Tiffany's Palm Beach [antikvár]

Introduction I The coconuts washed ashore in 1878; the money arrived by train some sixteen years later. Legends differ on the fate of the Providencia. its cargo, and its crew after it ran aground off Lake Worth Island on Januaiy 9, 1878. But whether the coeocuts washed ashore as the ship broke up or were sold to the locals by the wily Spanish captain—like the provisions and wood from the wreckage-makes very little difference. Fourteen thousand of the twenty thousand coconuts from Trinidad that were headed for Spain were planted up and down the island. They flourished, and Palm Beach had its palms. As word of the magnificent palm-fringed island spread north, Heniy Morrison Flagler, the Standard Oil, East Coast railroad, and real estate mogul, visited in 1892. He was searching for the perfect location for the uhimate seaside resort to rival Rhode Island's Newport. Seduced by the sixteen-mile-Iong island's extreme beauty and idyllic climate as well as by the obvious fact that its dozen or so inhabitants could easily be relocated, Flagler determined to turn it into America's number-one winter resort for the rich. He succeeded in short order. No stranger to opening new American frontiers, Flagler had already modernized and extended his Florida East Coast Railway south from Jacksonville to St. Augustine to provide access to his $2.5 million. 54o-room Ponce de Leon Hotel in the old Spanish colonial capital. He then ran his railroad south halfway down Florida to Daytona and Rockledge to accommodate his Ormond Beach Hotel in the new town of Daytona. Having come upon the so-beautiful new island resort location and renamed it Palm Beach. Heniy Flagler set in motion plans to extend his railroad farther south and to build a new hotel (the Royal Poinciana) of grandiose proportions. Appropriately named for y- y an exotic species of palm native to Madagascar, the Royal Poinciana Hotel was the largest wooden structure in the world when it opened on February 11. 1894. This was itself astonishing since it had been started only a little more than nine months earlier, on May 1. 1898. and with no railroad yet available. all materials had to arrive in Palm Beach by cargo ship. Although too late to help