Miami Springs Historical Society

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Preserving the History of Beautiful Miami Springs for Future Generations Since 1987

Miami Springs Historical Society and The Museum are A Not-For Profit Organizations.  Our Mission is to advocate for the historical sites in the City of Miami Springs and to educate the community on the history of Glenn Curtiss, the Curtiss-Bright Land Development properties (Hialeah, Miami Springs, & Opa-Loca) and the development of commercial aviation in Miami.



Miami Springs Historical Society and Museum Groundbreaking

Richard L. Block

Approaching thirty three years of generational volunteerism, The Miami Springs Historical Society finally has a place it can call its own. In a private/public effort, the Society raised enough money to get the project halfway there and the interest of the Miami Springs City Council push the effort past the goal line. The museum, located at 501 East Drive is a testament to the dreams of Glen Curtiss and James L. Bright who, in the 1920’s, brought Miami Springs and what would later become Virginia Gardens coupled with Hialeah and Opa-Locka into being. The Historical Society has endeavored to maintain the time-line of our great cities intact and preserve our history through a century of time. As things stand now, the museum will be a gathering place for adults and children alike to learn and keep alive our local culture and traditions. We stand proud to be members and fulfill the century old dream of the Curtis/Bright team. Our groundbreaking had the participation of dignitaries from various cities including the Virginia Garden City Council and of course, the Miami Springs City Council. Our future looks bright and you citizens and residents can even make it look brighter by joining and supporting our Society at miamispringshistoricalsociety.orgor our interactive Facebook site. Your donations for our non-profit organization would be greatly appreciated. Communicate with us at miamispringshistoricalsociety@hotmail.com



Miami Springs Historical Society Facebook Page
Miami Springs Historical Society

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Proud
Member
of the
American
Alliance of
Museums

Top: Museum Photo Under Construction Bottom: Museum Rendering
Miami Springs Historical Society Board of Directors, members & construction company official at our museum groundbreaking ceremony June 25th.
Miami Springs & Virginia Gardens City Officials at today’s Miami Springs Historical Society Museum groundbreaking at 501 East Drive in Miami Springs. Left to right VG Counclmember Gabe Fernandez, MS City Manager William Alonso, MS Councilmembers Jaime Petralanda & Maria Mitchell, VG Council President Jorge Arce, VG Councilmembers Debra Conover, Richard Block, and Elizabeth Taylor. Also present but not shown in photo was MS Council member Mara Zapata. The museum is scheduled to open in September.
Councilman Petralanda & Jim Watson

2019-20 Board of Directors

President - Jennifer Graham

V.P.  - Richard Block

Treasurer - Carmen "Lili" Martinez

Communications Coordinator - Ken Wilde

Recording Secretary - JoAnn Lenning

Museum Director - Dr. Jim Watson

Museum Curator - Yvonne Shonberger

 




The First Step Is Being Taken
Join us in this endevour!

https://www.gofundme.com/miami-springs-historical-museum

Miami Springs approves additional funding for Museum

On June 25, 1918 City Council approved additional funding of $26,000.00 as reported in River Cities Gazette on June 18,1918:

City Council voted unanimously to support the Miami Springs Historical Society's requuest for $26,000.00 in the 2018-19 bjudget, so tey can sign a contract with ELA Construction for the completion of the renovation of the Stafford Park building to house the Miami Springs Historical Museum.




2018-9 MSHS Board

Installation of the 2018-19 Board of the Miami Springs Historical Society took plance on June 1st at the Pioneer-Installation Dinner Dance.  Pictured above are Beverly Roetz (Past President), Lili Martinez, Terry Alexander, Jennifer Graham, Anna Gonzalez, Richard Block, and Charles Hill. 


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Changing Seas

Science: History and the Changing Ocean

We may not realize it, but Miami Springs is situated in a very venerable location that is susceptible to the effects of sea level rising.  As part of the Miami Springs Historical Society’s Speaker Series, Felix Martinez explored how decreasing species in the oceans are contributing to factors that worsen the issues we face with Global Warming. Topics spaned from the declining whale population to the increase in red algae blooms.  Mr. Martinez is an Instructor at All Angles Academy.  The presentation took place on Thursday April 26 at the Aquatic Center.  It proved to be an interesting and valuable discussion.  


History of Discrimination in Greater Miami

On Thursday, February 22nd at 7:30 pm at the Aquatic Center on Westward Dr., the Miami Springs Historical Society's Speakers Series guest speaker was our long time member, Professor Seth Bramson.  Seth presented one of his most acclaimed talks.  Guests heard the history of discrimination in Greater Miami, a talk that will resonate with those attending.  As part of his discussion, Seth brought memorabilia for the audience to see, including brochures, booklets, postcards, photographs and signs, which will give a better understanding of the days of Jim Crow and segregation.  It was an insightful evening of our local history. 


Annual Kick-Off

The Miami Springs Historical Society and Museum enjoyed our Annual Kick-Off Reception on Saturday, October 7th, 2017 at the Miami Springs Aquatic Center.  The event celebrated our existing and new Society members and also shared some very exciting news for the upcoming 2017-2018 year!  Click on the link below to see some of the highlights from the evening.

MS Historical Society Kick-Off Reception




Wolfsonian 

Talk at 

Historical Society


Frank Luca, the Chief Librarian of the Wolfsonian Museum on Miami Beach, spoke on Thursday March 9th at 7:30 PM to the Historical Society on the many treasures of this institution. Dr. Luca graduated with a B.A. in History and English from Colby College. He went on to study ethnohistory at The College of William & Mary and worked on a topic exploring the environmental implications of the Spanish mission program in Florida. Mr. Luca continued his graduate level studies at Florida International University, where he received a doctorate from the History Department.



 History of Greater Miami

Thur. Oct. 13th at 7:30 pm was the first 2016-17 general meeting
for the Miami Springs Historical Society.  Leading this year’s Speaker Series was Seth Bramson, with his presentation:
History of Greater Miami Part I.  The event was held at the Miami Springs Aquatic Center Multi-purpose Room in Miami Springs.  Glad you were there!


Photo is from “Speedway to Sunshine: The Story of the Florida East Coast Railway” by Seth Bramson.

As Reported In:

The Miami Herald/Neighbors         

Miami Springs preserves quirky history

BY LOLA DUFFORT

South Florida presents an odd dichotomy: the primordial ooze of the Everglades beside the gleaming newness of our cities. But the Miami Springs Historical Society wants you to know that while Miami’s history is short, it is fascinating.

The society is based out of Miami Springs, but the club’s aims are to preserve and bring to life the intertwined history of the industries and people who built a suburban metropolis from the swamps of South Florida, according to communications coordinator Jim Watson.

“The same architect who designed the Congress building downtown drew up many of the Curtiss houses here,” he said. The Congress building was a historic office building recently turned into apartments.

For now, the core theme of the Society’s programming are the exploits of the Curtiss-Bright development company, a joint venture between aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss and cattleman James Bright that inaugurated the cities of Hialeah, Miami Springs and Opa-Locka in the land boom of the early 1920s.

Curtiss and Bright began by developing in Hialeah, where Curtiss noted the mistake they’d made in the city’s uninhibited sprawl. For Miami Springs, Curtiss decided to change gears: he hired architect Clinton McKenzie, who had laid out the streets of Coral Gables, to plan a streetscape for his city. Incorporated in 1926 as Country Club Estates (the city’s 60 registered voters would change the name to Miami Springs just four years later), the city had strict building codes, tree-lined streets and a preplanned city center.

Borrowing again from Coral Gables, Curtiss stole George Merrick’s idea of a unifying architectural theme for a city, and decided to build in what would in the Pueblo Revival style inspired by the adobe villages of the southwestern Pueblo Indians. (For Opa-locka, the theme was to be Arabian Nights.)

You can tell a Pueblo Revival house by its bell-cots, irregular roof parapets and wall contours, thick, uneven walls and recessed windows. You might be fooled into thinking these are really adobe structures, but they’re actually covered in stucco. We’re thousands of miles away from the nearest desert.

Not many Pueblo buildings were constructed, given Curtiss’ abrupt and early death from appendicitis, and fewer still remain. But Curtiss’ legacy is retained in the city’s small-town feel.

Newly retired art director Sharon Wills has lived in Miami Springs since 1961, and on a recent historical society bus tour of the town’s Pueblo architecture, she called the little city “the land that time forgot.”

In all the years she’s lived there, she says, the town has somehow “stayed very true to small town community.”

That’s something the residents of Miami Springs guard fiercely, said society president Yvonne Schonberger, who peppered the tour with nods to parcels that developers had unsuccessfully lobbied the city to let them build on. “We keep getting discovered,” she joked. “But every time they try and build condos, we say no.” City rules won’t even allow apartment buildings to exceed three stories.

The bus tour — the society hosts two tours a year, including one in December in which participants can enter most of the buildings — winds its way through the city, starting first at the white and sprawling Hotel Country Club on Curtiss Parkway. Built in 1926 and furnished with solid mahogany furniture, the five-story construction was supposed to host vacationers and prospective buyers to populate Curtiss’ new town.

One of the walls is adorned with a giant hieroglyphic thunderbird, symbolizing rain and prosperity — “appropriate for a land developer in the ’20s land boom in South Florida, no?” Schonberger quips.

But while the rains continued to fall, prosperity dried up. When the crash of 1929 hit, Curtiss had no choice but to offload the hotel. For $10, he gave it to John Harvey Kellogg (of breakfast cereal fame), a doctor and nutritionist. He reopened it as a sanitarium and ran it until it was rented during World War II to the Air Transport Command for recovering veterans. It would later become a spa, and currently serves as an assisted living facility.

On Park Street, the tour turns a page in the Great Depression story with Miami Springs Elementary, the art deco school built in 1937 by President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration.

Notably, the tour also hits several Pueblo Revival homes — many built a little before incorporation, usually for Curtiss’ friends or family — homes that Miami Springs residents still live in today. On Deer Run, visitors can see the Y-shaped, two-story house originally built for Curtiss’ mother Lua, an amateur painter. Lua quickly decided she wanted something bigger, and a second house was built for her on Hunting Lodge Drive, but Schonberger and her husband are quite content there, where they host the society’s annual kick-off party in the fall.

And, perhaps in an unintended homage to the ephemeral nature of development in South Florida, the tour also stops on Pinecrest Avenue, where one of the first four Curtiss-Bright homes stood until it was demolished in 2007 and replaced by a decidedly larger and un-Pueblo house.

The tour also circles the Miami Springs Golf Course. Curtiss had always planned to include a golf course in his new city, and with fundraising help from the likes of Carl Fisher and Roddey Burdine, it opened in 1923 as the county’s first municipal golf course. In 1947, it became the first golf course in Florida to integrate.

The tour also drops by the Clune-Stadnik building on the Parkway circle, the only surviving building left from the civic center first envisioned by Curtiss. For a while, it was host to the society’s Miami Springs Historical Museum, but seven years ago the owners decided it couldn’t afford rent-free tenants.

Society members say a new museum should open at 501 East Dr. in the fall — they’re crossing their fingers for Oct. 1 — but wary that converting the former municipal storage shed into a fully operational historical museum might entail some delay. The museum will have exhibits rotating every three months or so, according to Watson, but also serve as “living space” for community groups to meet and host small events.

Society president Beverly Roetz added that the club has initiated talks with Miami-Dade public schools in hopes of getting kids from across the county come to the museum once it opens.

With the new museum, Watson hopes that the society might also start to profile the history of these towns decades after incorporation. In particular, the museum will highlight the role that aviation played in the development of Miami Springs from the 1950s into the ’70s, when big airlines like (now-defunct) National and Eastern used to be headquartered in the area and many of their employees lived in town.

Along with model Curtiss “Jenny” airplanes — the Jenny would be instrumental in popularizing civil aviation in the postwar era — and Harvey Kellogg’s cane, the society also has a series of Eastern Air Lines stewardess outfits from the 1960s and ’70s in storage, waiting for a new museum display.

On the way to the golf course, Watson — whose father was a captain with National — pointed out a signature 1950s neon sign that reads “The Pilot House BAR” atop a shuttered building, just across from the airport on 36th Street.

“One day driving home I just saw the sign flashing like a ghost,” he said.

It’s those kinds of pieces of a neglected history, Watson says, that he hopes the society can begin to expand upon.

Photos By CHRIS CUTRO                                               5.01.14


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TO THE RIGHT IS A DOWNLOADABLE COPY
 OF THE MIAMI SPRINGS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
 BY-LAWS IN A .PDF FORMAT

Document
CLICK ON ICON TO DOWNLOAD BY-LAWS
 
 
Please contact us at:
P.O. Box 660175
Miami Springs, Florida 33266-0175
Or Call Us At:
(786) 863-9963
Or Write Us At:
MiamiSpringsHistoricalSociety@hotmail.com