Business: Floranada

Mesdames Edward T. Stotesbury and Alexander W. Biddle of Philadelphia; Mrs. Horace E. Dodge of Detroit; Messrs. Samuel M. Vau-clain (Baldwin Locomotives), John S. Pillsbury (Pillsbury Flour) and Harry S. Black (The Plaza) . . . . H. R. H. the King of Greece . . . . H. H. the Countess of Lauderdale (England) — in trim aristocratic capitals the names were printed, not upon a list of opera patrons or letterhead of a new relief fund, but upon a most elegant double-page spread in the New York Times last week, advertising the latest, the very last thing in Florida realty— “the Floranada Club.” An organization entitled the American-British Improvement Corporation, with a coat of arms showing eagle and lion rampant beside the sovereign seal of Florida, proclaimed “a Biarritz in the building . . . small, smart, exquisite . . . whose founders read like a page from the social register.” A tract of 3,600 acres midway between Palm Beach and Miami was in hand. There was ocean frontage with the Gulf Stream only 3 miles offshore. There were the Dixie Highway, the East Coast Canal, the East Coast Railway, and hard beside, Fort Lauderdale with a fine natural harbor. Architecture was to be of the Mediterranean-Caribbean type, carefully supervised so that “each house, however simple, shall be an artistic gem.” Though great estates were being planned—golf clubs, yacht club, huge hotel, casinos—particular attention was being paid to modest private establishments. The public was invited to buy lots as low as $4,000. But “background counts as much as money . . . for society, the came society that decreed the rise and success of Europe’s famous watering place—Biarritz—has decided to have its new playground in Florida . . . a cosmopolitan paradise . . . impeccable social and financial powers. . . . Already steamships are plying. . . . Society does not care to wait.”