Before it was the Delray Affair, it was the ‘South Florida Gladioli Festival’

The first South Florida Gladioli Festival was held in 1946 on a rodeo field on Atlantic Avenue. Forty thousand invitations were sent to “northern visitors.”

The 1947 festival featured 22 Orange Bowl floats, along with Miss Gladioli and thousands of gladioli.

By 1966 the event was a week-long art show known as the Delray Affair.

The 1981 Delray Affair section of The Palm Beach Post recounts the history of the festival, including the story of Ignatz, the formerly ubiquitous Delray Affair symbol.

By 1985 the annual event was drawing 100,000 people, and the 25th Delray Affair in 1988 featured the 60s band The Association (Cherish, Windy, and Never My Love).

Tags: Delray Beach, festivals

Remembering the Lafrance: Delray’s first Black-owned Hotel

By Keely Gideon Taylor

The LaFrance Hotel in Delray Beach was the first Black-owned hotel in Delray Beach.

Completed in 1949 by the Charles Patrick family, it was the home away from home for seasonal laborers during the segregation era. When it opened, it was the only Black-owned hotel between Delray Beach and Fort Lauderdale. During the 1950s and 60s, many Blacks who were professionally trained as laborers in the North would travel to warm South Florida during the winter. From January through April, they would travel to Delray Beach to work long days as butlers, chauffeurs, housekeepers and waiters in segregated upscale homes and fine restaurants.

Kenneth Durante of Delray Beach remembers traveling from New York to Delray Beach from 1960-1968 and staying at the LaFrance. He was trained as a professional waiter in the North. He described the LaFrance as a nice place with decent size rooms and a common area with a small television. He recalled paying $35 a week to stay at the hotel during the 1960s. The hotel had two stories, 16 rooms and two bathrooms. In addition to professional laborers, the hotel also provided a home for traveling Black entertainers. Although Blacks musicians played in local clubs to integrated audiences, they were forced to eat and sleep in segregated establishments.

In 1968, Mr. Durante moved to Delray Beach and started a family. The Durant family has remained permanent residents. Mr. Durante, along with his wife Charlotte, a former City Commissioner, has owned several businesses in Delray Beach. His son, Tony Durante, currently works in ministry at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church. His daughter, Lori, serves as executive director/chief curator of the Museum of Lifestyle and Fashion History.

The LaFrance was purchased by the Delray Beach Community Redevelopment Agency in 2004 and redeveloped into affordable housing for low income seniors. The LaFrance Apartments sit on the original site on NW 4th Avenue in the West Settler’s Historic District of Delray Beach.

LaFrance Apartments in Delray Beach

Tags: Black History, Delray Beach, LaFrance Hotel

Delray Beach Hall family built theater, sought to create a ‘little Venice’

One of the more colorful characters in southern Palm Beach County was Emmett Campbell Hall (1882-1956).

Georgia-born Hall was the son of Delray Beach’s third mayor, John W. Hall.

“Began writing at age 16, fiction, newspaper features, research and popular-science articles, with sufficient success to make living,” Hall wrote in a 1942 résumé.

He claimed to have written about 600 original stories, producing dozens of books and articles as well as scenarios and scripts in the early days of film.

He produced no fewer than 68 titles between 1910 and 1917 — a staggering one every 5½ weeks.

The films, all silent, had titles such as A Day of Havoc, the politically incorrect That Chink at Golden Gulch, and The House With Closed Shutters.

“Overworked, discontinued this line to engage in — Farming, Florida, 1918 to 1924,” he wrote.

The Halls had moved to Delray Beach in 1919 and bought 1,500 feet of waterway-to-ocean barrier island north of Atlantic Avenue.

“Don’t I wish I had that property now!” daughter Evelyn Hall Ogren — now 81 and living in Boynton Beach — laughed.

Father and son Hall envisioned a “little Venice.” The bust did them in.

But not before they’d built the Delray Theater, at Northeast Fifth Avenue near Atlantic. It opened Christmas Day 1923.

According to Dorothy Patterson, archivist for the Delray Beach Historical Society, the Spanish-style theater had a dance floor on the roof and the town’s first air conditioning: huge blowers and blocks of ice.

“The women frequently complained that they had stiff necks or sore joints as a result of sitting in the draft,” pioneer Lora Sinks Britt wrote in her 1984 memoir, My Gold Coast. “I always liked it. At least I was cool for a while on a hot summer night.”

The big studios elbowed out “indie” theaters, and the Halls lost their theater in 1938. It had various uses before it finally was razed in 1961.

Ogren was born in the Hall family home at 116 N.E. Sixth Ave., on Federal Highway just north of Atlantic Avenue. It was sold in 1941 to the Falcon family, which operated a pharmacy. The house later became the Falcon House restaurant, which still operates.

Photos courtesy of Delray Beach Historical Society
The Delray Theater, built in 1923, opened on Christmas Day that year. Emmett C. Hall was the owner. Before he came to Delray, he had been one of the earliest scenario writers in the brand-new field of motion pictures. The theater had a rooftop dance floor. It was built in a beautiful Spanish style, and this photo shows the large Art Deco-style marquee added later.

For more information: Delray Beach Historical Society: (561) 243-2577. Web page: www.db-hs.org.

Tags: Delray Beach, theater

Look! The principal’s on both sides of this photo!

Lewis Currier was principal of the Delray high school and grammar school in the late 1920s, when this school photo was taken. (We know you can’t see him on this small image. Click on the photo to see a larger image.)

In those days, the camera rotated to take group photographs, so Currier posed on one side, then ran around to get on the other side of the photo, too.

His daughter, Charlotte Currier Schneiter, sent in this photograph to commemorate the centennial of Palm Beach County. Charlotte was born “at home on North Swinton Avenue” in 1932. She attended all of her school years at this school except for one — her senior year, 1949-50. Students moved to Seacrest High School that year and met new kids from Boca Raton and Boynton Beach.

“We were not happy to have to leave Delray High in 1949,” recalls Charlotte, who now lives in Jupiter. “But we all survived and became very good friends!”

Lewis Currier left education after a few years and bought land in Belle Glade. He farmed there during the week and returned home to Delray on the weekends.

Today, the Delray school, built in 1913, is the entertainment complex known as Old School Square.

PHOTO: Courtesty Charlotte Currier Schneiter

Want to know more about Palm Beach County history? Order your copy of the official centennial book, Palm Beach County at 100: Our History, Our Home, by The Palm Beach Post and the Historical Society of Palm Beach County. The 304-page, full-color, hardcover book publishes Nov. 1. Order yours now for $45 (plus tax and shipping) at gallerypalmbeach.com

Tags: Delray Beach, schools

Zion Was Delray’s First Postal Address

Readers: For our May 7 column, Dottie Patterson, archivist for the Delray Beach Historical Society, gave us the lowdown on the story behind the name of Old Germantown Road. Because no good deed goes unpunished, we’re running yet another inquiry past Dottie: Was Zion the first postal address used for Delray Beach, in 1885?

“Yes,” Dottie writes, “the House of Refuge was the first post office in the Delray area. Of course you know the story of the Barefoot Mailman. In his book Letters from Linton, Charles Hofman says there was a man called ‘Long John Holman’ who carried mail from St. Augustine to Biscayne Bay, hiding in caves along the way. He started doing this during the Third Seminole War in the 1850s and also again during the Civil War.

“In 1885, the U.S. government contracted for mail carriers along the South Florida coast. These were the ‘Barefoot Mailmen.’ It was their custom to stay over at the Orange Grove House of Refuge.

“Annie Andrews, wife of the refuge keeper, Stephen Andrews, ran the Zion post office out of the House of Refuge from 1885 to 1893.

“I looked at the bibliography in Charles’ book, but where he got the info on Long John Holman was not apparent. I know that Charles is a meticulous researcher and was a high school and college English teacher, etc.

“He dedicated his book to his grandparents, Delray Beach pioneers (1895). Underneath was a quote from Psalm 84:7: ‘They work from strength to strength until they stand before God in Zion.’ I suppose Annie Andrews chose the name.”

Thanks again, Dottie. As always, we welcome more detail from our readers.

Updates: The Germantown Road column also prompted a note from Dr. Bennett Miller of Atlantis. He notes that while we mentioned Germantown, Tenn., far more prominent is the one near Philadelphia, where in October 1777, George Washington’s army fought “a pivotal battle in our fight for independence. Initially, the Americans penetrated into the streets of Germantown, but partly due to a heavy fog, the Americans were eventually defeated, and from there had to withdraw to winter quarters at Valley Forge.”

Tags: Delray Beach, place names, post offices