April Fools’ Day usually is reserved for pranks and phony stories. Today we’ll confront a mystery, submitted for our consideration by L.J. Parker, a researcher with the Lake Park Historical Society and a frequent contributor to Post Time:
“We had been asked to solve a mystery of a plaque from Riviera Beach Elementary School. Dorothy Gooding was a teacher there from 1951 to 1962 and she doesn’t know what to make of this. The plaque is dated 1961 very plainly. It was on a two-story building that was torn down several years ago. The plaque was rescued by Riviera Beach historian Henry McNish and he is wanting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the school. Problem is that the school was going on there long before.”
He added, “Your column has found many answers to questions that previously couldn’t be answered.”
Of course, L.J. was both flattering and challenging us. It worked!
Riviera Beach Elementary, at 200 12th St., closed in 1992. School district records show it was built in 1930. So why does this plaque suggest it was built in 1961?
The answer: In late May 1961, our archives show, the school board approved a two-story, eight-classroom addition which would connect to a cafeteria built the previous year. The wing, for first- and sixth-graders, was dedicated Oct. 19, 1961.
The board at the same time approved a new Jefferson Davis High School, later Jefferson Davis Middle School. In June 2005, the district decided it was politically incorrect to have a school named for the president of the Confederacy, and it was renamed Palm Springs Middle.
Also of interest, some of the names on that 1961 plaque:
Howell L. Watkins, namesake of the middle school in Palm Beach Gardens, was Palm Beach High principal for 15 years, then schools superintendent from 1948 to 1964. In 1933, he helped found Palm Beach Junior — now State — College, the first of its kind in Florida. He died in 1965.
Ralph Kettler served on the school board from 1946 to 1962 and died in 1975. In 1910, when he was 22 months old, his father, movie theater pioneer Carl Kettler, posed him atop a stuffed alligator. You can see that picture here, and on the cover of the Post’s West Palm Beach history book, Pioneers in Paradise. Copies of the 2004 update still are available from the West Palm Beach city clerk’s office.
This plaque was found at the former Riviera Beach Elementary School. (Photo courtesy of L.J. Parker, Lake Park Historical Society.)
Tags: Riviera Beach, schools
Then, left: In the 1920s, Paris Singer and architect Addison Mizner started the Blue Heron Hotel, a $4 million resort on what is now Singer Island in Riviera Beach. The huge structure was more than half-finished when, in 1926, the land boom collapsed. The hulk stood for 14 years before being razed in the early 1940s. Riviera, incorporated in 1922, was renamed Riviera Beach in 1941. (Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
Now, right: A line of condos sits between State Road A1A and the Atlantic Ocean. Blue Heron Boulevard, which runs about 6.5 miles from A1A west to Beeline Highway, is named for the hotel that never was. (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)
See more Then & Now photos in our Then & Now photo gallery.
Tags: hotels, Riviera Beach, Singer Island
BY LADY HEREFORD
Riviera Beach’s majority black population makes it a rarity among South Florida’s waterfront municipalities. But the city’s complexion was quite different in its early days.
White settlers in the area voted to incorporate the city as the Town of Riviera in September 1922. It was re-incorporated in June 1923, and a volunteer fire department began in 1926, according to the book “A History of Riviera Beach, Florida,” edited by former Library Director Lynn Brink.
The 1928 hurricane destroyed Kelsey City, Riviera’s northern neighbor, and caused widespread damage to homes and businesses. During the next two decades, the sleepy town relied mainly on the commercial fishing industry and tourism, earning the nickname “Conch Town.”
During the 1940s, the town expanded, at one point buying 1,000 feet of beach on Singer Island (named for developer Paris Singer) for $40,000. The town, which changed its name to Riviera Beach in 1941, later acquired much of the south end of the island.
The civil rights era brought major changes to the city, which saw its black population more than double between 1950 and 1970. In 1962, attorney F. Malcolm Cunningham became the city’s first black councilman.
The Rev. Herman McCray moved to Riviera Beach in 1966. The area’s affordable homes attracted a large number of black professionals, McCray said.
He and his neighbors in the Imperial Point neighborhood founded the Imperial Men’s Club to fight for services like trash collection and street lights. The club grew to more than 100 members at one time, he said, and the group’s goals expanded citywide.
“It’s just something that needed to be done,” said McCray, who later became the city’s sanitation superintendent, served on the city council, owned a successful business and sat on the county school district’s biracial committee. He and the club earned a mention in the book “Blacks and Social Change” by James W. Button.
Many of the city’s newer residents aren’t aware that before integration, Riviera Beach, like many municipalities, had separate facilities for blacks and whites, he said.
“We’ve had a used car lot, black drive-in theater, pool, gymnasium,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t have that.”
Tags: Black history month, incorporated, Riviera Beach, Singer Island
