Hippodrome opens in Miami 1917 - a new venue for film and entertainment

Hippodrome 1917
Florida State Archives/Hoit

By Jane Feehan

Miami’s second Hippodrome, a large movie house that replaced the original, smaller venue across the street, opened in January, 1917. Located downtown at the 200 block of Flagler Street, the theater was acclaimed for its spaciousness, seating 1,100.

When completed, the new building cost New York-based owners Hickson, Whitener and Scacht [sic] $200,000. Its interior, with balcony, was painted white and dark green and featured a lattice work ceiling for an open, airy atmosphere. The Hippodrome took four months to complete and was designed with “Italian lines of architecture” for both the exterior and interior. Illumination, according to the Miami Metropolis, was provided by “inverted bowls” containing lights that could be regulated from a bright flood of light to a dim glow.

“Pictures will be thrown upon a Silveroid screen – the last word in the line of screens …” the paper reported.  There were to be two hour shows throughout the day between 1 and 9 p.m. Music was to be furnished by an eight-piece orchestra and a five thousand dollar pipe organ.

The Hippodrome was leased by Ohioans Joseph F. Foster and his son, Raymond W. Foster who planned to show the best films available, including Where are My Children, Purity, and the controversial Birth of a Nation. For opening day they featured 

six-reel The Common Law with Clara Kimball Young.

In 1928, the Hippodrome proudly announced the showing of The Lights of New York, the first all-talking movie (The Jazz Singer was the first partly-talking film). Dialogue was through the latest film industry gadget – the Vitaphone - and starred Helene Costello.

No doubt the Hippodrome was one of the most popular Miami theaters of the day, featuring not only movies but also plays, comedy acts, and musical events. It’s hard to imagine 1,100 people seated in a building without air-conditioning in August. The Hippodrome closed in 1930 and reopened as the Rex Theater in 1931. Copyright © 2011. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Miami Metropolis, Jan. 05, 1917

Miami Metropolis, Jan. 6, 1917

Miami News, Aug. 19, 1928

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/8147

Florida State Archives, Florida Memory

Tags: Florida history, Miami history, movie houses in the early 1900s, film industry research, film researcher

Miami in 1904: Nothing that savored of prosperity or future greatness except ...

Miami Bayfront Park 1958 (before the find in the 2000s)
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

In June 1897, the Daily Metropolis extolled the virtues of Miami (see prior post at http://bit.ly/1bU4bUp), a tiny settlement incorporated in 1896. The five-star Royal Palm Hotel was listed as one of the town’s assets and, indeed, it was.

Seven years later the same newspaper reported that Miami and its high-profile hotel, which was known to assign an attendant to each guest, made front page news of the Daily National Hotel Reporter. Its editor (unnamed) had made an East Coast trip during the winter season of 1904 to report on its “magnificent hotels;” Henry Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel was one of them.  

The editor wrote:

 The town of Miami is a revelation. Before the advent of the East Coast Railway, eight years ago, Miami was little more than a wilderness … few inhabitants, no industries and nothing that savored of prosperity or future greatness.

Miami is today one of the prettiest towns in Florida. It has three banks, numerous fine shops, factories, two daily newspapers and a tourist hotel. That hotel, the Royal Palm … is a hotel that appeals to every one who enjoys artistic excellence, home comforts and luxurious appointments. The hotel is under the management of Henry W. Merrill, first manager of the Poinciana in Palm Beach, who was previously connected with the Ormond-on-the-Halifax.

Today the Royal Palm may be too small for the demands that are likely to be made upon it in the future. Visitors are constantly arriving from Nassau, Havana, Key West and Cedar Key and on rail from St. Augustine.

The editor also wrote that he was in Miami when the East Coast Railway [sic] ran its first freight trains on a regular schedule over 22 miles which extended “below Miami. He predicted “that within a few years the output of vegetables—particularly tomatoes— will be of such volume and quality as to astonish the world.”

The Royal Palm Hotel was severely damaged by the 1926 hurricane and was torn down in 1930. Eventually it was paved over with a parking lot near what became the Dupont Plaza Hotel in downtown Miami.

In 2003, in preparation for a $640 million hotel/condo development, a pre-project inspection  excavation gave up ceramic fragments and metal pieces that lay more than two feet beneath the earth. It was the remains of the Royal Palm Hotel (see index for Miami in the 1900s). Further digging yielded even more history: artifacts from a Tequesta settlement 10,000 years old. Development was halted and the Miami Circle, as it is known because of a circle of stones apparently left by the Indians, was declared a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009. The city established the site as Miami Circle Park, a green space, in 2011. It is part of Bayfront Park at 301 Biscayne Blvd.

Repairing seawall surrounding  the 38 ft
Miami Circle cultural landmark
Florida State Archives

Today Miami has nearly 414,000 residents and is considered a gateway to South American markets. It is also a city where slightly more than half its population was born in another country.  

Henry Flagler, as history has proved, had a knack for picking prime real estate …
Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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Sources:

Daily Miami Metropolis, April 6, 1904

Sun-Sentinel, April 21, 2004
Wikipedia

Florida Memories

For more on how the Circle was saved see:

https://www.floridarambler.com/florida-bike-hike-trails/miami-circle-see-history-great-views-by-foot-or-bike/

Tags: Miami history, Henry Flagler, hotel history in Miami, Royal Palm Hotel, Miami in the early 1900s,Royal Palm, Miami Circle, Tequesta Indians