By Michelle Quigley
On March 22, 1894, Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway came south to West Palm Beach. The railroad lured businesses to the new downtown and established Palm Beach as a winter resort.
In the 1890s and early 1900s, Flagler Memorial Bridge was a one-lane wooden railroad trestle with a footpath that provided access to Palm Beach via the Florida East Coast Railway. Guests with private railroad cars used the bridge to get to Palm Beach hotels. The bridge soon became a toll bridge, with pedestrians paying a nickel and horseback riders a dime to cross. Tolls ceased in 1928, and in 1938, the wood bridge was replaced by a four-lane concrete and steel structure. Read more about the Flagler Memorial Bridge. (Photo courtesy of Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
Tags: Henry Flagler, railroads, This Week in History
By Michelle Quigley
On Jan. 16, 1896, Henry Flagler opened the Palm Beach Inn. It was expanded and renamed The Breakers in 1901. The Breakers burned down twice, in 1903 and 1925. The current twin-towered hotel was built in 1926.
Photo courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County
In the early 1900s visitors rode the mule train from the Royal Poinciana Hotel to The Breakers
Tags: Henry Flagler, This Week in History
Readers: Last week marked the 500th Post Time column!
In honor of the occasion –not to mention Palm Beach County’s Centennial — we gave you a list of the 25 biggest events in the county’s history, from a 1999 compilation we updated to 2009. Well, we gave you 25 through 11. Here’s the top 10. For some entries, we’ve added famous quotes.
10. 1945-2009 growth explosions; 2008-’09 real estate collapse.
9. Boom collapses into bust, late 1920s; region thrown into Depression. “A boom means something that is soon over with; West Palm Beach should keep on growing like this for years,” City Building Inspector Jonathan H. Brophy said.
8. Citrus industry develops, late 19th century.
7. West Palm Beach founded, 1894; Palm Beach County, 1909. Region expands from resort role.
6. 1928 hurricane kills up to 3,000 in Glades; Hoover Dike built for flood control. “It woke up old Okeechobee, and the monster began to roll in his bed,” wrote Zora Neale Hurston in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
5. Everglades drainage; sugar industry develops, 1900s-’20s.
4. 1947 hurricane/flood leads to creation of South Florida Water Management District.
3. World War II, 1941-45: U-boat wars, bases spring up, growth spurt. “It was my first trip to Florida. I didn’t like the experience,” said Frank Leonard Terry, the sole survivor aboard the W.D. Anderson, sunk 12 miles north of Jupiter on Feb. 22, 1942.
2. South Florida’s real-estate boom, mid-1920s.
1. Henry Flagler comes to Palm Beach, 1890s. “I have spoken of the godfather of this state. May the state of Florida recognize his benefits The coming years will make clear how wise was his judgment,” said the Rev. George Morgan Ward at a memorial service at Palm Beach’s Royal Poinciana Chapel on the first anniversary of Flagler’s death in 1913.
Photo: Special to Neighborhood Post
This photograph shows the aftermath of the 1928 hurricane at the Wannamaker home in Palm Beach and of D.H. Conkling’s Marchioness sloop that had run aground. Conkling was founder of The Palm Beach Post.
Tags: 1928 Hurricane, agriculture, economy, Henry Flagler, hurricanes, real estate, World War II, WWII
Readers: Our own Neighborhod Post editor, Tom Peeling, asked us about the rail car at Palm Beach’s Whitehall, Henry Flagler’s palatial former estate.
The 10-foot-wide, 60-foot-long, 30-ton car was built in 1886 in Delaware.
Car 91 was used for business and pleasure.
Its parlor had mosaic tile floors, covered with Oriental throw carpets, and wicker furniture.
Beyond that was Flagler’s private room, with a full-sized bed and a bathroom with sink and toilet.
Next was a sitting room with four pull-down berths, four chairs and pull-down tables. The kitchen held a miniature cast-iron stove and several pantries and even a pull down berth for the cook/servant.
Mary Lily Flagler took the car to Miami for day trips and Flagler himself rode it to Key West on the day his “railroad to the sea” was finished in 1912, the year before he died.
The Florida East Coast Railway sold the car to another railroad in 1935. In 1959, it was found in a small town in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
It was minus its wheel and axle assemblies and was serving as a rental home for either newlyweds or farm laborers.
The collector sold it back to the FEC for the $1,000 he’d paid for it. Thecar was loaded on three FEC flat cars and taken to the railway’s headquarters
in St. Augustine. Over nine years, the car went through thousands of dollars
in restoration, down to its oak finish and its copper-lined shower.
Carpet scraps went to the original manufacturer in England and the car was fitted with reproduction upholstery, shades, drapes and brass lamps.
In 1967, it was rolled back to Whitehall and placed on the museum’s south lawn. There it stood, braving the elements, for another three decades.
Next week: a new home.
Tags: Henry Flagler, railroads
Today’s Halloween. But don’t ask John Blades, executive director of the Flagler Museum, about Henry Flagler’s ghost.
The pioneer died in 1913, his wife Mary in 1917.
But in 1974, John Roth, a night watchman at Whitehall, Flagler’s former mansion, said he saw the man “just as plain as daylight,” in a hallway.
“He was just standing there, wearing a dark suit and tie,” Roth said. “I had a good look and then he vanished.”
Silver settings reportedly moved from a top shelf to a bottom one inside a locked cabinet.
A ceiling lamp and the top to an urn crashed to the floor and plates inexplicably broke.
And another watchman, since retired, said he saw Mary Lily many times on an upstairs porch.
Roth later allowed as how he’d seen Flagler only once, when he awoke from a
nap about 3:30 a.m.
Finally, retired director Grant Bedford, blaming the sightings on overactive imaginations, said he’d give $1,000 to anyone who could show him a ghost.
“I can’t make him appear any time I feel like it,” Roth argued.
Bedford said if Flagler’s spirit had made an appearance, it would not have been in the 1970s, when the estate had become a museum, but in the 1960s, when his former mansion was a hotel and his belongings were stuffed away in attics.
“It would have infuriated him,” Bedford said.
John Blades now says emphatically, “There are no ghosts, there never have been ghosts, and there never will be ghosts at Whitehall.”
Tags: Henry Flagler, Palm Beach, unexplained events
