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    St. Augustine in the 1930s and 1940s
    St. Augustine in the 1930s and 1940s
    St. Augustine in the 1930s and 1940s
    Ebook199 pages41 minutes

    St. Augustine in the 1930s and 1940s

    By Beth Rogero Bowen and the St. Augustine Historical Society

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    About this ebook

    The Great Depression came early to St. Augustine with the end of the Florida land boom in 1926, followed by the stock market collapse in 1929.


    Hotels closed, a major bank failed, subdivisions folded, and tourism was reduced to a trickle. The city's main employer, the Florida East Coast Railway, went into receivership in 1931, and public works projects sought to bring relief to the unemployed. The economy slowly improved toward the end of the 1930s, but it was World War II that brought economic recovery to the town. Local hotels were taken over for military training, and servicemen on leave from nearby military bases flooded the town, bringing prosperity once again to the Ancient City.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateOct 21, 2019
    ISBN9781439668351
    St. Augustine in the 1930s and 1940s
    Author

    Beth Rogero Bowen

    Author Beth Rogero Bowen is a descendant of Mediterranean settlers who arrived in St. Augustine in the 1770s. She is the author of St. Augustine in the Gilded Age, St. Augustine in the Roaring Twenties, and Bridge to a Dream, the story of building the Bridge of Lions and Davis Shores from 1925 to 1927.

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      Book preview

      St. Augustine in the 1930s and 1940s - Beth Rogero Bowen

      SAHS.

      INTRODUCTION

      The Great Depression came early to St. Augustine and the rest of the state with the collapse of the Florida land boom in late 1926. The town’s major building project, Davis Shores, came to an abrupt halt with developer D.P. Davis’s mysterious death at sea on October 12, 1926. The stock market failure in October 1929 only heightened the town’s economic misery, and its major financial institution, the First National Bank, closed only a few years after completing its new six-story building on Cathedral Place. The city’s largest employer, Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway, declared bankruptcy and was in receivership by September 1931. The elaborate Ponce de Leon Celebration, held annually during the first week of April, was discontinued after the 1930 event. The Alcazar Hotel and its annex, the Cordova, closed in 1932, but the Ponce de Leon Hotel remained open, thanks to Flagler’s brother-in-law William

      R. Kenan, now hotel president. Although the hotel began losing money in 1924, Kenan vowed that as long as he lived, the Ponce would carry on.

      St. Augustine’s citizens sought to adjust to this boom-to-bust economy. Many homes along San Marco Avenue and King Street, the route of US 1 through the city, were turned into rooming houses and tourist courts. The decline of the larger hotels with their own dining rooms created a demand for other eating places and several small restaurants, owned predominately by Greek families, opened in the downtown area. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933, and soon bars and package stores began opening in the city.

      The city’s economy began a slow recovery during the 1930s. On November 14, 1933, Jack Thompson and Harold Ryman acquired the bankrupt Davis Shores property at a receivership sale. They sold the subdivision’s former sales office on Arredondo Avenue to the Knights of Columbus and began to sell the 1,500 remaining lots and acreage. The Florida East Coast (FEC) Railway came under the control of the feisty Edward Ball, whose older sister Jessie was married to Alfred I. DuPont. Through his control of the DuPont assets, Ball purchased the FEC’s bonds and fended off a takeover attempt by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.

      Public works projects, funded by Pres. Franklin Roosevelt’s many alphabet agencies, sought to provide work to local residents. The Civic Center, now the Visitor Information Center, was funded by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and opened in 1935. The post office, today’s Government House, was completely rebuilt and enlarged as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project between 1936 and 1937. Another WPA project was the St. Augustine Beach pier and boardwalk, flanked by two commercial buildings and completed in 1939. In the late 1930s, the WPA rebuilt Fort Matanzas and constructed a combination visitor’s center and ranger’s residence on the east side of the Matanzas River. Construction for all of these projects required the use of native coquina stone, and former quarries along Old Beach Road were reopened.

      One bright spot during the 1930s was the establishment of a winter art colony in St. Augustine, centered around picturesque Aviles Street. Local residents Celia Reid, Hildegarde Muller-Uri, and J. Dexter Phinney took the lead in establishing the Arts Club of St. Augustine in 1931 and soon were attracting prominent artists from several New England summer resorts. Local garden clubs sponsored a Day in Spain festival on Aviles Street, and the St. Augustine Historical Society created the Oglethorpe Battery Park and monument on Davis Shores in 1938.

      Spurred by the Rockefeller-funded restoration of colonial Williamsburg in the early 1930s, city leaders felt that a similar effort should be undertaken to save St. Augustine’s remaining colonial structures. Led by Mayor Walter B. Fraser, a local committee met with the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC, on October 26, 1936. Its first step was a survey of the city’s historical buildings, undertaken by Verne Chatelain, former historian with the National Park Service. Noted photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston received a $500 grant from the Carnegie Institution to photograph St. Augustine’s historic buildings. The state legislature appropriated $50,000 for acquisition and preservation of historic buildings, but by 1940, only $5,000 had been received. World War II interrupted this ambitious project, and concerted restoration efforts did not resume until the formation of the St. Augustine Historical Restoration and Preservation Commission in 1959.

      Marine Studios, the world’s first oceanarium, opened on June 23, 1938. Located 18 miles south of St. Augustine on A1A, the oceanfront complex included a restaurant, motel, gas station, bus station, and marina. Visitors flocked to the attraction to observe sea life in two large tanks with viewing windows on three different levels. When wartime gas rationing affected travel and tourism, Marine Studios closed on June 30, 1942, and reopened June 1, 1946.

      The decades of the 1930s and 1940s heralded the emergence of the shrimp industry in St. Augustine. Sicilian immigrant Sollecito Mike Salvador, together with his brothers-in-law Salvadore Versaggi and Antonio Poli, moved their shrimping operations from Fernandina to St. Augustine in the early 1920s. They established their businesses on the east bank of the San Sebastian River, just south of King Street, and were one of the town’s largest employers by the 1940s.

      World War II brought profound changes and economic recovery to the Ancient City. The Coast Guard took over the city’s largest hotel, the Ponce de Leon, to house new recruits. Other hotels—the Bennett, Monson, Marion, and Ocean View—were also commandeered as training facilities. Coast Guardsmen watched for German submarines from the tower of the lighthouse and patrolled the beaches with dogs. Camp Blanding, near Starke, was expanded into a large infantry training center, and a naval air station was established at Green Cove Springs. Soldiers on leave from these facilities flooded St. Augustine, and a large tent city was built on the San Marco Lot (today’s location of the city parking garage and events field) to house them. There was a huge

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