
10:48:49
that, the 1928 hurricane story
10:48:52
and the New Deal. So she came here from
10:48:55
Jacksonville as like a
10:48:58
silver lining in that cloud
10:49:00
of the hurricane because she was a Red
10:49:03
Cross nurse. So they had
10:49:05
what they call traveling nurses.
10:49:06
And she came and they opened up these big
10:49:09
tent cities. And she was
10:49:11
in charge of the tent city
10:49:13
for segregated people. So for the black
10:49:16
residents. And she did such a good job
10:49:19
commanding the troops
10:49:20
in recognizing different things like
10:49:23
disease, sanitation, that
10:49:25
they kept her on. So she ended
10:49:27
up working for the Red Cross and the
10:49:29
school board. And she stayed
10:49:31
here and she taught home health
10:49:33
hygiene. She worked for the industrial
10:49:36
high school. And she was
10:49:39
just an amazing person. And
10:49:40
both she and Agnes Ballard, there was
10:49:44
suggestions to name county
10:49:47
schools after her. And that never
10:49:50
came to fruition, but I haven't given up.
10:49:53
I think that they both
10:49:54
deserve a school named after them.
10:49:57
It's a little bit off topic here, but you
10:49:59
talked about schools. I
10:50:01
mean, what was the situation,
10:50:03
especially early on, when did West Palm
10:50:06
Beach get its first
10:50:08
public school, first, I guess,
10:50:10
a high school? When did that take place?
10:50:12
Right. So the first, what I
10:50:13
would call like the permanent
10:50:15
that wasn't just like a little school
10:50:17
house was in 1908. So they built what
10:50:22
became central school
10:50:24
and the central school complex and not
10:50:26
very far from here. But at
10:50:28
the time, it was considered
10:50:31
west of town. So that's where the Dreyfus
10:50:34
School of the Arts is
10:50:35
today. Right. So the first school
10:50:37
built in 1908, it was built by William
10:50:40
Wofflin, again, in that
10:50:41
Mediterranean revival kind of
10:50:44
style that was so popular, expensive. But
10:50:47
the parents, they were
10:50:48
like, Oh, no, you can't send
10:50:50
our children all the way out there. So
10:50:52
for one thing, they had to
10:50:53
cross the railroad tracks and
10:50:55
they didn't have the warning systems that
10:50:57
they have. It was pretty
10:50:59
swampy land out there. And then
10:51:02
there were animals. So you would have the
10:51:04
Panthers, the Bobcats, the
10:51:07
alligators. So again, at first,
10:51:09
it was like considered way out there in
10:51:11
the bonies. That is a
10:51:13
different West Palm Beach than
10:51:14
what we know today. Definitely. The idea
10:51:17
that something that to us
10:51:19
is so centrally located,
10:51:21
like the Dreyfus School is would have
10:51:23
been considered to be way
10:51:24
out west. Oh, yeah. Where
10:51:26
the Kravis Center is. That's insane.
10:51:29
That's something. All
10:51:30
right. So we'll move on. And
10:51:32
your list is just so fascinating. George
10:51:35
Curry and of course, Curry
10:51:37
Park, Pleasant City and South
10:51:38
Florida Fair. How do those all come
10:51:40
together? Okay. Well, if you
10:51:42
think about when people come
10:51:43
to West Palm Beach, they come for so many
10:51:45
different reasons, whether for
10:51:47
recreation, for investment,
10:51:49
for vacation. But George Curry was what
10:51:52
you might call a wander
10:51:54
wanderlust kind of person that like
10:51:56
to travel. He ended up here by mistake,
10:51:59
but he was creative and he
10:52:02
ended up becoming one of our
10:52:03
earliest mayors. He helped build the
10:52:07
town. He was in real estate,
10:52:09
business, and so many other
10:52:11
things. But one of the things that he did
10:52:14
was he started what today we
10:52:17
call the South Florida Fair,
10:52:19
the same one that I had mentioned before.
10:52:22
And he lived over actually
10:52:25
across from Woodlawn towards
10:52:27
Flagler Drive and on a street named after
10:52:30
himself, Curry Crescent. And
10:52:33
he developed several different
10:52:34
neighborhoods around here. So George
10:52:37
Curry was also a poet. He was very
10:52:40
creative and artistic.
10:52:42
And he came up with a saying for West
10:52:44
Palm Beach. So you know how we do the
10:52:46
initials and acronym
10:52:47
and we just say W.P.B. His acronym was
10:52:51
Where Prosperity
10:52:52
Beckons. I have never heard that
10:52:56
before. That is fascinating. A great
10:52:58
Chamber of Commerce moment.
10:53:01
So telephones were first put
10:53:05
through here and when they came through
10:53:07
it ended up being later sold to Bell
10:53:11
South. But they had the
10:53:14
wires through the trees. Really? And
10:53:17
George Curry had the first
10:53:18
phone and his phone number,
10:53:21
can you guess what that was? 001. It was
10:53:24
one. He had the first phone. That's
10:53:27
funny. Wait a minute.
10:53:28
So you're saying that the actual
10:53:30
telephone wires were strung through the
10:53:33
physical trees, not a
10:53:35
telephone pole. Right. Through the trees,
10:53:37
through the woods, right?
10:53:39
Do you have any idea how many
10:53:41
phones there were when the system was
10:53:42
first launched? Probably
10:53:43
like two. There was more
10:53:46
than that. But I'm not sure. Wow. That is
10:53:50
something. And again, just a touch on it.
10:53:53
He was one of the folks who established
10:53:56
the South Florida Fair. Yes, he did. And
10:54:00
you can see how that
10:54:01
that's really grown over the years.
10:54:03
Obviously at the beginning it
10:54:04
was a place for people to show
10:54:07
off their produce, how big their cabbages
10:54:09
were, and for children to show their
10:54:12
ponies, people to show
10:54:14
different things they grew, what the
10:54:17
quilts that people would. So
10:54:19
they didn't have all the rides
10:54:21
and the bells and whistles that they have
10:54:23
today. And now I would
10:54:24
assume that the original fair
10:54:26
wasn't at the South Florida fairgrounds
10:54:28
that we know today. It was someplace
10:54:30
else. No, it was here
10:54:32
in town and it's moved a couple of times
10:54:34
since then. Wow. Again,
10:54:37
fascinating history. Now, just
10:54:38
touching on something else, since we're
10:54:40
talking about the fair, Yesteryear
10:54:43
Village is out at the
10:54:44
South Florida Fair. Can you talk to us,
10:54:46
describe what that is for our
10:54:47
audience? Yeah. So Yesteryear
10:54:50
Village is actually a unique, what you
10:54:53
would call like a living
10:54:53
history complex. A lot of other
10:54:56
cities have it and we're lucky to have
10:54:58
that by us. So what they've done is that
10:55:00
they brought different
10:55:01
buildings from different areas of the
10:55:04
county out there. So there
10:55:06
you'll find an old church, a fire
10:55:09
department, a schoolhouse, a fishing
10:55:13
camp, all different buildings
10:55:15
that they have out there. So
10:55:17
what people can do is they can go try to
10:55:19
step back in time, so to
10:55:21
speak, and see what it would have
10:55:23
been like to live here. And they also
10:55:25
have people that demonstrate
10:55:26
at certain times of the year
10:55:28
so that you can see them making
10:55:30
horseshoes. Right. So you get
10:55:32
flavor for what, for one of a
10:55:35
better term, early life in Palm Beach
10:55:37
County was like. Now, these are not
10:55:39
replica homes, they are
10:55:40
the real home. They are the real home. So
10:55:43
sometimes buildings have to
10:55:45
be raised for progress, but
10:55:46
sometimes they're instead picked up and
10:55:49
moved. And this is a nice
10:55:51
cluster where you can almost walk
10:55:53
down a main street and feel like that
10:55:55
you're back in time. That's
10:55:56
really cool. All right, so we'll
10:55:58
move along. Now, this is a crazy name
10:56:02
because it seems to be
10:56:03
counter. Seaboard Airline Railway
10:56:07
Station. What's that about? Okay, so it's
10:56:11
another railroad that
10:56:13
came through for passengers
10:56:15
in addition to Henry Flagler's Florida
10:56:17
East Coast Railway. So this is further
10:56:19
west and you know it
10:56:22
today as the Tri-Rail, but that came
10:56:26
through here in 1926. The
10:56:29
train station there is from 1926.
10:56:32
It's the original train station and that
10:56:35
was designed by famous
10:56:36
architects Harvey and Clark.
10:56:39
Okay, and if you go to the Tri-Rail
10:56:41
station today, you're seeing that
10:56:43
building. Exactly. So that's
10:56:45
another 100 years old. That's incredible.
10:56:50
And it's in heavy use today
10:56:52
and I know that it basically
10:56:53
is a place where people can exchange and
10:56:56
get on different types of
10:56:57
transportation to move around
10:56:58
the city or move into another, to move to
10:57:01
another community either
10:57:02
north or south. So it's still a
10:57:03
very active place for transportation.
10:57:06
Yes, definitely. School
10:57:07
children used to take that to
10:57:09
go for their annual trip to Washington DC
10:57:11
and I took it not too
10:57:13
long ago to go to Savannah.
10:57:15
Do you know what Seaboard Airline was?
10:57:19
Why was why airline? That was like a
10:57:23
juxtaposition. I think
10:57:24
they called it airline because it went so
10:57:26
fast. Ah. Yes. So there's
10:57:29
some marketing. It was marketing.
10:57:31
At one time I think that they also called
10:57:33
it the Orange Blossom
10:57:35
Express. Oh, that's a very
10:57:38
lovely name. It does make sense. A very
10:57:39
sweet sounding name indeed.
10:57:41
All right. Going down your
10:57:42
list and it's just so fascinating. Let's
10:57:46
talk a little bit about,
10:57:47
we touched on the boom time
10:57:49
in the early part of the, in the
10:57:50
twenties. Let's talk about some of the
10:57:52
developments that took place
10:57:53
during that period of time. Right. So the
10:57:55
different developments that were coming
10:57:57
about were very large
10:58:00
planned communities. So before that it
10:58:04
was more like a little
10:58:05
cottage city where the small
10:58:07
framed vernacular homes or boarding
10:58:09
houses or hotels would
10:58:11
spring up. But at this time
10:58:14
people were actually buying full lots,
10:58:16
plaiting them, giving them
10:58:18
maybe fanciful names and then
10:58:21
trying to sell the lots in there. And so
10:58:24
they would work with, you would have a
10:58:26
whole team of people
10:58:27
and they brought all of these workers to
10:58:30
West Palm. So you would have your
10:58:32
developer, you would have
10:58:34
your salesman, you would have your people
10:58:36
that would work on the
10:58:37
house. And so Grandview Heights,
10:58:40
if you think about some of the names of
10:58:42
these, they're trying to
10:58:44
play to being a little bit
10:58:47
loftier and on higher ground than the
10:58:50
standard area. And they
10:58:52
are, they're built on a ridge.
10:58:55
So they are a few feet higher than the
10:58:57
other ones. If you ride your bikes
10:58:58
through there, you can
10:58:59
really feel it in the back of your legs.
10:59:01
But no means mountainous.
10:59:03
No. And I was being funny.
10:59:07
So, and on top of that, we also saw
10:59:10
during these boom times, some fairly
10:59:13
significant buildings
10:59:14
taking place in downtown. We know the
10:59:17
Como building, which was, I
10:59:20
believe there was a bit of a
10:59:22
building race between the folks building
10:59:24
the Como building and the folks building
10:59:26
the Harvey building.
10:59:28
Right. Right. So they, something that
10:59:31
changed during this time
10:59:33
with these buildings was you
10:59:34
now had elevators. So once you had
10:59:36
elevators, that was the idea of having
10:59:39
skyscrapers. And I've seen
10:59:41
some things where they've said, you know,
10:59:43
it was going to be by 1930, have
10:59:45
buildings that were 40
10:59:47
feet tall. Wow. Right. So they definitely
10:59:51
had some lofty goals. And
10:59:54
for a long time, those two
10:59:55
buildings were indeed the tallest
10:59:57
structures in the entire
10:59:58
city. So then, and they're still
11:00:02
remarkable structures today. So it's
11:00:04
really fascinating. Tell
11:00:05
me about, this is a great
11:00:07
title, The Cottage City. The Cottage
11:00:10
City. So that was a nickname that people
11:00:12
called it because they
11:00:13
would often come here for two winter. So
11:00:17
they would stay in
11:00:18
something that was near the sea.
11:00:21
And it would be basically wooden. Think
11:00:24
of frame vernacular, one,
11:00:26
sometimes two story houses,
11:00:29
and they would have basically a wrap
11:00:31
around porch. You would have the screen
11:00:33
door, no air conditioning
11:00:35
so that the breeze could float through.
11:00:38
Sounds delicious. But it
11:00:39
was full of these balmy
11:00:43
cottages, just having the fresh air come
11:00:47
in. So it was sort of
11:00:49
an architectural style
11:00:51
just here, just a beautiful tropical
11:00:53
home. And indeed, back
11:00:55
then, there was no central air,
11:00:57
there was no air conditioning. You had to
11:00:58
rely on the tropical breezes
11:01:00
to create an environment that
11:01:02
was comfortable in any way. Right. And
11:01:04
the architects generally
11:01:05
knew which way to build them
11:01:07
so that they would catch the prevailing
11:01:08
breezes. Do you know if any of those
11:01:11
types of homes still
11:01:12
exist today? Most of them are gone.
11:01:17
There's a few streets where
11:01:19
if you go down, you'll see
11:01:20
some of them, but they're getting few and
11:01:22
far between. Sure, sure.
11:01:25
Moving right along. One that,
11:01:27
when it also is an interesting title that
11:01:29
piques my interest. West Palm Beach
11:01:32
School in the Jungle.
11:01:34
Oh, that's the one that we just talked
11:01:35
about. Oh, of course. So the
11:01:39
jungle would have been like
11:01:40
downtown by today's standards. Right,
11:01:43
yeah. Near the Kravis Center
11:01:44
down in the jungle. It really
11:01:46
was a jungle. And another thing was that
11:01:48
one of my postcards here tells about
11:01:51
somebody wrote on the
11:01:52
back of it that this school was built for
11:01:55
the sportsman's children.
11:01:57
So the people that would
11:01:58
come here to fish, to hunt, and it was a
11:02:03
big attraction. You
11:02:04
would get a guide to take you
11:02:05
out for the day, and they would hunt for
11:02:08
all different things and
11:02:10
taxiderm them. So there
11:02:13
would be the big hunting. And that would
11:02:15
be a great thing to
11:02:16
attract people here. Of course,
11:02:18
it was before they had all of the laws,
11:02:21
environmental laws, that
11:02:22
you had the plume hunters,
11:02:24
that they would be hunting plumes, birds
11:02:27
for the ladies hats. So
11:02:29
they would just kill the egret
11:02:31
other things. That's sad. But I can
11:02:33
understand it was a different time and
11:02:36
age, but it's terrible
11:02:38
that beautiful wildlife was taken for
11:02:42
something like a hat.
11:02:44
Definitely. So the Audubon Society
11:02:47
brought an end to that. But what some
11:02:49
ladies would do, though,
11:02:50
if they were environmentally
11:02:52
conscious, is they would wear an ostrich
11:02:54
hat, a hat with an ostrich
11:02:55
feather, because you don't
11:02:57
have to kill the ostrich to get the
11:02:58
feather. There you are.
11:03:00
There you are. All right. So we
11:03:01
move up moving along. Now talk about
11:03:03
Banyan Street and its role in
11:03:05
prohibition. Okay. So
11:03:07
Banyan Street is one of the alphabetical
11:03:09
streets, the original streets in West
11:03:11
Palm Beach, when Henry
11:03:13
Flagler laid them out. And it had a
11:03:15
reputation for being the drinking street.
11:03:18
So again, you're kind
11:03:19
of going back to that whole Mardi Gras
11:03:21
theme. So that would be
11:03:22
where you would have the saloons.
11:03:24
There were obviously some brothels and
11:03:28
things like that. So that
11:03:29
was more like the Wild West
11:03:31
type of the street. Okay. And this is
11:03:33
during the time, again,
11:03:35
you're thinking of when it was
11:03:36
prohibition. So Henry Flagler had a
11:03:40
drinking fountain put in so
11:03:43
that people could drink water
11:03:44
instead of drinking the alcohol. And the
11:03:48
Women's Christian
11:03:49
Temperance Union, which was against
11:03:53
drinking, they had their leader. Her name
11:03:56
was Carrie Nation. And she
11:03:59
was six foot tall and she
11:04:00
would come to these different towns. And
11:04:02
apparently she sometimes used a hatchet
11:04:05
to go up and actually
11:04:07
bust up the bottles at the bar. So she
11:04:10
actually made a visit to
11:04:11
here. Wow. So Carrie Nation made
11:04:13
an appearance here in West Palm Beach.
11:04:15
Yes. Because we were such a
11:04:16
party town. Exactly. Okay. So
11:04:19
the idea that, okay, Banyan was sort of
11:04:23
where you went to have a good time and to
11:04:25
imbibe and to party.
11:04:28
What was the, do you have any sense of
11:04:29
what, what the vibe was on St. Clamatus,
11:04:32
which is sort of Main Street? So Clamatus
11:04:34
was more business
11:04:35
oriented and also for shopping.
11:04:37
So there were different shops. You could
11:04:39
get your shoe shop, your
11:04:41
haberdashery, which was men's
11:04:43
suits. You could go to some little
11:04:47
luncheonettes and places to eat. So it
11:04:49
was more, it's pretty
11:04:50
much a little bit like how it is now.
11:04:53
Sure. So you could take the family to
11:04:55
Clamatus. You could go
11:04:56
ahead and shop in Clamatus. But then when
11:04:58
it's time to party, you head
11:04:59
on over to Banyan. Exactly.
11:05:02
And people would come here from different
11:05:04
places, from Boynton Beach,
11:05:08
from Lantana, from other places.
11:05:10
And you could drive after 1914 and take
11:05:13
the Dixie Highway, which
11:05:15
was now open, or you could
11:05:16
actually come by boat. That's
11:05:18
interesting. So prior to 1914, say if I
11:05:22
was down in Lake Worth or
11:05:23
Lantana, I would just hop on my boat and
11:05:26
then come up the, the, the, the Lake
11:05:28
Worth lagoon to this
11:05:29
party. Right. You could take the train,
11:05:31
you could travel by water,
11:05:32
but the roads until Carl Fisher
11:05:35
put the Dixie Highway in in 1914, the
11:05:38
roads were pretty terrible.
11:05:40
Yeah. So Dixie Highway start
11:05:43
before 1914, there was no Dixie Highway.
11:05:46
It was just right. It wasn't a
11:05:48
thoroughfare. It wasn't
11:05:50
paved or widened as it is today. It's so
11:05:53
funny. You, you think of
11:05:54
these roads as always being there
11:05:57
for decades and you know, generations,
11:06:00
generations. Everything does have a
11:06:01
start. And it's interesting
11:06:02
to think of that the Dixie Highway became
11:06:06
a reality, what, about 20
11:06:08
years after the establishment
11:06:10
of West Palm Beach as a city. Right. Or
11:06:12
30 years. 30 years. Yeah. My
11:06:15
math is not what it should be.
11:06:17
But yeah, I mean, that's, that's crazy.
11:06:19
Okay. So let's move on
11:06:20
now. We've talked about
11:06:21
Banion Street. Talk about what, what it
11:06:23
means for flower streets. Oh, flower
11:06:26
streets. So when it was
11:06:28
laid out in 1893, preparing for before it
11:06:31
was actually a town,
11:06:33
Henry Flagler laid it out,
11:06:34
but he got some advice from some ladies.
11:06:37
So it was a woman who named
11:06:39
the streets after flowers. So
11:06:41
you know that we have Banion, Clematis,
11:06:44
which was actually
11:06:45
pronounced clematis. And it turns out
11:06:49
that it's not a native flower here. They
11:06:51
made a mistake. And then
11:06:52
Datura, which is a poisonous
11:06:55
flower. And then you have some ferns,
11:06:58
which are Ivernia is a fern
11:06:59
and Fern Street, Gardenia,
11:07:02
and Hibiscus. So she helped name those
11:07:05
all for plants and for flowers. And
11:07:08
that's where all those
11:07:09
names came from. Yes. And then there's a
11:07:11
missing one. And the
11:07:12
missing one, its name is Althea.
11:07:17
So Althea would be the one to the north
11:07:19
of Banion. Well, there you
11:07:21
go. And so we're missing the,
11:07:23
the mythical street of Althea. Yes.
11:07:26
Great. Great. Very, very interesting.
11:07:29
Okay. So we have another,
11:07:31
another new topic here, the city
11:07:33
beautiful movement in
11:07:35
Flagler park. No idea. Never heard
11:07:37
of that. Tell me about it. So the city
11:07:38
beautiful movement, you can
11:07:40
think of it as sort of like
11:07:42
city planning, urban planning, and also
11:07:45
putting aside land for
11:07:48
public use. So this was instituted
11:07:51
by the Olmsted brothers who had laid out
11:07:54
places like Central Park
11:07:56
and the Washington Mall. So
11:08:00
we needed a place here in West Palm
11:08:02
Beach. So they put aside the
11:08:05
area, which is known as the Y,
11:08:08
at Clematis, where you have that Y, and
11:08:10
then it faced the
11:08:11
waterfront. So that is part of the city
11:08:15
beautiful movement, setting aside parks
11:08:18
for public uses. And so
11:08:20
they had things like they
11:08:21
would have a bandshell where you would
11:08:23
have live bands, of course,
11:08:25
then it was your, mostly your
11:08:26
brass instruments. I could imagine.
11:08:29
That's where they put the library. So we
11:08:33
had memorial library
11:08:34
that was built after World War I. And it
11:08:37
was memorial to those
11:08:38
soldiers. And this is where you
11:08:41
would, people would go to hang out. So
11:08:43
you could have your shopping or your
11:08:46
eating and drinking,
11:08:48
and then go relax in the park and listen
11:08:50
to music. A regular city center, I think.
11:08:53
It's an area of land that's gone through
11:08:56
many, many changes. I know
11:08:57
that I've seen very early
11:09:00
photographs of that particular area where
11:09:02
it was very, very forested.
11:09:04
There were lots of plants and
11:09:06
trees and little pathways running around.
11:09:08
And then, of course, I
11:09:10
moved into this part of the
11:09:11
world in 1970. And at that time, the city
11:09:15
library was right there.
11:09:17
And it was that very modern
11:09:19
looking 1960s sort of building that was
11:09:22
just really beautiful.
11:09:24
It's only a shadow of what our
11:09:26
new beautiful Mandel Public Library is.
11:09:29
But that area has seen so
11:09:31
many changes. So it's been a part
11:09:35
of the center of the city for quite some
11:09:37
time. Right. And when
11:09:38
you mentioned those plants,
11:09:40
so there was a master horticulturist. His
11:09:43
name was Professor Di Gattro from
11:09:46
Switzerland. So he was one
11:09:48
who helped figure out the different
11:09:49
plants to put along there. And it was
11:09:53
very beautifully forested.
11:09:56
Even the ancient photographs that I've
11:09:58
been able to see online. Yes, you're
11:10:00
exactly right. It was,
11:10:01
it looked like a little mini tropical
11:10:02
paradise. And there was the
11:10:04
ban show and all that stuff
11:10:05
going on there. And the library has
11:10:06
always been an important part of the city
11:10:09
all the way from when
11:10:10
it was once in a boathouse. And people
11:10:14
would come to the reading
11:10:15
room and then they would have
11:10:17
memorial library and that 1960s era
11:10:20
library. People still talk about that.
11:10:23
They have many memories.
11:10:25
And then the library today, I love that
11:10:27
its address is 411
11:10:29
Clamatus, which is information.
11:10:33
Very interesting. Okay, so let's move on.
11:10:37
And another item here
11:10:38
on your list that really
11:10:39
piques my interest. Sea base. I'm sorry,
11:10:43
sea plain base at sixth.
11:10:45
Tell me what that means.
11:10:46
Right. So people think about aviation and
11:10:49
they don't necessarily
11:10:50
think about West Palm Beach.
11:10:52
But we were part of that cradle of
11:10:54
aviation. So as early as 1911, there was
11:10:59
a sea plain base here.
11:11:01
And they would fly those Curtis sea
11:11:05
plains. And they would first
11:11:07
take people up and down the
11:11:08
waterway sightseeing. They eventually had
11:11:11
night flights. And then
11:11:13
they would take people all the
11:11:14
way to Havana. Wow. And people would come
11:11:17
out and just watch and
11:11:18
wonder. And, you know, we take
11:11:20
flying for granted, but imagine never
11:11:23
seeing a flying machine
11:11:25
before. And imagine just seeing
11:11:27
a flying machine come and land on the
11:11:29
water. Right. I mean, it had
11:11:31
to be really exciting times.
11:11:35
And of course you would pay to do that,
11:11:37
but it would be something
11:11:39
that people would all come out
11:11:40
and look at. So when did the city start
11:11:45
developing what we would
11:11:46
consider to be more of a regular
11:11:48
type of airport? How did that come about?
11:11:50
Right. So we have our Palm Beach
11:11:52
International Airport off
11:11:53
of Belvedere Road. So it started as a
11:11:56
flying field that was Mr. Belvedere's.
11:11:59
And then it ended up
11:12:01
becoming a dedicated flying field in the
11:12:05
1930s. And it was called
11:12:07
Morrison Field. And it was named
11:12:09
after a female aviator. So we have Amelia
11:12:13
Earhart, but West Palm Beach had Grace
11:12:16
Morrison. So she was
11:12:18
one of the first women to fly cross
11:12:22
country in her airplane.
11:12:25
And she died in a car accident
11:12:28
just a month or so before the field was
11:12:31
dedicated in the 1930s. So
11:12:33
they named the field after her.
11:12:37
So this field ended up in World War II.
11:12:40
It was a designated spot
11:12:43
for our army air force.
11:12:46
They would fly in and out. They had
11:12:49
barracks. And later on,
11:12:52
when it was discontinued,
11:12:54
it was the home of Palm Beach Junior
11:12:56
College for a few years. So
11:12:59
the students lived in the former
11:13:01
barracks and swam in the swimming pool
11:13:04
and had all that land for
11:13:05
archery and other things. Now,
11:13:08
I understand that Morrison Field and the
11:13:11
fact that so many young
11:13:14
service men and women traveled
11:13:16
through that conduit to get to wherever
11:13:19
they're going, that they
11:13:20
came away with a very strong
11:13:22
impression of West Palm Beach. And some
11:13:24
actually came back. Is
11:13:25
that true? Yes. After the war,
11:13:29
that there were people that ended up
11:13:31
coming back, you now had the Veterans
11:13:34
Administration. You could
11:13:35
buy a house with the VA bill. And we were
11:13:39
starting to have these places of
11:13:41
education. So you would
11:13:43
have the young families come back. And it
11:13:45
still had that feel of some
11:13:47
of the places in the South
11:13:48
Seas and other places that they had been
11:13:51
deployed to. And so the
11:13:53
Morrison Field, which eventually
11:13:55
became Palm Beach International Airport,
11:13:58
had an incredible impact on
11:14:00
the growth and the history
11:14:02
of our area. It has a long and storied
11:14:05
history that most people
11:14:06
don't know. Absolutely. Well,
11:14:09
this has been fascinating. We've gone
11:14:10
through your list and I personally have
11:14:12
learned so much in just
11:14:14
this little bit. Now, you're also an
11:14:16
author and you have a book. Can you tell
11:14:18
us a little bit about
11:14:18
it? One of the books that I brought with
11:14:20
me today, I wanted to say that it was
11:14:23
pretty much born here
11:14:24
in our West Palm Beach Mandel Library. So
11:14:28
the book is called "Overdue in Paradise,
11:14:32
the Palm Beach County Library History."
11:14:35
So this is a compilation of essays that
11:14:38
people have submitted
11:14:40
on their different libraries. So the
11:14:43
employees at the Mandel Library wrote
11:14:46
their history. And we have
11:14:48
the Good Samaritan Hospital, their
11:14:51
history, and other places.
11:14:53
And it won an award. So it's a
11:14:56
very nice Florida Authors and Publishers
11:14:58
Association award-winning
11:15:00
book. But I like to say,
11:15:02
again, that's a community book. I had the
11:15:05
idea and I was one of the
11:15:07
editors, but it was our community
11:15:09
and tells those stories. There's history
11:15:11
in everything.
11:15:13
Absolutely. And you've proven that
11:15:14
here today. Now, about this book, if I'm
11:15:16
interested in reading this book, is it
11:15:17
something I can get on
11:15:18
Amazon? Yes, you can. And it's called
11:15:20
"Overdue in Paradise, the
11:15:23
Library History of Palm Beach
11:15:24
County." Fascinating book. I look forward
11:15:26
to reading that. What
11:15:29
you've done here is you've
11:15:30
given us an opportunity to see some just
11:15:32
small little fragments of
11:15:33
the history of what is West
11:15:37
Palm Beach and in Palm Beach County.
11:15:39
Hopefully, this is going to
11:15:40
spark some interest in some of
11:15:41
the people listening. If folks want to
11:15:43
learn more, is there a
11:15:45
place people can go to really
11:15:47
sort of dive into the history of the
11:15:49
area? Well, I would say that
11:15:50
the number one place is the
11:15:52
Historical Society of Palm Beach County,
11:15:56
the Richard and Pat
11:15:57
Johnson Museum. But our library,
11:16:00
the Mandel Library, has a Florida room
11:16:02
that has amazing
11:16:03
collections of books and artifacts and
11:16:07
maps that really tell the story of West
11:16:10
Palm Beach. Fantastic. I
11:16:12
want to thank you for your
11:16:13
time. What you do here to preserve the
11:16:15
history as this area
11:16:16
develops is so important. It's so
11:16:19
important to keep our grasp on the past
11:16:21
as we move into the future, and you're
11:16:23
doing a great deal for
11:16:24
that. So thank you. Thank you. And thank
11:16:27
you for joining us. The City Center
11:16:29
podcast is a production
11:16:30
of the City of West Palm Beach
11:16:32
Communications Department. I'm Jerry
11:16:34
Marcello. We'll see you next time.