Miami: A Young but Turbulent History
The 1920s land boom
Miami may be southern in geography, but it was built with northern money and inspiration. It was a New Jersey native named John Collins who purchased a strip of swampland off the coast of Miami, envisioning an “Atlantic City of the South”. And it was Carl Fisher, a well-traveled Indiana native who made his fortune selling cars, who envisioned a “Fifth Avenue of the South” on the uninhabited island.
That island became Miami Beach in 1915, where Collins built his oceanfront hotels and casinos, and Fisher built Lincoln Road, a thoroughfare of expensive shops, nightclubs, bars and theaters. That year, Fisher completed the Dixie Highway, a 1,300-mile road that connected Miami to Chicago that ensured a steady flow of tourists.
The two men then began an aggressive marketing campaign targeting northern urbanites. Fisher went as far as purchasing a giant illuminated sign in Times Square during the middle of winter proclaiming “It’s June in Miami”. Thousands responded and Miami Beach became the hottest tourist spot in the country.
And unlike the turn of the century, when only the rich and famous could afford the train ticket to Miami, the 1920s was a time when Miami was accessible and affordable to America’s middle class, thanks to the advent of the automobile and Fisher’s Dixie Highway.
World War I had just ended and the economy was thriving. Most families owned cars and brand new highways that connected New York City and Chicago to Miami, kept a steady supply of tourists coming. Unlike in previous years, most of the new visitors were young, middle-class families that came looking for homes and land, rather than resorts and hotels.
Prohibition was keeping the country dry, but people were allowed to drink freely and openly in Miami, as the city gained a reputation for debauchery. Thanks to the hundreds of rum runners smuggling liquor in from the Bahamas and Cuba, Miami had a steady supply of booze to keep people happy. As the tourist slogan confirmed several decades later, “the rules are different here.”
The land boom pushed Miami’s boundaries westward and its buildings skyward. Developers built the Dade County Courthouse, which remained the tallest building south of Baltimore for several decades. They also built a skyscraper modeled on the Giralda Tower in Spain that became known as the Freedom Tower after thousands of Cuban refugees were processed there during the 1960s. In the eyes of the Cuban exile, it is Miami’s Ellis Island.
In 1922, developer George Merrick, the son of a Massachusetts minister, began carving out what would be the nation’s first planned community; an enclave of Spanish castles and tree-lined streets that became known as Coral Gables.
Merrick also built the Biltmore Hotel, another building modeled after the Giralda Tower in Spain. He nicknamed his creation “the City Beautiful.” Today, Coral Gables is a Mediterranean oasis within a thriving metropolis.
But there was a price to pay for paradise as many residents discovered in 1926. A severe hurricane with winds up to 150 mph wiped out most of the city, killing up to 300 people and leaving thousands homeless. Described by the U.S. Weather Bureau as “the most destructive hurricane ever to strike the United States”, the storm destroyed all of Collin’s casinos, washing away his Atlantic City, and flooded Fisher’s Fifth Avenue. It also left Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel in shambles where it had to be demolished. And it killed Miami’s land boom, placing the city in the Great Depression three years before the rest of the nation.
But Miami managed to rebound from the depression before the rest of the nation, thanks to a new wave of development that sprung up on Miami Beach. The new hotels that emerged from the hurricane rubble became known as the Art Deco District. With their sleek streamlining and bold geometric patterns, the colorful hotels once again turned Miami into a winter playground for rich and famous northeasterners – the only people who could afford it during those years.
Those years may have been lean, but Miami was still able to retain its allure for notoriety. In 1928, Al “Scarface” Capone bought a house in Palm Island, a residential island between Miami and Miami Beach. The man known to the feds as Public Enemy Number One was a notorious Chicago bootlegger. Setting up shop a short boat ride from the Bahamas was a wise business decision. And although Miami officials publicly decried Capone’s arrival, they were secretly grateful. Capone was a big spender during a time when Miami was in the economic doldrums.
Less than a year later, as Capone resided in his new home, a group of his henchmen entered a Chicago warehouse dressed as police officers, and gunned down seven rival mobsters in what went down as the most spectacular mob hit in gangland history. All fingers pointed to Capone, but there was nothing the Feds could do. He had been in Miami.
Nevertheless, newspapers throughout the country dubbed the incident the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” and turned Capone into an overnight celebrity. Capone had to hire a press agent to handle the numerous interview requests, which he conducted with his cocky charm and trademark cigar. Although Capone was eventually jailed for tax evasion, Miami continued to attract its share of criminals.
In 1933, when President-Elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt was touring the country, an Italian immigrant who had moved to Miami from New Jersey, entered a Miami pawnshop and purchased a .32 caliber pistol. Armed with his new purchase, Giuseppe Zangara joined a crowd of spectators in downtown Miami to listen to Roosevelt’s speech. He worked his way to the front of the crowd, stood up on a wooden chair and fired six times, missing Roosevelt but striking Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who died two weeks later.
During his trial, Zangara claimed to be an anarchist who was trying to kill Roosevelt. He was electrocuted two weeks later in the Florida State Penitentiary.
Some historians believe Zangara was a hit man hired by Capone to kill the Chicago mayor. Cermak, they say, had been trying to use his political muscle to move in on Capone’s turf. Although Capone was in an Atlanta prison at the time, it was no secret that he had been running his organization from his cell until he was transferred to Alcatraz the following year. Capone returned to Miami after being released from prison in 1939. By then, an untreated dose of syphilis had left him mentally incompetent. He died in his Miami home in 1947.