The Bramson Archive: How, What And Where
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By Seth H. Bramson
Another organization asked me to do a write-up on and about the immensity of The Bramson Archive and I thought that, in addition, our column really should be here, so I hope you enjoy this one, dealing with our collection of, beginning in May of this year, 63 years!
Very briefly in terms of “What” The Bramson Archive needs a short description: The Archive is the largest collection of Florida East Coast Railway and Florida transportation memorabilia in the world. It is larger than the state museum’s collection (of like items, of course, not the entire collection!) and larger than the Flagler Museum’s collection, the same qualifier applying. In addition, it is the largest private collection of Miami memorabilia and Floridiana in the country, private as opposed to the historical museums or certain libraries. More on the various areas of interest below.
The Archive also includes U. S. railroad, trolley, steamship, airline, bus and boat memorabilia, along with advertising and promotional material issued by cities, counties, towns, hotels, restaurants and businesses plus a major collection of U. S. picture postcards, mostly great city scenes, but with no trees, flowers, waterfalls, interstate highways, large letters or chirping bids.
The “How” will likely be of interest to our readers, particularly those who are either Floridians or have a strong interest in Florida history.
Almost from babyhood I loved trains. As a wee lad I always wanted Dad to buy me trains of any kind, although I never became a modeler or a Lionel or American Flyer buff, my interest, from the beginning, in “the real McCoy.”
We moved to Miami Beach in 1946, when I was two, and Dad used to tell stories of how excited I was during the night as the freight and passenger trains would roar by all night long, that shortly after World War II, with whistles blowing and us staying in motor courts or cabins as they were called then. There was no air-conditioning: they all had signs our front that read “Air-Cooled,” which, of course, meant that you either opened the window or that there was a fan in the room!
The following year—sometime in 1947—we began our Sunday routine, which went on for four years: breakfast at the Mayflower Coffee Shop on the corner of Southeast First Street and Biscayne Boulevard, where Bonnie was our waitress and I would be fascinated by “the donut train,” watching the donuts being made one-by-one and plopping onto the flat cars which, after receiving two donuts would proceed along the “track” under heat lamps as the donuts baked. I loved it!
From there we would go to the pony track on the northeast corner of Northeast 15th Street and Biscayne Boulevard so that I could ride the ponies, following which was the big event of the day: from the pony track we would go to Buena Vista Yard (now the site of Midtown on Northeast 36th Street) where Dad would pull in, open the door for me and watch me run excitedly to the giant FEC steam locomotives, just waiting for me patiently each Sunday, like old friends. How I loved them, and I would climb all over them, eventually jumping from the running board into Dad’s arms, and, yes, we have the pictures of me and Daddy on the steam engines there. Interestingly enough—and I never thought about his until just a few years ago—nobody ever came over and asked what we were doing there or told us to leave, and in looking back I found that to be a real anomaly, especially just a short time after the ending of the war.
Eventually, Dad was doing fairly well with his sign shop on Fifth Street on Miami Beach, and the routine changed a bit. Our day together became Saturday and every Saturday morning we would get up early and cross the 79th Street Causeway to have breakfast at the counter at the Walgreen’s in the 79th Street Shopping Center at Biscayne and 79th Street in Miami. As soon as we were done Dad would drive north on Biscayne and every Saturday, like clockwork, shortly after we passed Northeast 140th Street, an FEC streamliner (I later learned it was train number two, the East Coast Champion) would come roaring by us on its way to Jacksonville and points north.
The train was led by a brace of the railroad’s red and yellow diesel locomotives, followed by a long string of streamlined passenger cars and as I watched them I would literally quiver with excitement. In later years I would write that the FEC color scheme was the most magnificent diesel locomotive paint scheme ever created and used by any American railroad.
Getting older I knew that I wanted to know more about railroads, particularly my “home road” and in May of 1958 I walked into the FEC’s City Ticket Office in the Ingraham Building in downtown Miami for the first time and asked for timetables. It was there and then that “it” all began. This coming May of 2020 I will begin my sixty-third year of collecting all this junque and today I am America’s senior collector of the four categories of memorabilia noted in the first paragraph above.
With that, then, we turn our attention to “Where.”
My forays to downtown Miami to the FEC station and to the ticket office became regular and I began bringing home “lots of stuff.” My Aunt and Uncle, Gertrude and Joseph Engelman lived in Chicago and beginning in 1957 I began taking the famed passenger train, the City of Miami to the windy city to spend the summer with them. In Chicago I spent almost every day for the six or seven summers that I went up there going to every railroad office in the city and every station to collect more. By the time I was ready to come home I would check five or six large boxes of “stuff” with the baggage agent and each summer, the collection grew exponentially. Suffice to say, our dear Mom, and my beloved brother, Bennett, seemed bemused as the collection eventually took over our glassed in back porch and my entire bedroom.
Little by little I came to be known not only by many of the FEC people but by others in the railroad offices in Miami, who always had memorabilia for me. And the collection continued to grow.
All through junior high and high school and all through college I collected. Eventually, on January 22, 1963, the non-operating employees (the people who didn’t actually operate the trains) of the FEC went on strike and through passenger service ended. With no settlement in sight, the railroad began to demolish its passenger stations and from September through October of ’63, the Miami depot met its fate. Fortunately, I had the foresight to be there at least twice a week and to save what today are priceless relics from that and many other stations.
Among the incredible prizes which I removed were one of only two of the brass ticket windows taken intact; both of the big wooden “Ticket Office” signs with an arrow below the words, which were hanging outside on either side of the station; thousands of paper items plus what is one of the greatest Miami collectibles of all time, and is included in my talk (I am the only person in the state who gives this talk, which is one of my thirteen talks on and about South Florida local and Florida transportation history and which is one of my two “adult show and tell talks” to which I bring the appropriate and germane memorabilia) on “The History of Discrimination in South Florida” and that item always brings gasps from the crowd, for it is the large wooden “Colored” sign from the separate waiting room for African-Americans then required by state statute in Florida and all Southern states.
Eventually, I would, during the strike, be the only railfan or railroad buff allowed on company property and during the years while I was in school in Miami I made the most of that, going up and down the east coast of Florida, visiting every station and yard which was still extant, and saving everything I could.
In 1966 I was accepted at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, becoming the first Dade County Junior College (later Miami-Dade Junior College, now Miami-Dade College) student to be accepted at Cornell and then the first D C J C graduate to graduate from Cornell. Of course, my frenzied collecting continued for my three years in Ithaca, and, as always, the treasures would be shipped down to Miami Beach.
Returning to Miami after graduation I went to work in several hotels and restaurants and even when I went back to New York to run the famous New York Gaslight Club the collecting continued but in early 1978, my former partner in the restaurant business, the late, great Lloyd Apple, called me to tell me that the Thal Brothers, of the now sadly closed for several years Epicure Market wanted us to run their catering division and because my beautiful bride of by then a year and a half was kind of insisting that I return home, I did so, spending five years at Epicure followed by stints as General Manager of Playboy Club Miami and Miami Shores Country Club before I was fortunate enough to get out of that business and begin teaching at the college level, which I have been doing for 33 or 34 years. (I’ve kind of lost track, but not to worry: “Old railroaders never die: they just lose track!:)
The years went by and my first book, Speedway to Sunshine: The Story of the Florida East Coast Railway was published in December 1984, the 3000 copies selling out by August of ’85, with no internet and no FEC Railway Society then in existence.
By 1992, with me well established as “Mr. F. E. C.” I was able to approach company management regarding the coming (1995-96) centennial of the railroad. Late that year, FEC President Carl F. Zellers appointed me Company Historian, a position I continue to hold. Our current President, Nathan Asplund, likes to refer to me as “Number One in a field of one,” telling audiences that “We (the FEC) are the only railroad in the country with an official Company Historian,” a great and major honor.
By this point you may be asking about the Miami memorabilia and Floridiana, and the collecting in those genres began at the same time as the rail and trolleyana collecting started, in 1958.
Now, with all of that, where are we today? You already know about the size of the collection, at this point numbering somewhere past 1,400,000 individual items, but a few other facts may be of interest, beginning with the fact that I am America’s single most-published Florida history book author, all South Florida local and Florida transportation history, none self-published. Five of those books are on and about the FEC and Speedway to Sunshine…. is the single best-selling (now notice the disclaimer words) regional railroad history ever published in America, with 11000 copies sold prior to the soft-cover edition being published five years ago. In addition I have written six and one-half histories of Miami Beach and its northern suburbs, the “half” being the approximately half that is contained in “L’chaim! The History of the Jewish Community of Greater Miami.” Our Broward County in Arcadia’s Postcard History Series is the first ever history of that county and due out in June is our 33rd, Lost Restaurants of Greater Miami which should really bring back some gloriously happy memories!
And what about the collection? Massive, yes, but a few of the superlatives are in order. We maintain, in The Bramson Archive, the largest collection of Miami Beach hotel and motel brochures, booklets and flyers that exist in this country; we have the largest Florida postcard collection in the country (both of those in public or private hands) numbering 42 boxes all shoebox size or larger of Florida postcards, ranging from categories to city scenes to railroad, trolley, steamship, airlines and more; the largest collection of black Miami memorabilia in white hands in the country (not comparing ourselves to the Miami Black Archives, so trust you note the disclaimer words again); the largest Miami-Dade images collection (photographs, negatives and slides) in private hands in the country, numbering well over 18,000. Suffice to say, the list continues but just a few more that are eminently important: the FEC Railway company official negatives and color transparencies: the largest collection of Henry M. Flagler signed letters in private hands in the country, NOT comparing it to the collection of Flagler-signed letters at the Flagler Museum; the largest collection of Miami, Miami Beach and Coral Gables memorabilia in private hands in the country; the blueprint collection of the famed, late Miami architect Donald F. Roban, numbering several hundred and an endless list of “more” which includes the oldest known marked Miami piece known to exist, the 1823 hand drawn abstract of the “94,100 Acres of Miami” and the oldest known piece of marked Dade County memorabilia, the 1878 Revenue Collector’s book. The list, of course, continues from there.
Several collections are of special note, though. Many years ago—and this a wonderful story but too lengthy for the moment—the late Dr. Thelma Peters, beloved lifelong Miamian and Miami Edison High School Teacher, before she left Miami to join her sister in North Carolina, gave us her immense collection of Miami newspaper clippings, so huge that we are still going through it. We bought, some years ago, the Mary and William Brickell collection (another wonderful story for another time!), a good bit of which we donated to Florida International University; several years ago we made the largest purchase of Florida historic memorabilia ever made by—now note the disclaimer words!—a private individual in the history of the state, when we purchased the collection of the late William Gleason (please google “William Gleason Florida lieutenant governor”), said collection numbering not thousands of documents but tens of thousands. This is a true treasure trove of late 19th and well into the 20th century history.
Much of the Archive is maintained here, at the house, but a good deal of material is kept in two-ten by fifteen foot storage units, as it has long outgrown the house. Obviously, I couldn’t have done this without the patient approval of my beautiful bride, the long-suffering Myrna, to whom I owe a great deal. (November 27th was 43 of marriage years and I chased that woman for three years until she caught me!)
At present I am President of both the Miami Memorabilia Collectors Club and the Greater North Miami Historical Society and an Honorary Life Member of the Miami Springs Historical Society and we welcome all of you at any time you want to learn more about those terrific groups. For a number of years I have had the pleasure of being Adjunct Professor of History and Historian in Residence at Barry University in Miami Shores and Adjunct Professor of History at the Nova Southeastern University Lifelong Learning Institute. If you are interested in having me speak to your group, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Stay well all, be safe, and don’t throw anything out! Hope to see you at our meetings soon, and with all good wishes.
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