Palm Beach History 1894 -2016

1. Sold on Palm Beach
Augustus Mayhew
Palmbeach chamber of commerce - November 17, 2016

2. “A social utopia …
where architects are in heat.”
Author Ethel Petit Roche, 1925.

3. TOURISTS – SOCIALITES – BUILDERS – DEVELOPERS – PHILANTHROPISTS - TAXPAYERS
REFUGE + RAILROAD + HOTELS + COTTAGES + CLUBS = RESORT + SUBDIVISIONS = RESIDENTIAL
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
MAIN STREET / COUNTY ROAD / WORTH AVENUE
PHIPPS PLAZA / ROYAL PALM WAY / ROYAL POINCIANA PLAZA
Boutiques to Brands
Beaux-Arts Fashion Promenade Worth Avenue Phipps Plaza Royal Poinciana Way Royal Poinciana Plaza Esplanade
1917 1920s 1927 1938 1959 1979
HIGHLIGHTS
1910-1916 Ocean Boulevard built – Subdivisions – Automobiles
1918-1933 Prohibition
1929 Garden Club Plan of Palm Beach - Planning & Zoning
1950s Air-conditioning –Air travel – Estates to Subdivisions
1963 Florida Condominium Act
1980 Commercial Town-Serving (C-TS) Zoning

4. Island Refuge
to
International Resort
Cocoanut Grove House Royal Poinciana Hotel

5. Cocoanut Grove House
Island Refuge

6. Oil Swells- The Standard Oil Crowd at Palm Beach
From St. Augustine to Palm Beach

8. The Breakers I – II - III
Beach censors, cabana bookies, dance instructors, pier
fishermen, orchestra leaders, and Bessie Fenn -
America’s only woman golf pro.

10. The Vanderbilts arrive … and the Astors … and the Whitneys … and the …

11. “Palm Beach is fabulously rich, idle, but absolutely useless.”
“Palm Beach is essentially a society resort …
Created solely for expected visitors of a certain class … a vision of lazy luxury.”
1925
The 400
2016
25,000

12. The Gilded Age spectacle of wealth coincided with the development of daily
newspapers and photography, making the extravagance of the rich front-page
news.

13. Ruby Edna Pierce
“Dean of Florida’s
Newspaperwomen”
Editor
1910-1954

14. Bradley’s Beach Club
1898-1945
“Go to Palm Beach, which is not
exclusive, but merry, sumptuous and
expensive and where there is a
chance to meet many prominent
men in the gambling rooms.”
“The real reason for the popularity of Palm Beach is not its climate or
its hotels; it is Bradley's." The New York World, 1912.
“The Beach Club is the limelight for the privileged; at mid-season
there are 2,000 people in Palm Beach, all wealthy, but only 150 can
be seated for dinner at The Beach Club. That is society.” NYT, 1916

15. “People in Palm Beach prefer the thrill of rolling the dice; card games are boring. They
do not play to win but for amusement because it is fashionable and not necessary. Here
gaming is a pastime rather than a concern for money gains.” -Pittsburgh Press, 1913.

16. PLEASURE

18. 1920s Silent Movies
filmed at
Palm Beach

19. From Private Clubs to Night Clubs

20. 1916
Palm Beach Country Club
“Palm Beach was like a place near
the United States, an exclusive
foreign colony, a desired spot
created not for people to merely
exist but devoted entirely to
pleasure.”
-Theodore Pratt

22. George Sperti, Ph.D: Sunlamp & Preparation H

23. Builders
“ Pay whatever the price …”

24. From Tiki Huts to French Chateaux

25. Royal Park
When hotel guests returned at the beginning of the 1913
season, they beheld three subdivisions with streets planned
for as many as two-hundred houses, two banks, three
newspapers, commercial lots selling at $200 a front foot, a
new toll bridge, and a scenic ocean road.

27. Royal Palm Way - 2016
A 1973 zoning change converted Royal Palm Way from predominately residential to commercial,
paving the way for multi-story office buildings.

28. Floral Park
In July 1938 the town's new four-lane Flagler Memorial
Bridge motorway opened, transforming Main Street
into a palm-lined parkway renamed Royal Poinciana
Way.

29. Main Street

30. Royal Poinciana Way

31. Royal Poinciana Way

32. To the
Fashion Beaux-Arts Promenade
1917
Fashion Beaux Arts
25 New York & Paris Shops +Theater + Colony Club
North Lake Trail

33. 1935
North County Rd 1905

34. O’hara’s

35. County Road

36. PALM BEACH COMPANY

37. Phipps Plaza

38. Everglades Island

39. Royal Poinciana Plaza

44. From
Hotels & Apartments
To
Condominiums

47. Alligator Joe’s
Touchstone Convalescents Club for Soldiers
Everglades Club

48. PARIS SINGER
Everglades Club
Golf View Road
Singer Place/Middle Road
Everglades Arcade
Via Parigi
Singer Building
Palm Beach Swim Club
Palm Beach Ocean
Seminole Golf Course

49. Addison Mizner
-1925-
-700 employees
-25 architectural draftsmen
-Florida & New York Offices

52. Jesse Newman
President
Worth Avenue Association
(1957-1969)
President
Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce
(1971-2000)
Worth Avenue
The Mink Mile
Palm Beach’s Fifth Avenue

53. “On Worth Avenue, there is always an excess of possible
tenants.” - Worth Avenue Property Owners Association, 1979.

54. Worth Avenue
Portrait artist Channing Hare lived
on Worth Avenue and showed his
work at several of the avenue’s 20
art galleries during the 1960s.

55. By 1927, there were 7,000 different
cosmetic products for women who each
spent $300 per year for creams, lipsticks,
foundation, talcum powder, cleansers,
and rouge.
Women of Worth

56. Elizabeth Arden
(Florence Nightingale Graham)) Helena Rubinstein
Pauline Trigere & Martha Phillips
Women of Worth

57. Estée Lauder

58. Lilly Pulitzer

60. Women of worth

61. Automobile Showrooms
Rolls-Royce-Chrysler-Packard-Studebaker-Buick-Cadillac-Ford/Lincoln – Palm Beach 1929

62. Aviation

65. Markets
Palm Beach Stores
Aeillo’s
Bustani’s
Murphy Brothers
Brinkley’s
Oxford Market
Piggly Wiggly
Marty’s Market
Lafayette Market
GS Ginocchio
Irving Company
Southampton Market

66. Auctions

67. Banks & Wealth Management
Dade County State Bank
Main Street - 1893
Florida outlaws
Estate & Income Tax

68. Philanthropy

69. Sold on Palm Beach
AugustusMayhew
Credits
Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Post
Historical Society of Palm Beach County
State Archives of Florida – Florida Memory
Palmbeach chamber of commerce
November17, 2016