In the first few months of his boom, Merrick sold $150,000,000 worth of lots; sales then tapered off to about $100,000,000 a year. All the houses built in Coral Gables naturally had to have gabled roofs, and all had to be in the Italian or Spanish style, with archways, courtyards, and bell towers. The minute there was the slightest sign of a slackening in business, Merrick came up with a new promotional gimmick. He built a pool with underwater caves, through which Johnny Weissmuller was hired to swim. Paul Whiteman and his orchestra were hired to play Merrick’s written-to-order theme song, “When the Moon Shines on Coral Gables,” standing waist-deep in moonlit water. William Jennings Bryan, then getting on and in need of money, was hired at $100,000 a year to sell Coral Gables real estate with his famous “silver tongue,” and Rex Beach, a popular writer of the era, was paid $25,000 to write a promotional brochure disguised as a “novel” called The Miracle of Coral Gables.
Meanwhile, faced with the miraculous example of George Merrick, other builders and promoters were rapidly “discovering” new areas and building new “cities”—Fort Pierce Farms, Key Largo City, Indrio, Moore Haven—on the swampy banks of Lake Okeechobee. Floridale was to be John Ringling’s city. Soon the speculators had taken over. It was the era of the “binder boy,” a colorful and popular boom figure in white knickerbockers who scurried around selling and buying “binders,” or down payments to bind deals. As the binders changed hands, sometimes hourly, their prices doubled, trebled, quadrupled. Everybody chuckled at the binder boys. If some of their methods didn’t seem quite on the up and up, it didn’t matter since everything else was going up.
In many cases, the binders represented actual building sites; in others, it turned out, they did not. There was the case of Poinciana, advertised as “The Miami of the Gulf Coast.” Poinciana, put on the Florida map by its developers, had to be taken off when it was discovered that it really wasn’t there. Thousands of unsuspecting souls had bought thousands of uninspected acres for a thousand dollars each, and most of the “lots” were under water.
“It was a glorious, kind of nutty period,” Alfred Parker recalls. Money literally seemed to grow on palmettoes, and everybody was making so much of it—and not only in building and real estate—that few bothered to notice what all the building looked like. If they had, they would have noticed that much of it was extremely ugly, haphazard, and that, with a very few exceptions (such as Mr. Merrick’s Coral Gables castles) most of the new construction was so makeshift that it looked as though a puff of wind would blow it all away.
In 1925, there was a sudden, sharp recession. Furiously, developers pumped more money into Florida land, attempting to shore up the economy and, when a few Miami banks quietly closed their doors, and a few others began calling loans, and a few Northern investors made nervous noises, Florida developers shouted, “Don’t sell Florida short!” The doubters were called worrywarts and killjoys. Glowing press releases, telling how a typical investor had paid ten dollars an acre for his land, and was now selling it at twenty-five hundred dollars an acre—were mailed northward to influential newspapers. Then, in the fall of 1926, the puff of wind came, at one hundred and thirty miles an hour.
One witness of the 1926 hurricane recalls seeing “sheets of steel flying through the air.” Afterward, such phenomena were recorded as that of a broomstraw driven through the trunk of a tree. Estimates of the hurricane’s damage ran as high as $105,000,000, and yet, in view of the financial disasters that followed, that figure is modest. Thousands of homes were destroyed completely and thousands more were damaged. Hundreds of lives were lost, and when Florida struggled out to see what the storm had done, it found that the boom was over, the glorious bubble had burst. Even the Wall Street crash that followed three years later came to Florida as a meaningless anticlimax.
With the vanishing bubble went George Merrick’s career as a millionaire entrepreneur and city builder. For years afterward, he was a sad and familiar figure around Miami—a dazed and shopworn man with an echo of what was once his winning smile, always willing to buttonhole anyone who would listen (and few would) and tell his story of the dream of Coral Gables.
But Merrick’s story has a belated happy ending. The tens of thousands of trees and shrubs he planted have grown to shade and embower the winding streets he so romantically named—Avenue Sistina, Avenue Paradiso, Avenue Jeronimo—and the fine solid houses that he built have mellowed and grown serene and queenly; with their handsome gabled roofs of Spanish tile, they smile from behind romantic gates and walls cascading with bougainvillea. With its parks and plazas and canals and splashing fountains in courtyards, with three golf courses and the campus of the University of Miami at its heart, Coral Gables is now considered not only a marvel of city planning, but one of of the most beautiful residential sections in the United States. Since Merrick wisely placed Coral Gables a few miles inland, away from the ocean’s edge, the area has been spared by Florida’s hurricanes.
Compare Coral Gables with, say, John Ringling’s Floridale. Nothing exists of Floridale today except streets—paved streets, but with no houses or other buildings lining them—running off in an orderly pattern into nowhere. In retrospect, George Merrick emerges a genius after all.
In Coral Gables live the best of Miami’s year-round Society, whose lives are led with quiet elegance, whose sons go north to New England prep schools, whose daughters come out at the Debutante Ball at the Surf Club, and who speak with the “social voice,” priding themselves that they do not—as Society does in Savannah and New Orleans—speak with Southern accents. Ever. Here, in other words, is Society organized much as it is in Northern cities, or in the smaller “social” cities of the West, such as Denver, San Francisco, and Portland.
Also to Coral Gables and nearby Indian Creek come a select group of winter visitors from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. “The other Miami” is the term they use, affectionately and humorously, knowing that outsiders have absolutely no idea what it means.
One New York woman who winters in a huge, cool house in Indian Creek, says, “A lot of people think that we have to try to live down the fact that we spend our winters in Miami. They think that we must have to be constantly explaining that we go to this Miami, not that Miami, that we must always be having to apologize for it being, after all, Miami, which is a word which conjures up a certain image. Some people say to me, ‘Why do you admit to it being Miami? Why don’t you say Indian Creek, or Coral Gables?’ Well, all I can say is that only a climber or a very silly person would try to use a pretty label or disguise like that. We consider that sort of thing quite unnecessary. After all, those of us who know Miami know what we have here. We make no effort to cover up the fact that we winter in Miami, and always have.”
* Sections of the present Key West Highway still stand on Flagler’s original concrete pilings, and so that much of his dream remains.
* When the Kept Man does not live in, he usually returns, in the small hours, to shadowy lodgings on the other side of town.
19
The Palmy Springs (All That Money Can Buy)
If the “only way in the world” to get into Society is with money, then why is it that so many very, very rich people are not in Society? It is a question worth pondering. Is it because they lack some mysterious ingredient of “leadership”? Not really; many of these “outsider” men and women are people of great influence and power. Is it that they lack some qualities of polish or good manners? No, for many people solidly in Society are far less mannerly than they. Is it that they don’t care? Not at all; they care greatly. Or is it that they think they are in Society? For one answer we might turn to a gold-plated desert mirage known as Palm Springs, California. For here is gathered a random selection of the richest people in America, strenuously enjoying all that money can buy.
The discrepancies between Palm Springs and Palm Beach are more than geographic, and rest upon more serious matters than differences in climate and the quality of the citrus crop. Palm Springs insists that i
t has better people than can be found anywhere else, Palm Beach included, and has the statistics to prove it. Palm Springs has, among other things, “More swimming pools per capita than any other city in the world”; to accommodate a winter population of 18,300, there are over 3,500 pools—or roughly one pool for every five residents. In summer, when the population drops to around 10,000, there is an even higher per capita gallonage of swimming space, and the proportion of pools to people may explain why most Palm Springs pools seem empty of swimmers at all seasons of the year.
Palm Springs also boasts more Cadillacs (locally called Caddies, or Cads), more Lincoln Continentals (Connies), more Rolls Royces (Rollses), and more Thunderbirds (T-Birds or Teebs) than can be found assembled on any other 41.6-square-mile area on this planet. During a recent nose count of Cads, Connies, and Rollses, the census taker was asked why he did not tally Bentleys. “We’re interested in prestige cars,” he replied. Palm Springs is also the home of “the world’s most luxurious thermal baths,” “the world’s largest and longest single-span, passenger-carrying aerial tramway,” “the world’s most sumptuous Mobile Home Park,” “the world’s only flying great-grandmother,” and “the world’s wealthiest tribe of Indians.”
No Palm Springs resident can escape for long his own personal, identifying superlative. A Seattle retailer is pointed out, in local promotional literature, as “the owner of one of the largest department stores in the West.” A Milwaukee restaurant owner is referred to as “the head of one of America’s biggest chains of steak houses.” Clearly bigness is what counts in Palm Springs. A Pebble Beach lady named Laurena Heple is identified as “the world’s largest manufacturer of remote-controlled gates.” In the meantime, when one is not rubbing tail fins with Paul Hoffman, Benjamin Fairless, Conrad Hilton, Jack Warner, Leonard Firestone, Floyd Odium, William Ford, or George Schmidt—“owner of one of the biggest amusement parks in the country”—a visitor may be grabbed by the shoulder with, “Hey, there goes Billie Dove! No need to tell you who she is. Hiya, Billie!”
If a superlative statistic can be attached to a slogan, so much the better—as far as Palm Springs is concerned. Palm Springs is advertised as “The Winter Movie Capital of the World,” and as the place “Where the Sun Shines on the Stars.” The Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce publishes a two-page list of “Hollywood Personalities with Homes in Palm Springs,” with names arranged alphabetically from John Arcesi to Myron Zobel. Similarly, a list of “prominent business people” is available, ranging from George Allen, “friend of several U.S. Presidents,” to Farny Wurlitzer, “Wurlitzer Music Corporation.” Clearly, Society in Palm Springs is the Society of the self-made. The town is also touted as “The World’s Friendliest Place,” and proof of this, according to one resident, is that “Most of these stars and millionaires don’t even bother to have unlisted telephone numbers out here. You’ll find Allan Jones right in the book—go ahead, look him up! That’s what I call friendly.”
In Palm Springs, Society and public relations have merged, or at least have come to a working arrangement. Everyone is a booster. Conducting a tour of “Society mansions” in the low hills around Palm Springs, a resident delivered the following monologue: “Now here is the house where Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher spent their honeymoon. Over there is the house where Eddie Fisher and Liz Taylor spent their honeymoon. I forget which house Liz Taylor and Mike Wilding spent their honeymoon in, but the house where Liz Taylor and Mike Todd spent their honeymoon is back over in that direction. Up ahead, that’s the house where Debbie and Harry, her present husband, live now—some layout, huh? That other house belongs to the biggest parking meter manufacturer in Chicago—boy, what I wouldn’t give to have his millions! He also manufactures the Yo-Yo—I guess you’ve heard of Duncan Yo-Yos. Hey! There goes Alice Faye behind the wheel of that white Connie! Hiya, Alice! No, sir, you can’t tell me that this isn’t the richest town in the U.S.A. We’ve got more than three hundred millionaires living here in Palm Springs! See that home up there on the hill? That’s where Joan Crawford and Alfred Steele spent their honeymoon—they were a swell couple, Joan and Al. Yes, I guess you could say that the best in America is here in Palm Springs. Now over there—that’s Alan Ladd’s hardware store. He was a great guy, Alan. But there’s one thing that burns me up, and that’s folks who come out here and get the impression that Palm Springs is nothing but movie stars and millionaires. Why, we’ve got much more here than that.…”
Palm Springs is “The Winter Golf Capital of the World.” Golf, which may have become a middle-class sport elsewhere, is the required Society sport here. Few who cared about advancing socially would admit to disliking golf. There are eighteen golf courses in full operation—most of them private clubs—and there are more abuilding. “And this,” the booster reminds one, “doesn’t count all the pitch-and-putt courses.” Palm Springs is either “The Birthplace of the Golf Cart,” or “The Site of the Development of the Golf Cart,” depending on which handout you read, but in any case undoubtedly has more golf carts per capita than it has golf courses, and can go so far as to make this dizzying claim: “More homes with specially built, semi-attached golf-cart garages than any other resort area.” Because they speed the game, and allow the fairways to accommodate more players, golf carts are now required on nearly all Palm Springs courses. Though this may decrease the amount of exercise to be gained from a game of golf, one golfer comments, “You’d be surprised how much exercise you can get climbing in and out of a golf cart.”
Recently, too, Palm Springs has become “The Playground of the Presidents,” where, as one Palm Springer put it, “Three reigning U.S. Presidents have visited.” The “reigning” Presidents have been the late Dwight D. Eisenhower (who spent a portion of each winter there in a cottage on the grounds of the Eldorado Country Club); the late John F. Kennedy; and Lyndon B. Johnson. Harry Truman and the late Herbert Hoover visited Palm Springs as nonreigning Presidents. On the occasion of President Kennedy’s last visit, barely two months before his death, a local Palm Springs magazine took it upon itself to state, rather loftily: “Desert residents are getting so used to Presidential visits that many, this past month, regarded the Kennedy sojourn as a prerogative of this unique resort area rather than as a compliment that would dazzle any other small community in the nation except, of course, Hyannis Port. So the excitement was confined to Democrats, traditionally a desert minority group, and visitors.”
On the other hand, this blasé attitude was not at all in evidence during President Johnson’s first visit in the spring of 1964. The town decked itself with hectic bunting, thousands of residents mobbed the airport, and the mayor declared, “We’ve got to get some kind of gimmick to welcome guys like this—something that will be symbolic of Palm Springs. You know, the way Honolulu greets folks with hula dancers? Is there anything we could do with a bunch of golfers in golf carts?”
The center of all this fanfare is a tiny corner of the crescent-shaped Coachella Valley in the great Southwestern desert of the United States, some one hundred miles east of Los Angeles—a flat, arid, windswept stretch of landscape, where less than three inches of rain fall yearly, where irrigated patches show surprising green (a million gallons of water a day are required to water the average Palm Springs course), but where even the city’s promoters admit, “The predominating color is beige.” Here, on the outwardly unpromising terrain, surrounded by implacable beige mountains, one of the most extraordinary real estate booms in the country has been in progress, dwarfing anything that ever happened in Florida. Since 1940, Palm Springs’s permanent population has doubled itself every ten years; in the next ten years, it is almost certain to double again. The winter, or “in season,” population climbs at an even more alarming rate, and during winter weekends as many as fifty thousand extra people a day crowd into the city. These figures, which would certainly dismay members of a traditional Society, delight the wealthy who have made Palm Springs their winter home; the popularity of the place assures them of the wisd
om of their original investment.
Admittedly, the surrounding landscape has a certain drama. In early spring, acres of wild verbena outside the town come violently into bloom, turning the desert floor an intense purple, and casting lavender shadows in the air. A little farther on, the vineyards and the citrus groves are in blossom, and in the vast date gardens, rows of palms form deep cathedral arches. In rocky canyons, the century plant sends up its tall, improbable flower, and the bearded Washingtonia palms gather in conspiratorial clusters. As the sun moves across the valley, the deep ridges and arroyos which articulate the mountain slopes come vividly into focus, making slow, snaky patterns of light and shade, while the color of the mountains gently edges from beige to yellow to pink to mauve.
Great clouds of fog and rain often drift eastward from the coast and pause at the tops of the western ranges where, from the valley below, they can be watched doing battle with the hot desert air that rises from the valley; almost inevitably, the clouds lose the contest, dump their rain or snow on the mountaintops, and disappear. In fact, a true Palm Springs enthusiast keeps his eyes tilted loyally upward toward the hills—toward San Jacinto Peak to the west, or San Gorgonio to the north, or the soft sand mountains to the east—admiring their shifting shapes and hues.
Over what goes on at eye level he manages to draw a little curtain. He does not see Palm Springs the real estate phenomenon: the speeding, honking traffic, the gaudy motels, the trailer parks, the used-car lots, the pennant-flapping service stations, the pancake parlors, the giddily decorated shops and bars and real estate offices. These become, in a sense, invisible. When a new development of “exclusive, luxury homes” called Southridge Estates began advertising “the most spectacular view in Palm Springs,” it was not talking about what Southridge overlooked at the time—a forlorn trailer park. It was talking about its view of the mountains, several hundred feet above the level of the chrome.
The Right People Page 30
