A Special Moment In Time… 1896: Miami’s Most Crucial Year

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By Seth H. Bramson

There are certain years in certain cities that can be defined as “crucible” years, meaning that those years were either the single most important in and to the history of that particular town or city or one of several that fit that definition. Chicago, for example, will always be defined by the great world’s fairs of 1893 and 1933-34 as well as the years of the Chicago Railroad Fair of 1948-49. For New York it will be the great blizzard year of 1888, the world’s fairs of 1939-40 and 1964-65 and, of course 2001. Miami is another city that has had several crucible years including 1896, 1912, 1926 1941 and 1960, but, unquestionably, the single most important year for what would become one of the world’s greatest cities was 1896.

What happened in 1896 and why is and why should that year be considered the single most important year in the city’s history? The answer is simple: because in that year five defining events would prove to be the most important in the formation and shaping of what would, just a few years after its founding, be called “The Magic City.”

The railroad construction crews of Henry Flagler’s renamed in September of 1895 Florida East Coast Railway were pushing steadily toward Biscayne Bay as ’95 came to an end, the result of the agreement reached by Mr. Flagler, Julia Tuttle and Mary and William Brickell whereby Tuttle and Brickell would donate half of their holdings (the former’s north of the river, the latter’s to the south, plus fifty acres given by Mrs. Tuttle for the railroad’s shops and yards) to Flagler in exchange for his extending the railroad to the north bank of the Miami River and building one of his great hotels upon said bank, with the hotel’s construction also underway in late ’95.

The year 1896 began quietly enough but on February 6th of that year a fellow by the name of Isidor Cohen would, for the first time, set foot in what would become Miami. That story is told in “L’Chaim! The History of the Jewish Community of Greater Miami,” the first and only complete history of Greater Miami’s Jewry, heavily illustrated and covering all of Dade County, from what is now Aventura to Homestead, which, yes, had a Jewish presence (albeit not a permanent one) before Mr. Cohen got here.

Cohen’s arrival would prove to be a major asset to the yet-unborn city as in addition to his business acumen and his desire to see the city come to life, he was the first permanent Jewish settler and his story is told in detail in the aforementioned book, which was published by The History Press of Charleston and is available in local book stores, at amazon.com or from The Bramson Archive.

The second major occurrence of 1896 was the arrival of the Florida East Coast Railway on April 15th. Interestingly, while there were well-wishers on hand, the crowd was surprisingly small. Among those in attendance were Mr. Flagler, his now famous in Florida history lieutenants, James E. Ingraham (for whom Miami’s Ingraham Building is named) and Joseph R. Parrott, Flagler’s railroad vice president, along with Mr. Cohen, who, in his 1923 self-published Memoirs and History of Miami, Florida describes Flagler, Ingraham and Parrott as “an odd lot.”

For a very short time, the station, a wooden building of small almost shack-like proportions and looking somewhat like a temporary, thrown-together structure (which was pretty much what it was) was opened on Avenue E almost right at 12th Street, the names being changed in 1921 so that, under the Chaille Plan, which was the quadrant system of street numbering, Avenue D would become Miami Avenue, Avenue E Northwest First Avenue and 12th Street would be named Flagler Street. (To put it all in perspective, Avenue A became Northeast 3rd Avenue, Avenue B became Northeast 2nd Avenue, Avenue C became Northeast 1st Avenue while the street numbering began twelve blocks north of 12th Street—later Flagler Street—with 1st Street, hence the only street which would retain its number was what would later become Northeast 6th Street while today’s SE and SW 1st Street was 13th Street before the re-naming and re-numbering)

After only a few months serving as the depot, the railroad moved the passenger and express operation to Sixth Street (the only street whose name or number remained the same after the 1921 renaming and re-numbering of streets and avenues) just west of “Boulevard” as what would become Biscayne Boulevard was named at the time. The FEC’s trains would stop at the beautiful depot, then pull across Boulevard and unload or load passengers, baggage and express at the Florida East Coast Steamship Company’s dock, approximately where the American Airlines Arena is today. It was there that, until 1909, they could board or disembark the ships which would take them to Key West and Havana. Beginning in 1909, and until the completion of the FEC’s extension to Key West on January 22, 1912, passengers destined to the island city or to Cuba would leave or embark their ships at Knights Key, the three year temporary terminal of the FEC which was built about five-eighths of a mile out into the Atlantic Ocean. It was just one part of that herculean task of building the Key West Extension that makes it, simply put, “the greatest railroad story ever told.”

The station on Sixth Street served as the FEC’s Miami’s terminal until the opening of the Key West Extension in 1912 when a new station was constructed on Avenue E, a block and a half north of 12th Street at what would become number 200 Northwest First Avenue in 1921. That station enabled trains to load and unload at the new depot which had been placed on the mainline (enroute to and from South Dade and Key West) so that the cumbersome backing maneuver to get in and out of the previous station was eliminated.

Next: The three remaining events add to the importance of 1896 as Miami’s crucible year and we will tell you about those in the next exciting episode!

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