A Special Moment In Time Miami’s Crucible Year: Part II

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By Seth H. Bramson

As noted in our previous column, 1896 was the single most important year in the history of the tiny unincorporated village on the shores of Biscayne Bay as it transitioned to becoming a city without the intermediate steps of villagehood or township.

The previous article introduced the first two events that gave the year 1896 its cachet as the crucible year in Miami’s incredible history: The arrival, on February 6, 1896, of Miami’s first permanent Jewish settler, Isidor Cohen and the arrival of the first work train and then the first passenger train of the Florida East Coast Railway, on April 15 and April 22, 1896, respectively, were of immense importance in and to the formation of what would become the City of Miami. There were three more events to follow, however, each in its own way equally as important to the formation of said city.

On May 15, 1896, the people of the area awoke to find that that day would herald (if I may use that term) the publication of the first issue of Miami’s first newspaper, the Miami Metropolis. Begun to fill the need of a reliable printed news, advertising, commentary and opinion paper, the Metropolis would serve as the city’s only newspaper until 1903, when the Record (to later become The Miami Herald) would be published for the first time.

The Metropolis would have an illustrious career until 1925 when James M. Cox, the U. S. senator from Ohio, and his newspaper family would buy the Metropolis and change its name to the Miami News-Metropolis. Cox purchased the property at the intersection of Northeast Sixth Street and the Boulevard which extended west to Northeast Second Avenue adjacent to the Florida East Coast Railway. That location is hallowed ground, for it was the place which the FEC had chosen for its first station, primarily because of its proximity to the Florida East Coast Steamship Company’s (later P & O Steamship Company’s) docks directly across the Boulevard (later Biscayne Boulevard) and it was on that site that Cox would build the Miami News tower, known today to newcomers as The Freedom Tower but to long time Miamians the building will always remain, in our hearts if not in our minds, the Miami News building. Eventually, the name of the paper was changed again and the title Metropolis was dropped from the masthead as the newspaper became The Miami Daily News.

The next major event—and the fourth in the soon-to-be a city’s history—following the first issue of the Metropolis—was the founding of the City of Miami on July 28, 1896. Lobbying furiously for incorporation were no few of the locals, supported by the Flagler people, who felt that an incorporated city would be in their best interests.

There were 502 adult males who were qualified to vote on that sultry summer day and, depending of whose account one reads, with either 342, 343, 344, 345 or 350 of them voting “yes” to incorporation, no few of those voters being of the (as the word was then current) Negro persuasion. Within a few years the shamefulness of segregation would overtake the growing city, but for those first several years black people were an integral part of the area’s growth, including a strong and civic-minded community in Coconut Grove as well as the fabled D. A. Dorsey buying large amounts of downtown acreage.

A sidebar regarding the above paragraph is here necessary. Some months ago, the Miami Herald ran a story on and about the one remaining (supposedly) Henry Flagler’s company-built house and the need for its preservation, written by one-time sports writer Linda Robertson. Suffice to say, while the story was utterly riddled with errors (we will do a complete column on what a travesty that once-great paper has become, for no few reasons) the one relevant point is that, in the story, Ms. Robertson made the mistake of quoting the queen bee in regard to the number of people who were in Miami at the time and her answer to Robertson, which was printed in the article, was “about 400.” To put it mildly (and again, I will explain much on this topic in a forthcoming column) I exploded over the ridiculousness of that comment and the lack of interest of that once great now mediocre mullet wrapper in coming to me to verify the veracity of that number, which, as you can see in said preceding paragraph, was nonsensical and totally and completely false.

When I emailed the Herald, including the writer, the managing editor and the other top dogs at the paper, managing editor Rick Hirsch emailed me back to tell me that “they would check on my statements for factuality and get back to me,” the usual Herald b. s. whenever they are in error regarding history, a statement that essentially means “stuff it, we really don’t care.” Incidentally, have they gotten back to you? No? Me neither, and besides being shameful and disgusting their lack of interest in historical accuracy, has, along with their lack of editing and indifference to factuality in many articles, particularly history-related become “a shondra for the neighbors,” a complete slap in the fact of and to journalistic integrity.

Among the signers of the city’s charter were Isidor Cohen, the Sewell Brothers, John and Everest, Frank Budge (he of hardware fame) and no few others whose names resonate in Miami’s great and now-122 year history. As of July 29, 1896, the city founded by Mr. Flagler, Mary and William Brickell and Julia Tuttle—the first city in America to have women as a major part of its founding—was one day old.

The fifth and capstone event of 1896 was the opening, on New Year’s Eve, of Mr. Flagler’s great and fabled Royal Palm Hotel on the banks of the Miami River. (Obviously, that was not our dear friends, the beloved Rose and Unger family’s, Royal Palm Hotel on Collins Avenue south of Lincoln Road on Miami Beach.) An incredible hostelry, especially given the then-rural conditions of the area in which it was built, the hotel would, until the 1926 hurricane devastated it, be the center of Miami’s social life and whirl and would be the meeting place (in the winter, of course, as the hotel, like all Flagler System hotels, closed early in April and did not reopen until just before Christmas) of and for most organizations and civic groups in the Miami area. The Flagler hotel people were quite concerned about doing good for the community and for quite a few years, although the hotel was closed from early Spring to very late Fall, the company kept the swimming pool open and staffed for the enjoyment of the local residents, which allowed those living on the Miami side of Biscayne Bay to, if they chose, use that hotel’s bathing facilities rather than trek over the wooden Collins Bridge or use the Biscayne Navigation Company ferries to first Ocean Beach and then beginning in 1915, the Town of Miami Beach.

Unhappily to report, however, the numerous (as the late, great Neil Rogers would call them) front—running phonies who did not grow up in, live in, go to school in or work in Greater Miami but blew into town to write a bunch of nonsensical hooey about the area would usually state the date of the opening to be “sometime in 1897,” which, like so much else “they” write (or in some cases talk about as if they knew what they were talking about on their bus or walking or river tours) about is completely false: the hotel absolutely, positively, unquestionably and with absolute documentation opened on the last day of 1896 with a grand and gala opening night ball.

Suffice to say, while there have been other important years in Miami-Dade’s history, 1896 will always remain and be thought of not only as the crucible year but as one of the two unquestionably most important and we will tell you about the next one—1926—next time around, perhaps following that with 1941, as the late, great Jerry Wichner, Miami’s “midnight mayor” on the radio would say, “the good lord willing and the cricks don’t rise!”

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