Sublime

When talks with existing line owners proved fruitless, Flagler did what anyone with his resources might: he ponied up half a million dollars and bought the railroad.

Construction firms had not been willing to take on the risk associated with delays; instead, they put that risk on their clients. But Ivar understood a fundamental proposition about the allocation of risk: both parties to a deal can gain when the party in the best position to bear a risk takes on that risk. Construction firms, not clients, were in

He had husbanded Florida’s economy through at least two natural disasters, and had established every one of the glittering, world-famous beach resorts that ran the length of its eastern shores. By the time he had reached Miami, some might have assumed Flagler was at a natural stopping point. He could retire at long last, one might have conjectured,

With government backing, behavior had shifted entirely by 1930, and the default was that streets were for cars, and pedestrians should limit themselves to crosswalks. The industry had successfully changed attitudes from always blaming the driver to assuming any collision was an unavoidable accident and probably the fault of a reckless pedestrian—an

Each vessel carried “Northern” as its first name, for instance Northern Light. And each embodied the same philosophy of massive tonnages and low rates that Hill and others were applying to rail transport.

Browne had by 1895 carried out his promises to Flagler, using his position as a state senator to see to it that all legislative impediments to Flagler’s plans had been disposed of. Shortly thereafter, Flagler recombined all of his rail holdings in the state into the Florida East Coast Railway, and gave official notification to the state that it was