Palm Beach Daily News from Palm Beach, Florida • 50

Page B6 Palm Beach Daily News, Sunday, February 9, 1997 ntS EVr 1 from page B1 vvr 5 3J -'V 1 jI ll 1 PHOTOHISTORICAL SOCIETY OP PALM BEACH COUNTY Actor Joseph Jefferson owned the first power plant in West Palm Beach. He also helped develop the city. I IL homestead on the shore of Lake Worth. March 22, 1894: Flagler extends his East Coast Railroad to West Palm Beach. November 1894: Building begins on the second Bethesda-by-the-Sea Church on North Lake Trail.

The building features an arched veranda, a clock with the hands set at the hour of 11, and a gilded cock that in later years will be replaced with a cross. July 7, 1894: Contract for erection of Congregational Church let to C.C. Haight; CO. Livingston begins to build. 1895: First power plant, owned by famous actor and Flagler friend Joseph Jefferson, begins operation in West Palm Beach.

Jefferson quotes from the Bible when he throws the first switch: "Let there be light!" 1895: The Rev. Edwin B. Webb begins preaching at Royal Poinciana Chapel, the Congregational church attached to the Royal Poinciana Hotel. Nov. 16, 1895: First bridge to Palm Beach, a railroad spur from near Banyan Street, opens.

1896: Henry Flagler remodels and enlarges a private home on the beach, creating The Palm Beach Inn to handle overflow guests from the Royal Poinciana. Soon, Royal Poinciana guests are asking for rooms "down by the breakers." Flagler later expands the hotel and renames it The Breakers. 1898: The second Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church is consecrated. March 1896: First train arrives at Royal Poinciana Hotel on special railroad spur. 1896: Horses banned from Palm Beach except between the bridgehead and the Royal Poinciana Hotel.

Bicycles and pedal-wheelchairs become popular means of travel. 1896: Cap Dimick elected to Florida Senate. Feb. 12, 1897: S. Bobo Dean publishes first issue of the Daily Lake Worth News, which will become the Palm Beach Daily News.

Vo. 1, No. 1 promises to "give all the interesting news relating to people, places and things around Lake Worth, the most charming spot in Florida." 1898: Col. E.R. Bradley opens Bradley's Beach Club, a luxurious gambling casino and restaurant.

Aug. 24, 1901: Henry Flagler, The Palm Beach Pier was located on the ocean at the east end of Worth Avenue. This 1937 photo also shows Lido Pools, the new name for Gus' Baths, to the left. 'ft- PHOTOBERT AND RICHARD MORGAN STUDIO PHOTOHISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PALM BEACH COUNTY Patsy and Peter Pulitzer, children of Gladys M. Ruby Edna Pierce, who joined the 'Palm Beach Munn-Amory and Herbert Pulitzer, at the Sea Daily News' in 1907, was named manager and Spray Beach Club in 1939.

editor in 1910. She retired in 1954. From iet, Kate Smith, Marjorie Merriweather Post and actress Bil Tennis Club opened. Post helped organize membe i It'll IP -V hi one scandal-ridden year. March 7, 1918: Old Guard Society of Palm Beach founded aboard the yacht Silouan by members of the Royal Poinciana Hotel's "Porch Club" prominent winter residents who golf daily and gather on the hotel veranda to recount their matches.

1919: Having retired from public office a year earlier, amid protests from his constituents, Cap Dimick dies. 1919: Paris Singer's Everglades Club, designed by Addison Mizner, opens on Worth Avenue with a membership of 305 men. As at Bradley's Beach Club, women are allowed as guests but not as members. February 1919: George W. Jonas, president of the First National Bank, elected third mayor of Palm Beach.

Jan. 18, 1920: Port of Palm Beach opens. Dec. 6, 1920: Publisher Richard Overend Davies buys out Flagler's interest in the Palm Beach Daily News. First offical U.S Census of Palm Beach: Pop.

1,135. 1921: Charter revision introduces the town-manager form of government to Palm Beach. Dec. 20, 1921: Michele Testa comes from Chicago to open a soda fountain called Testa's; it is now the oldest restaurant still operating in Palm Beach. Dec.

29, 1921: First masonry bridge across Lake Worth, the v' sa 7 i PHOTOHISTORICAL SOCI Mattie Spend her father postmaster i office in i ing been organized by Marjorie Merriweather Post and E.F. Hut-ton before their marriage. Dec. 25, 1927: St. Edward Catholic Church is built through donations from Col.

E.R. Bradley, owner of Palm Beach's famous gambling casino. First Mass celebrated Christmas Day. 1927: F.A. Shaughnessy organizes the First National Bank in Palm Beach, which is established by the Central Hanover Trust and Bank Co.

of New York. Shaughnessy becomes its first president and, in 1935, its owner. Jan. 13, 1928: Mrs. Oscar Davies, wife of the Palm Beach Daily News' publisher, is elected first president of the Parent-Teacher Association in Palm Beach.

1928: Barclay H. Warburton, retired diplomat and publisher of the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph and current Florida office manager for E.F. Button is elected Palm Beach's first "society mayor" by swamping his three competitors by a margin of 4-1 to become the town's fifth mayor. 1928: Encouraged by the voters' mandate, Warburton's first official act is to invite aviator Charles Lindbergh to drop by on his way north from a goodwill 1 trip to Latin America. (Lindberg declines.) i Sept.

16, 1928: Devastating hurricane kills between 1,800 and 1 3,000 people in South Florida, most living around Lake Okee- rs pP 421 6i Ete3 PHOTOFRANK TURGEON JR. bhI 1 'A FILE PHOTO expensive and gleaming new Royal Park Bridge, collapses at 2 p.m. while workers put finishing touches on it. February 1922: Cooper Light-bown, 36, Addison Mizner's builder, is elected Palm Beach's fourth mayor by unseating the incumbent. 1923: Mayor Lightbown receives eight of the town's 12 building permits, including a permit to build Mizner's $500,000 Josh Cosden home, Playa Riente.

Aug. 11, 1924: The rebuilt Royal Park Bridge opens. March 18, 1925: The second Breakers burns to the ground. Winds carry burning embers to Henry Maddock's Palm Beach Hotel, which is also destroyed by fire. A "newfangled curling iron" is blamed for the blaze.

March 20, 1925: New York Times editorial predicts that "Out of the ashes of the burned Breakers and Palm Beach Hotel some splendid hostelry may be expected to rise so that Palm Beach, riotous and modern in its villas, will be able to boast of a hotel 'built for the March 22, 1925: Officers and trustees of the Flagler System conclude two-day conference at Royal Poinciana Hotel by deciding to rebuild "the fire-riddled Breakers" on its current site this time as a fireproof building. "It will not be gaudy but will be conservative while pretentious and it is claimed will be the finest in the world," the March 23 Palm -t: Henry's Flagler's Seagull Cottage, the oldest house in Palm relocated in 1984 during The Breakers' expansion. The Preserval tion moved the house to a site by the Royal Poinciana Chapel anc Building began on the second Bethesda-by-the-Sea Church on North Lake Trail in late 1894. The structure featured an arched veranda, a clock with the hands set at the hour of 11, and a gilded cock later replaced with a cross. 71, marries third wife Mary Lily Kenan, 34, in Kenansville, N.C., and begins building her an American palace, Whitehall, on the shores of Lake Worth.

1901: New railroad and pedestrian bridge at site of present north bridge replaces earlier railroad spur four blocks to the south. 1902: Whitehall opens. June 9, 1903: The Breakers, formerly the Palm Beach Inn, burns to the ground. 1904: The rebuilt Breakers reopens. 1905: S.

Bobo Dean sells the Palm Beach Daily News to Henry Flagler's interests and moves to Miami, where he battles Flagler from the pages of the Miami Metropolis, later to become the now-defunct Miami News owned by Cox Enterprises, publishers of the Shiny Sheet. 1905: Flagler installs Richard Overend Davies, an Englishman who had lived in Sydney, Australia, as publisher. Papers are drawn up changing the name of Dean Publishing Co. to Davies Publishing Co. 1907: Davies hires 19-year-old Ruby Edna Pierce, whom he meets at church.

Her first duties are running the cash register and delivering papers to the Royal Poinciana and Breakers hotels. 1908: Harvey G. Geer organizes the Palm Beach Improvement Association with Cap Dimick and George W. Jonas to develop 160 acres of jungle running from Lake Worth to the ocean, and from today's Seaview Avenue to Golfview Road. The main thoroughfare, Royal Palm Way, is designed after Drexel Boulevard in Chicago.

Only four royal palm trees are old enough to bear seed, and them are grown the magnificent trees that line the boulevard today. The subdivision is called Royal Park. 1910: Ruby Edna Pierce is named business manager and editor of the Palm Beach Daily News, a position she will hold until her forced retirement in 1954. 1911: The Royal Park Bridge, a privately owned wooden trestle from Lakeview Avenue in West Palm Beach to Royal Palm Way, opens; users must pay a toll. County will take it over in 1918.

First airplane flies over the area. April 17, 1911: The town of Palm Beach incorporates at 8 p.m. to avoid a feared "land grab" by the City of West Palm Beach. Vote, taken on front porch of Clarke home on Lake Trail, is 34 in favor of incorporation and one abstention for unknown 1911: Cap Dimick elected town's first mayor by a vote of 32-3. First town ordinance prohibits the dumping of garbage on streets.

First "town hall" is drug store owned by a councilman. 1913: Palm Beach Daily News moves its plant from West Palm Beach to the corner of County Road and Brazilian Avenue, the first business to be located in the district south of the Royal Poinciana Hotel. May 20, 1913: Following a fall at Whitehall, Henry Flagler dies at oceanfront Nautilus Cottage in Palm Beach. 1917: Shiny Sheet temporarily abandons expensive book-quality newsprint because of wartime shortages. "When the markets get into a normal condition again we hope to be seen in our regular Sunday go-to-meeting clothes," an editorial states.

January 1918: Architect Addison Mizner arrives in Palm Beach to convalesce at the home of friend Paris Singer. February 1918: T.T. Reese who married Cap Dimick's daughter in the first wedding held in Royal Poinciana Chapel, and who is president of the area's largest bank, treasurer of the new Everglades Club, treasurer of E.R. Bradley's Beach Club and overseer of his real estate holdings, and, previously, Henry Flagler's trusted first station agent is elected second mayor of Palm Beach. His tenure will be as controversial as it is brief Beach Daily News reports.

March 1925: Palm Beach passes $100,000 referendum to build Town Hall. 1925: Work begins on the new, and permanent, Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea. Mrs. Charles Cragin donates the Gothic cloister garth. 1925: Oscar Davies succeeds his father as publisher of the Palm Beach Daily News.

Work begins on new building at 204 Brazilian Ave. December 1925: First steamship service established at Port of Palm Beach. 1925: Construction revenues in Palm Beach at the height of the building boom peak at $14 million. Jan. 7, 1926: The Daily News Building is completed at a cost of $85,000.

June 1926: Closing of Palm Beach Bank and Trust causes run on area banks. Sept. 17, 1926: Hurricane sweeps coastal Southeast Florida, killing 392 and hastening real estate bust. Dec. 25, 1926: First services held in new Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea.

Dec. 29, 1926: The new Breakers, rebuilt in IIV2 months at a cost of $6 million, reopens with its now-famous twin towers. Jan. 1, 1927: Bath and Tennis Club, built at a cost of $1.25 million, formally opens. Membership is limited to 300 and is fully subscribed at opening, hav.