1929, marked by unbounded industrial growth and prosperity, and an optimism that was barely dimmed by World War I. The term was coined after the title of a Mark Twain novel published in 1873, a characteristically dark satire attacking the pitfalls and excesses of land and business speculation rampant during the postwar years.
Twain’s reservations notwithstanding, public confidence and personal wealth were growing at an unprecedented rate. Centuries-old assumptions concerning the very nature of creation and man’s place in the universe had come into question as well: the work of Charles Darwin and advancements in the modern science of psychology reflected a growing sense of self-determinism that had begun to work its way into the very weave of Western civilization.
The public read of the accomplishments and vast accumulations of such men as Vanderbilt and Astor, Rockefeller and Flagler, and saw no reason why they could not do the same. The works of Horatio Alger, in which poor but honest boys succeeded by dint of hard work and other Boy Scout–like qualities, were runaway bestsellers of the time; in all, Alger would write more than one hundred books, of which more than 20 million were sold.
Most important, an extraordinary number of Americans were finding their efforts and their speculations rewarded. With fortunes growing and personal income at an all-time high, the demand for ways in which to dispose of wealth grew accordingly. If Mrs. Benjamin Harrison had traveled to St. Augustine along with Vice President and Mrs. Levi Morton to hobnob delightedly with the Wanamakers of Philadelphia at the Ponce de Leon, then there was no reason why others on the swelling rolls of the Social Register should not follow.
A writer for
Harper’s
visited the Ponce de Leon and, in an article titled “Our Own Riviera,” wrote vividly of what he saw: “[A] woman and her lady friend and maid were paying $39 a day for rooms and meals; where an Astor and his bride had paid the same sum per day during a week of their honeymoon; where one lady took a room solely for her trunks at $10 a day. . . . There was one little party that occupied three bedrooms, a bathroom and a parlor, taking up a whole corner of the hotel on the ground floor, whose bill . . . might easily have been $75 a day. . . .” All this at a time when a skilled carpenter or tradesman might earn two dollars a day for his labors.
The response to the Ponce de Leon was so enthusiastic, however, that Flagler was soon at work on a companion hotel nearby, the Alcazar, where he intended that guests of more modest means could experience something of the sybarite’s lifestyle. Flagler and his new wife took a suite at the Ponce de Leon, meanwhile, and announced that Florida was now their permanent winter home.
For a time Flagler basked in pride, having created an entity that went well beyond the practical matters of fueling kerosene lanterns and lubricating machines. He had fashioned a pleasure palace in the midst of a lone and distant place, and the result, if not exactly profitable at the outset, had taken the social world of which he was a part quite by storm.
Flagler’s happiness was soon to be tempered, however. His daughter, Jennie Louise, by then thirty-three and married to the son of a Chicago industrialist, fell ill of complications during an unsuccessful childbirth. On her way by ship to St. Augustine, where it was thought she might rest and regain her health, she died.
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 positive symbol of his affection. The Memorial Presbyterian Church, constructed in the neo-Renaissance style popular of that day, remains to this day one of St.
Twain’s reservations notwithstanding, public confidence and personal wealth were growing at an unprecedented rate. Centuries-old assumptions concerning the very nature of creation and man’s place in the universe had come into question as well: the work of Charles Darwin and advancements in the modern science of psychology reflected a growing sense of self-determinism that had begun to work its way into the very weave of Western civilization.
The public read of the accomplishments and vast accumulations of such men as Vanderbilt and Astor, Rockefeller and Flagler, and saw no reason why they could not do the same. The works of Horatio Alger, in which poor but honest boys succeeded by dint of hard work and other Boy Scout–like qualities, were runaway bestsellers of the time; in all, Alger would write more than one hundred books, of which more than 20 million were sold.
Most important, an extraordinary number of Americans were finding their efforts and their speculations rewarded. With fortunes growing and personal income at an all-time high, the demand for ways in which to dispose of wealth grew accordingly. If Mrs. Benjamin Harrison had traveled to St. Augustine along with Vice President and Mrs. Levi Morton to hobnob delightedly with the Wanamakers of Philadelphia at the Ponce de Leon, then there was no reason why others on the swelling rolls of the Social Register should not follow.
A writer for
Harper’s
visited the Ponce de Leon and, in an article titled “Our Own Riviera,” wrote vividly of what he saw: “[A] woman and her lady friend and maid were paying $39 a day for rooms and meals; where an Astor and his bride had paid the same sum per day during a week of their honeymoon; where one lady took a room solely for her trunks at $10 a day. . . . There was one little party that occupied three bedrooms, a bathroom and a parlor, taking up a whole corner of the hotel on the ground floor, whose bill . . . might easily have been $75 a day. . . .” All this at a time when a skilled carpenter or tradesman might earn two dollars a day for his labors.
The response to the Ponce de Leon was so enthusiastic, however, that Flagler was soon at work on a companion hotel nearby, the Alcazar, where he intended that guests of more modest means could experience something of the sybarite’s lifestyle. Flagler and his new wife took a suite at the Ponce de Leon, meanwhile, and announced that Florida was now their permanent winter home.
For a time Flagler basked in pride, having created an entity that went well beyond the practical matters of fueling kerosene lanterns and lubricating machines. He had fashioned a pleasure palace in the midst of a lone and distant place, and the result, if not exactly profitable at the outset, had taken the social world of which he was a part quite by storm.
Flagler’s happiness was soon to be tempered, however. His daughter, Jennie Louise, by then thirty-three and married to the son of a Chicago industrialist, fell ill of complications during an unsuccessful childbirth. On her way by ship to St. Augustine, where it was thought she might rest and regain her health, she died.
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 positive symbol of his affection. The Memorial Presbyterian Church, constructed in the neo-Renaissance style popular of that day, remains to this day one of St.
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