The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 34

rT7 34-A THE MIAMI HERALD Sun April 23 1 972 In El Barrio Miami Cubans Live and Care i r- she has lived in the helghbor-hood in and out for the laet 50 years she is back now only because her mother 82 widow of James Herlong! a school board member in the refuses to move out under-stand the change in the said Mrs Jacobs of her mother "but she has beautiful memories of sharing a whole lifetime with my father here and bringing up my sister and myself She want to give up what has been hers as far back as her memory will Mrs sister is Juvenile Court Judge Dixie Chastain She and Mrs Jacobs went to Ada Merritt and Miami Senior High Judge Chastain moved out of the neighborhood in 1957 Those were the transition years Between and many oldtimers left New subdivisions made the old frame homes seem like the antiques they are Mrs Chastain moved to fashionable Bay Point said Judge Chastain from behind her big polished desk in the Miami Municipal Juvenile Building can remember when Southwest Third Street used to be the last paved street in City maps of the times show that in 1919 the year James Herlong moved in his family from Alabama Third Street was indeed the last paved street south of the city except for the Tamiami Trail ADA MERRITT was not built until three years later and Third Street was 15th Street Sixth Avenue was Avenue and Seventh was The old street numbering started on what is now NW 12th Street going south The lettering started on Biscayne Boulevard going west Miami Avenue was Avenue "During boomtimes we rented out rooms just like everybody else said Judge Chastain "The Chamber of Commerce pleaded with people with large homes to try and accommodate the avalanche of fortune seekers coming down There were not nearly enough hotel rooms so we took in of them and so did our neighbors" Photos by JIM BIRMINGHAM Inside Dolled Line of El Barrio for a Cuban Neighbors Become commission put up lights on Riverside Park and now a red hot Little League flourishes at night on what used to ba called "el parque de la mari-guana (the marijuana An exile organization impressed by the community spirit provided a specially constructed trailer that houses free medical and psychiatric services to neighbors who otherwise might not be able to afford them "This is where we Cubans like to live and if we take care of it no one is going to do Jose Ramon Fleites 44 explained The neighbors in a flurry of activity in the fall built a backstop and high fences around the ball park diamond at Riverside They built fenced-in dugouts with concrete benches for their players all with their own hands and with money they raised themselves IT WAS PERHAPS their toil and the many long weekends and muggy nights spent at the that turned the neighborhood into a barrio During the early and mid-60s the old frame homes were vacated by Americans retreating to the suburbs and were subdivided into apartments Many arriving Cuban refugees found temporary shelter in some of the more dilapidated quarters They became a ready market for cheap housing near the downtown area This is why Mrs Irma Gonzalez and her husband and family moved into a house across from the park in 1961 "We needed a big place We were seven in the family then and the house was cheap and we could even walk to Most of those early refugees followed the Americans to the suburbs With freedom flights at a standstill this inner core of Little Havana is no longer a beachhead for arriving refugees who crowd into the old tenements MOVED IN here from the Northwest because this is where we Cubans said Jose Ramon Fleites one of the communi- ty organizers "Here we have the flavor we like Here I step outside the apartment and I breathe Fleites is from Sagua la Grande in southern Cuba He works in a food company warehouse and his wife in a clothing factory They are typical of the people Most are blue-collar workers who have come in the past six years mostly on the freedom flights Even though some lived in Havana they have their roots in countryside They like the simple atmosphere of a small country town where one knows his lives and problems In fact an amazing number of those living in el barrio are related attracted there by relatives who came first FOR THE FEW natives who remain (90 per cent of Family the Place Castro took over in 1959 parents enjoyed seeing their three boys and their families together the hell you are cooking sure smells Garcia told his sister-in-law almost shouting sure we starve to death Mrs Clements laughed and said the longer they waited the better the food would taste "Here we live together en (in said Clements folks come over some nights and other nights we go over to their house The only time we go out is to see them or to take them expressways and all the transportation we particularly care where we live My parents and my brothers moved in here because they like this area and so when we came we moved in here said Clements For five years Clements OPEN SUNDAYS Your Life and his family lived in Tulsa Okla They decided to come to Miami when his parents arrived from Cuba NEXT DOOR TO the Clements at 626 lives Edith (Topsy) Jacobs 58 Mrs Jacobs a widow for eight years mind the loud Cuban music Ana Clements plays late into Saturday nights There is a good reason love Cuban music I just love it when they put it on and get going with that tremendous said Mrs Jacobs a sociology teacher at Miami Edison High until three years ago see I studied at the University of Havana for two years back in the 1930s I find that if you know the countries and the cultures of people you tend to be less prejudiced so I have no said Mrs Jacobs She has much in common with the Clements Although 12 TO 8 parties for friends from Miami High where she is a senior To Clements it is not important that rusty soda-pop cans and broken bottles sometimes dot the broken sidewalks and dried-up patches of grass or that poor Cubans live a few doors from him He is close to his parents and relatives and what he wanted On a recent night all of the family visited Clements because it was his birthday His wife Amparo dressed up in a red pant-suit and fixed dinner for 11 They watched Tom Jones on a huge color television set and talked of Cuba CLEMENTS AND his brother-in-law Jose Garcia discussed old times in armed services He was a tank commander and Garcia was in the air force They were both retired when NEXT: Community volvement in El Barrio In- RBSS i VICTOR PIANOS ORGANS 500000 WAREHOUSE SALE OF 625 PIANOS ORGANS UP TO 60 OFF Call any of Victor's eight branches and describe the model and make you want Victor's representatives will find it for you These Are the Few Blocks of El Barrio where Cubans have recreated the Cuban way residents are Cuban) the memory of earlier days lingers on Those days are gone but the elderly residents remain co-existing with their Cuban neighbors For an old neighborhood there is surprisingly little left in el barrio The school for one the park but those seem to be the only even if the Dade School Board says Ada Merritt is "unfit as a and wants to tear it down and replace it No one feels this will happen soon About two dozen old homes remain Two old tenements have withstood the elements and the bulldozer but the other wooden houses have been razed and new buildings have gone up in their place During the past two years 10 buildings with a total of 62 apartments have been built where 10 homes stood Eight buildings are under construction They will add 58 units to the six block fronts of this barrio A lot of people a lot of cars In all 125 Spinet Organs MOO to s9000 100 Rock Hammond Organs $295 to s1200 50 Chord Organs s50 to $495 10 Stereo Consoles s95 to S8Q0 120 new units in 18 lots The main problem in the area is overcrowding Some old houses being torn down and new apartments are built on same site with no open spaces Due to influx of new resident lots of single family residences have been converted to rooming houses creating undesirable conditions THESE ARE the findings of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in a recent survey of a larger area of Southwest Miami close to downtown The Ada Merritt barrio lies in the middle of that study area With rents in the new buildings ranging from $180 for one-bedroom apartment to $205 for a two-bedroom the new neighbors hardly are hard-core welfare cases The welfare families are much in evidence in the area however and the family of a 59-year-old grandmother who lives with the last of her 13 children and five grandchildren is a case in point They live in a three-room apartment and share the only bathroom in the converted single-family dwelling with eight families in the ground floor From the street the large white house seems like the grand old home it was sometime in the first half of the century Inside it is a different world BUSINESS IS A vital segment of life in el barrio is one of three markets in the two-square-block area There is a restaurant where one can have a good-sized steak for lunch for 89 cents and a bakery where guava pastry goes for five cents The Teatro Marti shows movies in Spanish or with Spanish sub-titles and is at Eighth Avenue and Fourth Street at the southwest corner of el barrio A shoe repair and sales place is next door to the bakery owners Julio Regalado and Francisco Ortega said most of their sales are to customers who purchase their groceries on a daily basis The store is 15 feet wide and about two car lengths deep come in here and spend $2 and cook for all the family that said Regalado it is the daily Those who move into the new buildings and in some cases buy some of the old homes are economically stable refugees like Fleites who like the ethnic flavor of the area or are pulled into this barrio by relatives living there already Decoroso Clements moved in four years ago He bought a home at 632 SW Third St next to the school He owns a gold 1969 Cadillac and works as a draftsman in a Coral Gables firm of architects HE SAID IIE moved there because he wants to be near his parents who live with a home-owner brother a block away Another brother owns a home two blocks to the north and his brother-in-law moved into the neighborhood four months ago after he arrived on one of the last freedom flights The Clements family is from Oriente eastern province frame home has three bedrooms and a yard where 18-year-old Ana the only child holds weekend 100 Grand Pianos $495 to $899Q 100 Spinet Pianos $200 to $1990 15 Electric Pianos s395 to M095 25 Player Pianos s495 to S300Q 100 Theatre 0rganss1695 tos8900 ALLEN CONN GULBRANSEN -STORY CLARK YAMAHA WURLITZER KIMBALL BALDWIN HAMMOND STEINWAY KRAKAUER i MASON HAMLIN KAWAI KNIGHT KNABE SOHMER CHICKERING CURRIER KOHLER CAMPBELL PIANOLA DUO-ART CALL BRANCH FOR DAY OF FREE CLASSES AT New Buildings Go Up Class Lesson for Life for your entire family Every Saturday at 2 PM at PI VIVOS OKGWS 300NW 54 ST 751-7502 COR NW 54 ST ft NW 3 AYE AT 54 ST I 95 EXIT FROM BROWARD 522-5131 SE HABLA ESPAN0L DAILY 9 TO 6 PM FRI 9 PM SUN 12 to 6 nunnmixxmiiixDL rt NEW CONCERT POLICY FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE VICTOR'S WILL ALTERNATE THE WEEKLY ORGAN RECITALS BETWEEN MIAMI AND FT LAUDERDALE RECITAL HALLS TODAY AT 4 PM CHICAGO ARTIST RICHARD ROGERS WILL PERFORM AT THE BROWARD HEADQUARTERS GRAND OPENING AT 224 FEDERAL HIGHWAY FORT LAUDERDALE NORTH OF THE TUNNEL in El Barrio Adding to Living Quarters in theforeground remnants of a rased tenement YS.