WEST PALM BEACH BOARD OF TRADE,.
West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County Florida: A Pictorial Tale of Wintertime in Summerland.
West Palm Beach: West Palm Beach Board of Trade , 1915.
$450.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-152215
+$500
West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County: An Early Promotional Booklet for the Palm Beaches, Circa 1915
Rare promotional booklet for the Palm Beaches, issued by the West Palm Beach Board of Trade circa 1915. Octavo, original pictorial wrappers printed in color and gold, 15 pages, illustrated throughout with photographs, a map of Florida, and a table of comparative climatic data. The booklet presents the winter resorts of Palm Beach County to prospective visitors: among the photographs are the Lake Front Plaza, the gardens of the Royal Poinciana Hotel, Whitehall (described as the winter home of Mrs. Henry M. Flagler, which with the reference to the new Dixie Highway dates the booklet to the years just after Flagler’s death in 1913), a prize sailfish, and the parks of West Palm Beach, with a closing tribute naming Flagler among the world’s great benefactors. A section titled “How to Reach the Palm Beaches” details the named Pullman trains of the Florida East Coast Railway. In very good condition. An evocative survival of the early promotion of the Palm Beaches.
The transformation of the Palm Beaches from frontier settlement to America’s premier winter resort was the work of Henry M. Flagler, whose Florida East Coast Railway reached Lake Worth in 1894 and whose hotels, the Royal Poinciana, then among the largest wooden structures in the world, and The Breakers, made Palm Beach the destination of Gilded Age society. West Palm Beach, platted by Flagler across the lake as the commercial town serving the resorts, incorporated in 1894; its Board of Trade, forerunner of the chamber of commerce, produced booklets such as this to draw winter visitors and settlers south. Surviving examples of this early resort-era promotional literature are uncommon.
West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County Florida: A Pictorial Tale of Wintertime in Summerland.
$450.00
In Stock
