OF THE OLD MIAMI AND THE NEW MIAMI—OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MIAMI BEACH AND PALM BEACH—OF THE SCENIC POSSIBILITIES IN FLOATING COCONUTS AND THE ACTIVITIES OF JOHN S. COLLINS
THE people who knew Miami prior to 1918 have in their minds an entirely different place from the Miami of to-day. The old Miami was a city first and a winter resort afterward. This statement will, of course, offend the touchy Miami folk; but it is true none the less. It was—and is—a hustling, bustling, booming, noisy city with about one automobile for each seven-eighths of an inhabitant, and with perpetual warmth and sunshine. In the long run, however, the big-money tourists don’t want to go to a hustling, bustling, rapidly growing city for their winter holidays, even though the city may boast perpetual warmth and sunshine. What they want is clean air and plenty of sun and sky, and a complete change from the scenery to which they are accustomed in their northern cities, and a surcease from all noises except the noises they make themselves—which are frequently much louder than the ordinary noises of a city. For that reason Palm Beach was in a class by itself. The big-money tourists went to Palm Beach. Miami got a smattering of them, but a very small smattering. Palm Beach sneered at Miami Beach and called it “the Coney Island of Florida.”
That, however, was prior to 1918. To-day Miami has been augmented by Miami Beach; and eventually Miami Beach will nose out ahead of Palm Beach and get all the youngsters and live wires who like to be on the jump from eight in the morning until three and four and five o’clock the next morning—with occasional busy evenings which will keep them up until six or seven in the morning. Palm Beach folk still sneer at Miami Beach and still, according to their ancient custom, call it the Coney Island of Florida. But it isn’t the Coney Island of Florida; and Palm Beach is frightened for the first time in years—frightened that the wealthy tourists will desert the endless corridors of her hotels and the continuous clothes-changing and the eternal chatter and twaddle of society and near-society and the lifeless air of Bradley’s Roulette Emporium, and get down to Miami, where there’s something doing every minute, and where people go into dinner in golf clothes without getting a hard look from the head waiter.
Photograph by F. A. Robinson
The outdoor swimming pool on a private estate in Miami.
Any January morning at Miami Beach.
A January afternoon tea-dance on the shore of Biscayne Bay.
The story of Miami Beach is a remarkable one and without it Miami would scarcely be able to get out gaudy prospectuses with pictures of beautifully shaped ladies in red one-piece bathing suits on the covers. This is the way of it:
Miami’s palm-shaded streets run down to the shores of Biscayne Bay, which is a strip of water some seven miles long and between two and three miles wide. Between the bay and the ocean is a long narrow tongue of land, not much over a mile in width at its widest point. Prior to 1913, ninety-nine per cent. of this narrow tongue of land was a worthless jungle. The man who owned it is said to have bought it for twelve thousand dollars. The only way of reaching it was by ferry boat, and there was nothing on it in the line of a winter resort except a bathing shack on the beach at the extreme tip, to which a few tourists occasionally repaired when the urge for sea bathing became almost too intense to be endured.
A persistent attempt had been made to utilize the natural advantages of this narrow tongue of sand and jungle. In 1884 some New Jersey business men essayed to plant coconuts on it in sufficient quantities to make the venture profitable. There were no railroads, and it could only be reached by boat. Three shiploads of coconuts were brought from the island of Trinidad. The ships were anchored off the tongue of land; and when the wind blew toward the shore, the coconuts were dumped overboard to float to land. Three hundred and thirty-four thousand coconuts were sent ashore by the promoters of this scheme. They cost five cents apiece in Trinidad, and the freight figured up to six cents apiece. The venture became so costly that the promoters hunted around for more capital and succeeded in interesting a New Jersey fruit-grower named John S. Collins. As a commercial proposition, the coconut planting was a complete failure. But as a flyer in landscape architecture, it was a great success; for the entire ocean-front of the tongue of land was fringed with beautiful coconut palms.
The original coconut planters dropped out as their failure became apparent. Collins and one other man hung on to their narrow and apparently worthless piece of land. In the center of it was some high ground on which Collins conceived the idea of starting a grove of avocados, better known as alligator pears. The avocado shuns frost as an Epworth Leaguer shuns cocktails; and since there is no frost worthy of the name on the tongue of land because of its water-protection on both sides, Collins figured that avocado culture could be made to pay. He was right; and his avocado grove is now the largest in the world. The speed with which he worked, however, didn’t meet the approval of his one remaining partner; so Collins bought him out, becoming the sole owner of the narrow sand-spit with the avocado grove down its backbone.
It then began to dawn on Collins, who was seventy-four years old and therefore able to see a good many things that younger men overlooked, that his sand-spit was a pleasant place on which to live during the winter and summer too, but that he probably couldn’t persuade people to live there until he made it possible for people to get there. Consequently he conceived the idea of building a wooden bridge two and one-half miles in length—the longest vehicle bridge in the world—between Miami and the sand-spit.
The bridge was started in July, 1912; and, as has always been customary in the early developments of Florida, his friends, attorneys and bankers almost had heart-failure over his wild scheme. They prophesied enthusiastically that in about two years’ time he would be standing at the Miami end of his unfinished bridge, begging for nickels with which to get a square meal. The population of Miami at that time was about seven thousand five hundred.
At one time, late in 1912, the amateur prophets were looking gloomily at Collins and saying proudly to each other: “Well, I told him so!” The bridge was such a tremendous undertaking that the Collins money began to pinch out; and no local talent could be found to advance any sum larger than nine dollars on the chance of making a success out of the bridge or the sand-spit.