Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Miami’s proximity to Cuba made it an attractive tourist destination for elite European-descended Cubans who also sent their children to be educated in the United States. And over the course of the twentieth century, Overtown’s demographics expanded to include the descendants of freedpeople from Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, and Haiti. In the late ni
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Flagler was crushed, but he had learned something from the building of the Ponce de Leon. In a small way, he had become a creator instead of an accumulator, and had found a more substantive sort of satisfaction in such accomplishments. As a result, he undertook to build a church in memory of his daughter and her stillborn child, a visible and posit
... See moreLes Standiford • Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean
By the 1890s, Texas was settled into the fabric of the nation, or mostly anyway. A Jim Crow industrialist class ruled. Texas wealth was concentrated in the port city of Galveston. But in 1900, Galveston suffered the deadliest natural disaster in US history, a hurricane that left somewhere between 6,000 and 12,000 people dead, a fourth of the people
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Irreverent and, to some, irrelevant, the oddball city at the end of the line is still the “Last Resort.” The sun still shines, the Gulf Stream still flows, and palms still wave in the island’s balmy breezes. Tourists and sports fishermen still descend, the colonies of writers and artists endure, and Hemingway’s house on Whitehead has become a museu
... See moreLes Standiford • Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean
In the winter of 1894, one of the worst freezes in Florida history swept southward across the state, wiping out crops and citrus groves all the way to Palm Beach. The suffering he saw among farmers, growers, and laborers stunned Flagler. He sent James Ingraham, whom he had hired away from Plant, out on a private relief mission with $100,000 in cash
... See moreLes Standiford • Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean
About a mile away from the Orleans Ballroom, on St. Charles Avenue, stands the old headquarters of the United Fruit Company. There they traded in bananas, shaped the history of Central America, and provided the template for the modern multinational corporation. The heyday of United Fruit can be traced to Samuel Zemurray. In 1877, he was born to a J
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Hurricanes, scourge of the Key West Extension during its construction, seemed to lose interest once the line was in place, for a good long while, at least. Even the monster blow of 1926, which struck Miami head-on and virtually destroyed the spanking new suburb of Coral Gables, laid hardly a scratch on the Keys Extension. In one of history’s ironie
... See moreLes Standiford • Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean
Florida is the second most popular tourist destination in the United States, after California. The appeal is remarkably diverse: beaches, islands, nightlife, and theme parks. The most iconic one is Disney World, in Orlando, Florida. Orlando is seven miles south of Eatonville, and is the county seat of Orange County. Everywhere there are dollar stor
... See more