The Birth of The City Beautiful
The creation of Coral Gables was a dream realized by George Merrick
The Last Frontier: The City of Coral Gables Rising Up From Barren Land
By Patrick Alexander
Photos Courtesy of the Raul E. Valdes-Fauli Archives, City of Coral Gables
According to a report by Bloomberg in April 2024, Coral Gables is the most expensive and sought after neighborhood in the U.S. and the third-most expensive city in the world. In addition to Coral Gables, Florida has seven of the nation’s wealthiest neighborhoods, and, since the pandemic, Florida has become the fastest growing state in the Union. But, ironically, for most of its history, the state has been ignored and unwanted.
At the end of the 19th century, South Florida was America’s “Last Frontier.” A few decades earlier, a New York Herald journalist (who visited the state in 1864) described South Florida as a place that “no sane man… no decent man would think of living in.” And few people, sane, decent, or otherwise, did live there.
To encourage settlement, the federal government expanded the Homestead Act in 1873 to Florida. Under the Act, settlers could claim 160 acres of federal land and, if they improved the property and built a home where they physically lived for five years, the government would grant them freehold rights at no charge. One of these pioneering souls was William Harrison Gregory and his wife, who moved onto their plot in the wilderness west of Coconut Grove in 1893. They then sold it in 1899, sight unseen, to a Massachusetts preacher named Solomon Merrick and his artist wife, Althea (see pg. 64), for $1,100. Twenty years later, their son, George, would transform that humble homestead into the City of Coral Gables.
Top: Investors Gather at a Doc Dammers Land Auction in 1921
Below : Advertisement Selling Housing Plots on the Miami Riviera
Thanks to the family fortune, George was able to build much of the infrastructure of his future city with his own money as well as with a great deal of borrowed capital. Roads and avenues were laid out; sewers, plumbing, and electrical grids were installed; and public buildings, parks, sales offices, churches, and hotels were all planned, if not constructed, before the first lot was even offered for sale.
By 1920, just as the Florida Land Boom was about to explode, George had assembled his “dream team.” His senior architect was Phineas Paist (see pg. 60), who had already gained a reputation for his work on Charles Deering’s nearby Buena Vista estate (today’s Miami Design District). His most prolific architect was his first cousin, H. George Fink. Frank M. Button oversaw landscaping the new city, planning its parks and the layout of its broad avenues and boulevards. George’s uncle, Denman Fink, worked on the marketing, and the famous Doc Dammers (see pg. 62) was in charge of sales.
Denman Fink, a nationally known illustrator, introduced George to the burgeoning “City Beautiful” movement and together they visited New York’s Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, as well as other new planned communities. Button, Merrick’s choice to plan the layout and landscaping of his own “City Beautiful,” was one of Olmstead’s chief followers.
The City Beautiful Movement was a widely popular architectural philosophy of North American urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur to American cities. It was a part of the progressive social reform movement in North America under the leadership of the upper-middle classes, concerned with poor living conditions in all major cities. By introducing wider streets, parks, and attractive public spaces, it was hoped the widespread disease and crime of urban life would both be reduced if not eradicated. The hectic unplanned growth of American cities during the 19th century led even Charles Dickens to describe North American urban conditions as being worse than the most awful Victorian slums in London. The movement promoted beauty not only for its own sake, but also to create moral and civic virtue among urban populations. Advocates of the philosophy believed that such beautification could promote a harmonious social order that would increase the quality of life, while critics would complain that the movement was overly concerned with aesthetics at the expense of social reform; the movement has been referred to as an “architectural design cult.”
Aware that Miami was expanding rapidly and that the projected Tamiami Trail would run along the northern edge of his property, it was George’s dream to convert the family plantation into a garden-city suburb of Miami. He served as a member of the Dade County Commission in 1914 and began apprenticing himself in the real estate development business. By 1920, buying, selling, and developing land on the western edge of Miami, he had built and sold at least 10 subdivisions. Along the way, he managed to build up a nest egg of some $500,000 and, as he commented to a newspaper reporter a few years later: “I worked night and day to build up a nucleus for the Coral Gables project, which consistently grew in my dreams. I never told anyone my plans, but as my profits in real estate grew, I bought adjoining land.” The 160 acres the family originally owned increased to 300 acres, then to 500, 1,000, and finally, by 1927, the suburb had grown to 3,000 acres, with space to accommodate 50,000 homes.
Historic 1925 Map of Coral Gables With Bird Road to the North, Le Jeune Road to the East, and Sunset Drive to the South
If demand for Florida property during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s was fierce, competition among those selling it was ferocious. To the northwest, Merrick was competing with well-known aviator Glen Hammond Curtiss in Hialeah; to the north, he faced society architect Addison Mizner in Boca Raton; and to the east, his greatest rival, the bombastic Carl Fisher on Miami Beach. When new prospects arrived in Miami on Flagler’s railroad, Fisher and Merrick competed to draw them away to their respective developments.
Top: A Trolley Passes by Merrick’s Sales Offices at the Colonnade
Top Left : George Merrick Sitting Outside His Coral Gables Home
Below : The First Coral Gables Commission Meeting in 1928
Left: The City of Coral Gables Entrance on Le Jeune Road 1924
Merrick not only had teams of pink buses boldly labeled “Coral Gables,” but he also had a fleet of pink trolleys, with trolley rails laid from Downtown Miami all the way to his impressive Colonnade sales office at the junction of Ponce de Leon Boulevard and Coral Way (today’s Miracle Mile). He also built a series of grand entrances along the north side of his property, facing the Tamiami Trail, to entice visitors who had crossed the Everglades from Tampa before Carl Fisher and the other developers even knew they had arrived.
Fisher’s marketing boasted “Twenty Miles of Waterfront Property” on Miami Beach. Merrick, not to be outdone, dug 20 miles of canals throughout the city, and, because canals have two sides, he was able to boast of “Forty Miles of Waterfront Property,” which Denman Fink added to all his marketing flyers. During the peak of the Land Boom in 1925, Merrick sold $100 million worth of property, while building permits for new construction exceeded $24 million.
Like all the other developers, Merrick and Fisher advertised widely all over the United States. Fisher famously had a billboard in New York’s Times Square that said: “Miami Beach: Where the Summer spends the Winter.” Doc Dammers offered, “Where Coral Gables Lies, Your Money Multiplies.” Merrick’s own Coral Gables slogans included, “Where Your Castles in Spain Are Made Real.” There was even a 1924 popular song, “When the Moon Shines in Coral Gables,” recorded by The California Ramblers and the Red Rose Ragtime Band among many others, featuring a photo of a full moon shining over the Country Club Prado Entrance on the sheet music cover.
Merrick’s ad campaigns in 1925 and ‘26 involved full-page and double-page ads, many in full color, in 20 different national magazines with a combined circulation of more than 11 million readers. Separately, 100 newspapers around the United States carried ads that reached a further six million readers, with a total of 98 million images of Coral Gables appearing before the American public.
Although his development became a city in April 1925, Merrick originally envisioned it a subdivision or suburb of Greater Miami. The original development, the Granada Section, built between 1921 and 1924, was located between the Tamiami Trail in the north and Bird Road in the south. The second section – Riviera, built in 1925 – stretched from Bird south to Sunset Road and Biscayne Bay. The third and final stage, the Biscayne Section (never completed in Merrick’s lifetime), stretched along the shore of Biscayne Bay south from Tahiti Beach (now Cocoplum), and had three chains of wide lagoons and over 25 miles of waterfront property, including a yacht basin for the planned Miami-Biltmore International Yacht Club.
Although he had been planning his project for many years, Merrick did not sell his first lot until late in 1921, but within the next five years he created a city with a university, churches, thousands of gracious homes, and a vibrant business district. Still known as “the City Beautiful,” it remains one of the most sought-after residential areas in the nation. One of the things that Merrick emphasized to his salesmen was, “Remember that what you are selling out here is not just land; it is not just a piece of ground on which to put a house. What you are really selling is romance, the stars and moon, the tropics, the wind off blue water, and the perfume of flowers that never grew in a northern clime.”
Left: The Newly Completed Biltmore Hotel and Golf Course. The Hotel Would Become George Merrick’s “Jewel” in Coral Gables
Right : Advertisement for Distinctive Homes on the Miami Riviera
In November 1921, from the back of a wagon in the front yard of George and Eunice’s home on Coral Way, Doc Dammers sold the first empty lots as well as fully constructed houses. “Homes for Homefolk” were sold for $5,000 while “Homes of Distinction” ranged from $10,000 to $25,000 – normally on corner lots. By 1922, the Coral Gables Country Club and the Granada Entrance on the Tamiami Trail were both completed, and the following year, the Granada Golf Course opened. In 1924, The Grammar School was built, as well as the Venetian Pool and the Alhambra Water Tower. In 1925, the trolley system was inaugurated, and the magnificent Puerta del Sol was completed, facing the Tamiami Trail. In January 1926, George Merrick’s “jewel,” the Biltmore Hotel, was opened. In addition to fox hunting on horseback, the hotel offered gondola rides along the canal to Tahiti Beach on Biscayne Bay, manned by a team of gondoliers brought over from Venice. George also donated 160 acres of land to establish the University of Miami and construction began that same year.
In just five years, George Merrick and his team of 3,000 salesmen had built 2,792 private homes, 112 office and commercial buildings, 11 schools, 10 public buildings, two hospitals, eight churches, two university buildings, six hotels, 100 miles of streets, 125 miles of sidewalks, 20 miles of canals, four major entrance gates, and countless fountains in honor of Ponce de Leon and his Fountain of Youth
On April 29, 1925, Coral Gables was formally incorporated as a city and Doc Dammers became the first mayor. Building permits totaling $26 million were issued in 1925 alone. The city already covered 10,000 acres of land, including more than 47 miles of canals and coastline along the shore of Biscayne Bay. Merrick had spent $100 million in developing his dream.
This excerpt has been drawn from Patrick Alexander’s recent book, “Coral Gables: The First Hundred Years.”