Coral Gables Riviera

1925 CORAL GABLES RIVIERA 1941 AN INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER

16TH YEAR NO. 10 SECTION ONE CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA, APRIL 25, 1941 SECTION ONE PRICE FIVE CENTS

GABLES "SWEET SIXTEEN" ON MONDAY

500 N. E. A. EDITORS TO VISIT CITY

Five hundred editors and publishers, representing newspapers scattered widely over the nation, will be the guests of the city on Monday at a luncheon at the Country Club of Coral Gables. The newspapermen will be in the city on a post-convention tour following the meeting of the National Editorial Association in Jacksonville. The last N.E.A. convention in Florida was held 20 years ago, when Coral Gables was non-existent. The editors, riding in a police escorted motorcade, will arrive in Coral Gables at 12:45 and will proceed up Coral Way to North Greenway Drive and from there to the Country Club. There, with members of the Junior Woman's Club serving as hostesses, they will be served a buffet luncheon. Outside, of a brief address of welcome by Mayor Paul D. McGarry, speeches will be omitted. The girls ensemble from Ponce de Leon High School and the string ensemble from the University of Miami will furnish the entertainment. Following the luncheon, the editors will be taken on a sightseeing trip of Coral Gables before going to the Pan-American Airport to watch the clippers come in and to have dinner. Elaborate plans have been made for entertaining the group from the time they reach the Miami area on Sunday. On Sunday night they will dine at the Royal Palm Club as guests of the Miami daily newspapers, Tropical Park and other organizations. Following the dinner, they will be the guests of Burdines on a moonlight boat ride on Biscayne Bay. On Monday morning, the editors will breakfast at the McFadden-Deauville on Miami Beach, following which they will come to Coral Gables, sightseeing enroute. Following the dinner at Dinner Key on Monday evening, part of the group will embark for Havana while the rest will be guests on another boat ride. On Tuesday morning, the editors will be guests of the Hollywood Beach Hotel for breakfast before the motorcade again heads north. At the Gables luncheon, the editors will be presented copies of this issue of the Coral Gables Riviera, an N.E.A. member. The club will be decorated for the luncheon by a committee of Garden Club members, headed by Mrs. Charles T. Fuchs, president. Her aides include Mrs. Leslie H. Coombes, Mrs. R. H. Montgomery and Mrs. Fred Gemmill. Aiding Mrs. Dana McLendon in serving the editors will be the following members of the Coral Gables Junior Woman's Club: Mrs. John Halifax, Mrs. Wade Stephens, Mrs. E. M. Reinhold, Mrs. W. O. Mehrtens, Mrs. G. G. Lee, Mrs. H. G. Lesley, Mrs. E. C. Hodge, Miss Ruth Doughty, Mrs. M. C. Weir, Mrs. John Tigert, Mrs. D. D. Anderson, Mrs. H. O. Biggers, Mrs. Elsie Melanson, Mrs. Ed Grant, Mrs. Leo Cloney and Mrs. Lee Wallace.

In May Day Gala

Miss Marg Jane Lambeth of 315 Navarre Ave. will play the part of Princess of Summer in the annual May Day celebration of the Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee Saturday, May 3.

Typifies Spirit of Gables

Miss Zoya Dickens, Ponce de Leon High School student, typifies the spirit of Coral Gables on its Sixteenth Birthday. Young, beautiful, Coral Gables welcomes the Members of the National Editorial Association, just as Miss Dickens extends the key to the city to them. In her right hand she holds a birthday cake replica of the City Hall. —Photomontage by Manley Brower Studio

Birthday No Stopping Point But Marker on Path Forward

By JIM MOORE Twenty years ago, members of the National Editorial Association made a post-convention tour of the state of Florida. When they reached Miami they heard rumors of plans for a new subdivision to be called "Coral Gables". However, those who drove out to inspect it, found little but palmettos and wooden stakes that marked lots and proposed streets. Twenty years is not a long time, but it wasn't until four years after those editors left Florida that the city of Coral Gables came into being. What was an idea 20 years ago is now a full-fledged city that will welcome the second group of editors on Monday, the 16th anniversary of the community's incorporation. Those wooden stakes and scrub palmettos have developed, in that short span, to a city with an assessed valuation of approximately $25,000,000.00. From a subdivision populated largely by be-knickered real estate salesmen, Coral Gables has grown into a town with a year-round population of 8,294 persons, occupying 3,301 dwelling units. Coral Gables has a complete business district where the shopper can buy anything from a spool of thread to an automobile. Its recreation facilities, including the municipal golf course, tennis courts and the beautiful Venetian Pool are equalled by no other community of its size in the country. Coral Gables is young—just 16—but it has accomplished wonders in that short time. More important than that—Coral Gables has just started to live. A firm foundation has been established since April, 1925. Its residents have been community boosters and builders and consequently Coral Gables has progressed rapidly. April 1941 is not a stopping point—just another milestone in a long record of achievement to be. Coral Gables is proud to welcome the members of the N.E.A., on her 16th Birthday. We hope that you won't wait another 20 years to visit us again.

Riviera Wins Six Awards In State Press Contests

Competing with other weekly newspapers in the state, The Coral Gables Riviera placed in six out of seven divisions entered in the annual Florida Press Association competition, awards for which were announced this week. The honors were announced by John Davis of Lake City, contest chairman, at the National Editorial Association convention in Jacksonville. Top honors for the entire state went to The Riviera for the best front page and the best editorial page during 1940. The Riviera placed second in the "Best Weekly Newspaper in the State" division, third in the matter of most local news and Jim Moore's "Our Town" was judged the third best special column in the state. In the job printing division, the Riviera took second honors. On a point scoring, based on divisions entered, the Riviera made a clean sweep of the competition with 13 points to its nearest competitor's 8. Owned by John D. Montgomery and edited by James B. Moore, the Riviera has been published continually in Coral Gables since 1926.

CORAL GABLES' HISTORY

AS TOLD BY YEARLY BUILDING TOTALS | 1925 | $ 24,224,900 | 1926 | 13,402,012 | 1927 | 2,602,900 | 1928 | 868,340 | 1929 | 962,425 | 1930 | 286,300 | 1931 | 140,919 | 1932 | 71,605 | 1933 | 164,393 | 1934 | 477,554 | 1935 | 496,687 | 1936 | 1,385,800 | 1937 | 1,222,595 | 1938 | 1,087,450 | 1939 | 1,195,998 | 1940 | 1,750,645 | 1941 (To Date) | 413,328 | TOTAL | $50,753,851

GABLES LOOKS BACK ON 16 YEARS OF GLAMOUR, EXCITEMENT

Coral Gables is "Sweet Sixteen" this week! But unlike most young ladies of her age, Miss Gables looks back on 16 years crammed with more excitement, glamor and interest than an ex-Broadway prima donna writing her memoirs. And yet, despite a lifetime crammed in 16 short years, Coral Gables is still youthful, beautiful and ready to go places. No other city of its size and age in the nation can match the short and exciting history of Coral Gables. Why, she even has a theme song. Remember? WHEN THE MOON SHINES IN CORAL GABLES HEARTS ARE EVER YOUNG AND GAY I KNOW THAT WE'LL NEVER ROAM WE'LL BUILD A WONDERFUL HOME IN CORAL GABLES—SOME DAY. The words of this Coral Gables song have caused many a young couple (as well as older ones) to dream of the day when they would be residents of the most beautiful city in the world. Coral Gables could well be called the City of Dreams. It was a dreamer, visualizing a city of beautiful homes, a community of high ideals and a center of education that made this city of OURS possible. Dreamer George E. Merrick spent his boyhood days in a home surrounded by an unbroken wilderness of palmetto and pine and dreamed of the day when it would become a modern, cultivated suburb of Miami. As he grew to manhood he raised vegetables and tomatoes, but kept his cherished dream in his heart. These tomatoes and vegetables were raised on the land which is now the Coral Gables Country Club golf course. This land was a neck of the Everglades and the soil was the most fertile in this area. Mr. Merrick had a tomato packing house on the property just east of where the country club now stands. His original home, at the corner of South Greenway Drive and Castile Avenue, is a part of the house standing there now—this house having been added to the old homestead. One of the original quarter section stakes also still stands on this corner, although a straggling fir tree is doing its best to engulf the old land mark. The Merrick barn had to be demolished when Castile Avenue was cut through as it was in the center of a road which spelled PROGRESS. Original Idea Mr. Merrick's original idea was for the Gables to be a Suburban Spanish Village—but when the Florida boom came the dream of an independent city also came. It was on November 27, 1921 that the first lot was sold in Coral Gables. Then, in March, 1922, the first street was cut through and in July of the same year a store was built. Granada Boulevard was cut through from Tamiami Trail to Bird Road and the Granada Entrance was the first of the many beautiful entrances into the Gables. Denman Fink was the head architect, with the power of censorship of all buildings, homes and appearances of the Gables. The late Phineas Paist was the supervising architect and the late Frank M. Button was the first landscape architect. Mr. Button was still working on the beautification of Coral Gables, supervising the planting of trees in the parkway of Bird Road, when he was run over and killed by one of the trucks working on the project. This happened about three years ago—but Mr. Button's beautiful landscaping will be a living monument to his untiring effort and work in making Coral Gables parkways, plazas and boulevards the pride of every Gableite. Mr. Fink and Mr. Paist are to be commended for their admirable architecture, which has made Coral Gables internationally known as "The City of Beautiful Homes." Coral Rock Used The first houses and buildings were made of coral rock and their beauty and uniqueness still stand as models of that early day. Paul Chalfin, architect for the James Deering estate in Miami, was the originator of all the group houses, including the Chinese compound, French, English and Dutch-South African villages. He was also the designer of Tahiti Beach which was one of the most colorful beaches in the world. This beach was opened February 6, 1926 and was almost completely destroyed in the September, 1926 hurricane. The dressing rooms, which still stand, are the only original buildings left. The Coral Gables Inn on Minorca Avenue was the first hotel and a building on Coral Way housed the first drug store. The first ground sales office of the Merrick Corporation was built on the corner of Le Jeune Road and Alhambra Circle, soon to the the new home of the Granada Shops. The homes of many of the first real estate salesmen were also used as offices and many of the wives can still recall stepping over maps and plats of the Gables, which were strewn over the floors of their homes. Large busses traveled all over the United States, bringing in prospective buyers. These trips were free if a lot was purchased and if a lot was not purchased the traveller was charged only a small sum. Gables Incorporated On April 29, 1925, Coral Gables became an incorporated city, and the late E. E. Dammers was elected first mayor. Remember in those "good old days" how Mayor Dammers, when giving a speech, brought a laugh from his audience by saying he was the best mayor Coral Gables ever had? Don Peabody, George Merrick, Telfair Knight and F. W. Webster were the first city commissioners. On April 30, 1925 the first street car arrived in the city, coming down Ponce de Leon Boulevard from Flagler Street. It was a day of great festivities, with Wm. Jennings Bryan, George Merrick, F. W. Webster and many others giving speeches. The Renuart Arcade was completed on Decemebr 20, 1925, and this also called for a big celebration. First Riviera The first Miami Riviera (now the Coral Gables Riviera) was issued on January 15, 1926, and its original editor and owner, John Montgomery, is still publishing it. The Biltmore Hotel had its formal opening this month also. A big Venetian Festival was held at the Hotel and gondolas with Italian gondoliers were imported from Italy for the gala occasion. The gondoliers were held up at customs and everyone was on "pins and needles" for fear they wouldn't arrive for the grand opening. They did arrive, however, and the gay gondoliers propelled their gaudy gondolas over the canals of Coral Gables. These colorful boats were destroyed during the 1926 hurricane and they have never been replaced. Mail Delivery On April 3, 1926, mail delivery was inaugurated and on May 10 rapid transit service began. June 3 saw the opening of the Coral Gables Theatre and on June 22 the Masonic Club was formed. Dr. M. H. Tallman opened the first hospital here on July 28, (Please turn to Page Two)