Paradise for Sale:
|
|
By Nick Wynne and Richard Moorhead
The first impression a listener or reader gets when discovering the boom is that it lasted for many years, but that is not the case. The boom was a short-lived affair, lasting barely twenty-four or so months at its height, but it took two years (1921-23) to get started and another two years (1927-28) to die. However, the years 1925 and 1926 were glorious years, unrivaled in American history, when millions of dollars were tossed around like so much confetti. Far outstripping the fabulous gold and silver rushes of the 1800s and early 1900s in monetary value, the Florida land boom made overnight millionaires a common occurrence and rags-to-riches tales a dime a dozen. The price of the average home, away from the hubbub of development communities, rose by a remarkable 200 percent. Virtually every part of the Sunshine State had a leading "boomer" who was responsible for focusing attention on his particular section -- Addison Mizner in Palm Beach and Boca Raton, Carl Fisher in Miami Beach, George Menick in Coral Gables, David P. "Doc" Davis in Tampa and St. Augustine, John Ringling in Sarasota and Barron Collier in southwest Florida. For every giant in the public eye, there were scores of other, lesser-known figures who duplicated their efforts on a smaller scale -- Carl Dann Sr. in Orlando, D. Collins Gillette in Temple Terrace, Walter Fuller in St. Petersburg, William J. Howey in Lake County and the list goes on and on.
Everyone in Florida benefitted from the boom. The price of the average home, away from the hubbub of development communities, rose by a remarkable 200 percent, a feat that remained unsurpassed until the real estate explosion of 2005-06. Jobs were plentiful -- so much so that northern contractors brought workers with them, and inmates in Florida jails worked grading streets, unloading ships and completing construction of needed infrastructure. Banks, long distrusted and few in number in 1920, suddenly began to spring up overnight and reported millions of dollars in deposits. |
It was a gigantic party. Florida was a perpetual motion machine -- destined to go on forever. Credit was easy to come by, and money poured into the Sunshine State in torrents. Chain banking, a new innovation, gave access to the deposits of northern banks and banks in other southern states. It seemed that only the most slothful could fail to get his fair share.
People came to Florida by trains, steamships and automobiles. The Model-T Ford became the icon of the period, signifying a major shift in societal dynamics as mobility and freedom replaced stability and tedium. Prohibition, the Jazz Age, gambling, the rise of the middle class, wild stories of fortunes made in minutes and an atmosphere of constant happenings were all disparate elements that cooked in the cauldron that was boom Florida. Greats, near greats, the famous, the infamous, movie stars, politicians, athletes, ne 'er-do-wells, preachers, foreign royalty, con artists, educators, labor leaders, union members -- every element of American and world society showed up in the Sunshine State. It was a gigantic party. Florida was a perpetual motion machine -- destined to go on forever. The party and the perpetual motion machine came to a screeching halt in 1927. The Sunshine State, which had offered so much promise just a year earlier, entered the doldrums. For almost two decades, it remained there -- baking in the hot sun, scarred by empty subdivisions, decorative arches over roads that led to nowhere and languishing amidst fields of broken promises. In the years that followed the 1920s, Floridians eagerly sought to reclaim the halcyon days of that decade and every little surge in the state 's economy quickly became a "boom." It is still true today -- boom, boomlet, bust -- all part of the lexicon of Floridians, and all very real parts of the Florida economy. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal! |