Dade County FlArchives History - Books .....The Building Of Viscaya, Chapter 9 1965
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/fl/flfiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 April 5, 2009, 3:49 pm

Book Title: Memories Of Old Miami

CHAPTER NINE
The Building of Viscaya

    THE building of James Deering's Villa Vizcaya, completed just before the
United States entered World War I, had an incredible impact upon the economy of
Miami.

    A thousand Miamians, one-tenth of the population, were employed on the
mansion, which took two years to build.

    Mr. Deering also imported hundreds of artisans from Europe to lay the stone
for the Italian style villa and to carve the figures for the magnificent formal
gardens.

    You could hear the major languages of Europe spoken in Miami. We had
English, Scotchmen, French, Italians, Spanish, and Germans; and naturally, we
had plenty of Irish. Large numbers of Negroes were employed, including Bahamian
and British West Indian.

    The villa - now a public museum - is said to have cost Mr. Deering 15
million dollars. That was a lot of money when you consider that in those days a
laborer got $1.50 a day. The stone walls alone cost $100,000.

    The walls were built of limestone quarried on the grounds. They were then
covered with thick concrete and decorated with scroll work. Although the house
was started in 1914, I believe that work on the walls was begun in 1913. I
remember that every available worker in the city was recruited to work on the
walls and to help quarry the limestone.

    The building of Vizcaya was the greatest boon to the economy since Mr.
Flagler extended his railroad to Miami in 1896.

    Mr. Deering bought the property, more than 160 acres, from Mrs. Mary
Brickell in 1912. It ran along both sides of a narrow wagon road that extended
through Brickell Hammock from the Miami River to Coconut Grove.

    Cut through the dense hammock like a tunnel, the road came out onto the
present S. Bayshore Drive at about where the south entrance to Mercy Hospital is
located. It followed the base of Silver Bluff to Dinner Key and to Coconut Grove.

    Because of the panthers in the hammock, people were scared to travel the
road at night, especially in a buggy. One night a panther dropped from a tree
onto a buggy and crushed the top.

    I heard Dad say that it took one full grown deer a week to feed one of those
big cats, with side dishes of raccoon and bobcat thrown in.

    As soon as Mr. Deering handed Mrs. Brickell a check in payment for the land,
she turned it over to her daughter, Edith, who took it immediately to the old
Bank of Bay Biscayne to get it cashed.

    (The Bank of Bay Biscayne, located on the northwest corner of Miami Avenue
and Flagler Street, went bankrupt during the depression.)

    Mrs. Brickell didn't trust checks. She liked cash. She kept large sums of
money in trunks.

    My uncle, Robert H. Seymour, was the Brickells' lawyer for a time. He lived
on the opposite side of Brickell Avenue from the old Brickell home.

    He told me that Edith brought him $5,000 one morning as he was leaving his
house and asked him to put it in "Ed Romfh's First National Bank."

    "Hoyt," he said, "I put the money in the pocket of my white linen suit and
by the time I got to the bank I was reeking with the odor of moth balls. I
couldn't get rid of the odor, and I had case in court that morning."

    Edith was in love with Uncle Bob. One time she said to him:

    "Robert, if you'll marry me I'll give you 40 acres at NW Seventh Avenue and
11th Street."

    Uncle Bob later regretted that he did not marry Edith.

    "But, Hoyt," he said, "I didn't want the damn land."

    Neither ever married.

    The impact of the building of Vizcaya may be imagined when you realize that
Miami at that time had a population of only about 10,000.

    Up to that time, Miami's prosperity depended to a large extent on the winter
tourist business and on Mr. Flagler's railroad. But things got pretty dull in
Southeast Florida after the completion of the railroad to Key West in 1912.

    Our tourist season was very short then, only three months-January, February
and March. So, as you can imagine, our summers were long and lean. We got pretty
tired of eating grits and grunts.

    With no major work for the population, I suppose Miami would have faced a
recession after the completion of Vizcaya in 1915, had it not been for World War
I. But the area had hardly begun to feel the loss of jobs before the United
States entered the war on April 6,1917.

    Mentally, we already had begun to feel the impact of the war; for it had
been in progress since 1914, and most people believed that we would be in it
sooner or later.

    "Those German U-boats will be sinking our ships and we'll be in it," I
remember my grandfather, John W. Seymour of Ojus, saying.

    People got pretty sore when the Germans sank the Lusitania in 1915. It was
no surprise two years later when President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to
declare war on Germany.

    It wasn't long before downtown Miami was crowded with service men on
weekends. This area already had become widely known for its excellent flying
weather. So, immediately after the war started, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps
established flight training centers here.

    The Navy moved into Dinner Key with its flying boats, then was chagrined to
discover that the new planes received from the factory wouldn't take off. The
pilots would race up and down Biscayne Bay as fast as the flying boats would go,
but for some reason they couldn't get them off the water.

    Then some six-bit mechanic found out what was wrong. The big pontoons were
creating such a vacuum as they skimmed along the surface of the water that the
weak motors they had in those days just wouldn't overcome it.

    All the mechanic did was drill a hole through each pontoon and insert a
pipe. This killed the vacuum and the planes took off.

    Suddenly there was work for everybody, for the unskilled as well as the
skilled. And Miami had its first taste of inflation. Wages for common laborers
jumped from $1.50 a day to $1 an hour. Carpenters, who had been receiving $5 a
day, received $12 to $15 a day.

    There was a big demand for truck drivers, who were paid $10 to $12 a day.

    Miami had never seen so much money before. Not even James Deering had as
much money as Uncle Sam - and Uncle Sam was a willing spender, especially in
wartime.

    Men began sporting silk shirts and flat-topped straw hats. As I remember,
pink was the popular color; although there were yellow shirts, too. The
candy-striped shirts didn't come out until after the war. A silk shirt cost $10
to $12, which was a lot of money then.

    Not everything was rosy. We had tragedy, too. Many Miamians lost their sons
in the war. And then there was the influenza epidemic.

    I was working in C. H. Gautier's store, at NW Eighth Street and First
Avenue, at that time.

    I can still remember the telephone number - 294. People called in orders and
I delivered them, sometimes by bicycle if they were light; but on Saturdays I
had to use a mule and wagon.

    Mr. Gautier was a fine person. A son of his, R. B. Gautier Sr. became mayor
of Miami, and his grandson R. B. (Bun) Gautier Jr. is a former state senator.

    When something displeased him, Mr. Gautier would say, "Dat burn it."

    The flu hit Mr. Gautier's customers pretty hard. When I'd deliver groceries
somebody would yell from his or her bed, "Just put the groceries in the kitchen,
son."

    I knew the family was sick and I'd tell Mr. Gautier.

    "All right, Hoyt," he'd say, "I'll get them some help."

    I never knew how Mr. Gautier helped, but he did, for I remember how much
those who lived appreciated it.

    When I returned some would be up and about, but there were many customers
that I never saw again; they had gone to the cemetery.

    The war finally came to an end. I remember the Big Armistice celebration we
had, the parades and the bands.

    I remember standing at the corner of NE First Avenue and Flagler Street when
a country-looking boy came riding by on an old swaybacked draft horse, shaped a
little like a tug boat. A young Naval ensign said to the boy:

    "Son, what about giving me a ride in that boat of yours."

    The boy stopped the horse, leaned forward, grabbed an ear and tilted it in
the direction of the ensign, who stood a couple of feet away.

    "You'll have to call down and ask the skipper, sir," the boy said, "I'm just
a deck hand."

    Although the war was over, Miami would never be the same again. Thousands
who came to Miami to help work on the Deering mansion or who came here as a
result of the war, stayed to make their homes. Many established businesses. They
or their offspring have lived in Miami ever since.

    Miami's population, which had jumped from 1,600 in 1900 to 5,500 in 1910,
passed the 30,000 mark in 1920. The fantastic years were just ahead.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

"Memories of Old Miami"
by Hoyt Frazure as told to Nixon Smiley
Reprinted from a series of articles first appearing in Sunday Magazine of The
Miami Herald

Undated, but circa 1965


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/fl/dade/history/1965/memories/building41nms.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/flfiles/

File size: 9.6 Kb