There are few things in life that are more distressing than opening your eyes to realize that the wonderful dream you were having only a few moments ago was, well, nothing more than a dream. Thus is the story of the Coral Gables Dream Theater, the massive open-air movie theater that graced the corner of Ponce de Leon Blvd and Giralda Ave from 1926 to c.1928. In May of 1926 it was announced by J. Gordon Hussey, a developer who had built his fair share of Coral Gables homes, that plans had been finalized and construction was commencing on Miami’s newest movie theater. Hussey dubbed it “The Dream Theater” and announced that the building would be two stories high and would contain 29 shops and offices, yielding a capacity of 1,500. In keeping with the architectural themes found within Coral Gables, John and Coulton Skinner were hired as architects and fashioned the building to replicate a famous bull ring in Seville, Spain. The excitement surrounding the announcement of this theate...

Coral Gables was officially incorporated on April 29th, 1925. To say there was electricity in the air would be no understatement. In fact, the statement could be taken quite literal. Not only did Gables residents find themselves citizens of a newly-founded city, they also found themselves standing beneath the electrically charged wires which would power the street cars which defined mass transportation in the area throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s. The electric trolley shaped and transformed the urban landscape and enhanced the way people traveled from place to place. Although the electric trolley system finally got it’s feet off the ground in Miami in the 1920’s, the venture was a product of trial and error dating back to the early 1900’s. In 1906, ten years after the City of Miami was founded, the first incarnation of an electric trolley system appeared. Despite the fact that the city’s population had grown significantly since its founding in 1896, the recently instituted city d...

Lincoln Memorial Park, located at 3001 N.W. 46th Street, is one of the oldest black cemeteries in Dade County. It is the final resting place of many black pioneers and luminaries who have helped shape the cultural landscape of early Miami. Since its inception, thousands of people have been laid to rest within the 20-acre property. One of the most unique features of Lincoln Memorial Park is that it is one of perhaps three   Miami cemeteries that is almost exclusively comprised of above-ground burial vaults.        Lincoln Memorial Park’s origins are somewhat shrouded in mystery. Fact and myth have blended together to produce one of Miami’s most beautiful and enduring legends. The urban-myth is described as follows: Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery was located in what was then known as the Brown Subdivision (now known as Brownsville) and was founded in the early 1920’s by a white realtor named F.B. Miller. According to the legend, Kelsey Leroy Pharr,...

When thinking of Richard Merrick’s wife, most people today recall only the universally beloved Mildred Heath Selles, a widow and the respected UM Reference Librarian, whom he wed in 1969, when he was 66 and to whom he was happily married for 17 years until his death in 1986. Not so. Two women bearing the name Mrs. Richard Merrick preceded her. Emerging artist Merrick had worked for elder brother George in advertising and had lived in New York from 1927 where he lived intermittently, plying his art, but by 1930, he was back in Coral Gables. It was in his hometown where he married Marion Wallace, the 22-year-old daughter of Beatrice Wallace and the late Griffith Wallace of 6704 LeJeune Road, on the evening of October 13, 1932. Marion had attended the University of Miami where she was a member of the Alpha Delta Sorority. Beatrice owned and operated Beatrice Wallace Hostess Bureau. The quiet nuptials took place at 912 Velencia Avenue, the home of Otis Spencer, Justice of the Peace, ...

The first marriage of Richard Merrick, artist and younger brother of George E. Merrick, to Marion Wallace, when he was 29 and she 22, was brief, childless and uneventful. However, the circumstances leading up to his second marriage were neither brief or uneventful. Merrick had been single for 14 years, when in 1949 he wed Mrs. Myra Baseman Anderson, a Coral Gables socialite and pioneer resident of Miami. She had been widowed for less than two years – but she and Merrick had known each other, quite well actually, for several years. Myra Louise Baseman was born in Gary, Maryland September 9, 1889, the eldest child of Ernest & Minnie Young Baseman, both Maryland natives. On Christmas Day, 1911, Myra married Howard Reade Anderson, in Wentworth, Hamilton, Ontario. He was 13 years her senior, born in Gaines, NY in 1876, and had lived in Albion, which adjoined Gaines, NY his entire life. While Myra’s obituary stated she and Howard came to the Miami area in 1917, the 1920 census ...

For those readers who are passionate about the history of early Miami- the first families, the communities, the burial grounds and everything else that delved into the history of Miami’s past, there was for decades a definite lack of research available. Miami, a new city by most standards even in 1980, did not have records as readily accessible as older, more established areas. Then Came along Oby Bonawit, a retired Eastern Airlines pilot, who took it upon himself to write “a book that needed to be written,” Miami Florida – Early Families and Records (1980). Although he occasionally bumped heads with other historians, the “Red Book,” as it would come to be known by history buffs, broke ground. Bonawit spent countless hours assembling a many faceted book, with the assistance of several equally passionate historians, including Arva Moore Parks and Harriet Liles. Starting with voting lists from 1836 and the probate files of over 380 early settlers, the book provides the first histor...

Film aficionados will readily recall a masterful early example of Film Noir, 1944’s classic “Laura”. A suspenseful dark romance, it opens with a street-smart detective, Mark McPherson (played by Dana Andrews) finding himself fixated by a portrait of a wealthy, beautiful young lady, Laura Hunt, who has mysteriously disappeared (superbly essayed by Gene Tierney), and foul play is suspected. Although they have never met, McPherson finds himself enamored of the lady in the portrait, falling hard for the missing Laura. After numerous twists and turns, peppered with attempted murder, Laura’s cad of a fiancée, a venomous poison-pen news columnist and a cast of characters (each with their own agenda), all ends well. McPherson and the very-much-alive Laura fall in love and all is right in the world. Fade to black. A similar, teasingly enigmatic portrait of a beautiful lady, by renowned artist Denman Fink, hangs in the Coral Gables Museum. Done in 1943, it captures the imagination of those...

In 1985 an elderly lady of nearly 80, living with her sister in a modest home at 722 Cadima Ave. in Coral Gables, received an unexpected invitation. The invitation, which came from King Juan Carlos of Spain, invited her to a royal funeral at the El Escorial Monastery. The ceremony was for the entombment of His Royal Highness Alfonso of Borbon, Prince of the Asturias, the heir to the Spanish throne, and later styled the Count of Covadonga.  What made the royal invitation unusual was that Edelmira Sampedro-Robato, the lady in question, was not only that that she had once been wed to Alfonso, or that in 1933 the prince had renounced his rights to the abolished Spanish throne in 1933 to marry her, that the couple had divorced in 1937 after a tempestuous marriage of four years, but that Alfonso had, by 1985, been dead for nearly 40 years. If those reasons were not enough for her surprise, Alfonso, shortly before his untimely death had remarried, and divorced. Edelmira respectfully dec...

In 2003, the non-profit Coral Gables Museum Corp. was formed under the leadership of the City of Coral Gables to direct and operate a museum in the Old Police and Fire Station. In 2008, work began in earnest on the restoration, renovation and expansion of the 1939 WPA building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The architect Jorge Hernandez together with Dooley Mack Constructors led the historic preservation project. On October 10, 2010 (10-10-10), Museum staff occupied the building and reopened it to the public. In November 2011, the Coral Gables Museum unveiled the inaugural exhibits and began its first year of full operation. In 2013, the Coral Gables Museum became the Official Visitor Center for the City Beautiful.  The Museum is a true public/private partnership between the City of Coral Gables and the Coral Gables Museum Corp., a private, not for profit 501.c.3 corporation operating an educational cultural institution within a City owned facility.  ...