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A Special Moment In Time: The Bathing Casinos Part III

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By Seth H. Bramson

As was noted in this column previously, there were a total of five bathing casinos, only one of which—the Harvey Baker Graves owned Sunny Isles Casino—had open gaming.

The first of the bathing casinos was the Avery Smith and James C. Warr-owned Ocean Beach later Smith’s Casino, located just north of Biscayne Street on the oceanfront. Between Second and Third Streets Dan Hardie, later the Dade County sheriff, built Hardie’s Casino, which was a huge (for the times building). North of Hardie’s, at Fifth Street and the Ocean, was Cook’s Casino, similar to the other two but definitely smaller in size.

It would be Cook’s that would long outlast the other four and years after they had been closed, burned down or demolished, Cook’s continued to operate until some time in the early 1960s.

Although the first three did include changing rooms and sundry shops, it appears that of the three only Smith’s and Hardie’s offered some form of food service; other than perhaps the selling of candies and perhaps bottled soft drinks there is no evidence that Cook’s competed for the snack or meal trade.

The fourth of the casinos lasted until the early 1950s but as the Everglades Cabana Club, rather than as a casino, which it had been when it was built by Carl Fisher and the Collins—Pancoast group. In fact, it started life on the block between 22nd and 23rd Streets and Collins Avenue, just south of the Roney Plaza, as Fisher’s St. Johns Casino, made into a true Miami Beach landmark by virtue of the large windmill that stood almost until the building’s demolition in the mid 1960s to build the 22nd Street Holiday Inn, that edifice also now demolished.

Perhaps the greatest of the glory days of the Fisher/St. Johns Casino was when it was bought and taken over by new operators, who changed the name to Roman Pools and made the site a major entertainment venue, with show rooms, night clubs, fine dining, a coffee shop and stores fronting both Collins Avenue and 23rd Street. The Roman Pools attracted well-heeled patrons from Miami, Miami Beach and the Roney Plaza, that hotel no slouch in terms of it’s in-house retail establishments including the first Burdine’s store outside of Miami proper, same operating in the Roney during the winter seasons only beginning in time for the 1925-26 season until the management of Burdine’s opted to open their first year-round Miami Beach store on the southwest corner of Lincoln and Meridian in 1936.

Among the famous names which had space in the Roman Pools building, both facing north on 23rd Street, were Lou Walter’s club and restaurant (not yet the Latin Quarter and contrary to the NONSENSE on Wikipedia—another reason my students are not allowed to use that site as a reference on their two papers in my Contemporary World History class at Barry University—is the FACT that Walter’s daughter, Barbara, did NOT graduate Beach High, spending only her tenth grade year there, following which Mr. Walters sold the Miami Beach Latin Quarter and moved the family back to New York) and Murray Franklin’s, no relation to Franklin’s 12-17 Steak House on Normandy Isle.

Murray Franklin’s was THE place on Miami Beach for the stars to relax after their shows and, yes, a young Frank Sinatra went there (as well as to Riccio’s on 79th Street on the Miami side) as did his later great and close friend, “Mr. Warmth” himself, Don Rickles, who, in fact, actually got his start at Murray Franklin’s.

The Roman Pools would, as previously noted, become the Everglades Cabana Club and for some years offered swimming and diving lessons, water shows, shopping and dining mostly to locals, who enjoyed the near luxury of a cabana in the pre-Fontainebleau Hotel days, by which time and in which place, some of the cabanas featured their own restrooms, sinks and separate and enclosed changing areas.

The furthest north of the five casinos was the Harvey Baker Graves owned Sunny Isles Casino, built by Mr. Graves in the early 1920s as part of the development by him of Sunny Isles. The concept of the original Sunny Isles was to feature an entire island of recreation, another of private home sites, a major hotel, a fine roadway to connect Sunny Isles to the mainland (now known as 163rd Street on the Miami side, 167th Street on the beach side), a rebuilding of Sunny Isles Beach Road (today’s Collins Avenue) and a water supply plant on the mainland which would eventually be taken over and operated by the City of North Miami Beach.

After the “bust” of the great 1920’s “boom” which occurred following the September 17th and 18th 1926 hurricane, Mr. Graves returned to Rochester, New York and the area essentially entered a long period of quiescence, the casino building eventually housing several different restaurants, the last of them being “Grandma’s Kitchen and Grandpa’s Bar,” which also had stores on Biscayne Boulevard and 114th Street and in the Boulevard Hotel on Dade Boulevard on Miami Beach, and which no few South Floridians remember fondly. The former casino building was torn down in the mid 1960s and is today just south of the site of the Newport Motel, which opened in 1967.

The memories of those great and wonderful pleasure palaces is fading fast, but the stories of the buildings and their aficionados can be found in “Sunshine, Stone Crabs and Cheesecake: The Story of Miami Beach,” published by The History Press, of Charleston (www.historypress.net) as well as here, on Mr. Berkwitt’s fine blog.

Next issue, we shall see what we shall see, but it is very possible that we will begin the story of “The Time of the Trolley,” the years during which Greater Miami had three streetcar systems, none of which should have been destroyed, but that will be told in the coming issues. Be well, have a good weekend, and we will “see you” soon.

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