The Birth of the City
The City of Miami was incorporated on July 28, 1896. The population of the settlement then known as Fort Dallas hardly reached 500 souls, but it had a newspaper with a bold name: The Miami Metropolis.
Bold name, considering Miami had yet to be founded and by no stretch of the imagination did Fort Dallas amounted to a metropolis.
The Metropolis reported that 163 of the 344 signatories were registered as colored, and added: “That is what we did in Miami. It’s worth remembering that the site of the present city was a tract of wild land less than six months beforehand, and that the railroad only reached here four months prior, on April 15th.”
Once Flagler’s railroad, renamed the Florida East Coast Railway in 1895, reached Fort Dallas, his men dredged a canal, built streets, instituted the first water and power systems, and financed the town’s first newspaper — The Metropolis.
The Metropolis further reported the events as they unfolded at the Lobby, a pool hall near the Miami River on Avenue D (current Miami Ave.): “The meeting for the purpose of incorporating the City of Miami was remarkable in many respects, for a large number of votes polled, for its unruffled harmony, and for the expeditious way all business was handled. What other city in the State of Florida ever sprung into existence with a list of 400 registered voters, and at its meeting for the purpose of incorporating polled 344 votes?”
Residents clamored the name Flagler for the city. Flagler suggested the old Indian name for the river where the settlement was built around, Miami.
Julia Tuttle, dubbed Mother of Miami, was in town but could not vote. Women were not allowed to vote in 1896. She did not have a vote, but she certainly had a voice. For example, she willed into law a ban on alcohol in her city, excepting, of course, Flagler’s exclusive Royal Palm Hotel, which opened overlooking Biscayne Bay.
Miami’s First Newspaper
The first issue of The Metropolis was published on May 15, one month after the press arrived aboard Flagler’s train. A resident, a J. N. Lummus, describes the train’s arrival: “The old wood burning engine, with its big bell top, was spouting smoke and the whistle and the bell were going full tilt.” Besides the locomotive, the train consisted of a mail coach, baggage car, day coaches — first and second class — and a chair car. Arva Moore Parks adds in her classic The Magic City: “Some old-timers who had never seen a steam engine took off for the woods.”
W. S. Graham, a lawyer, founded the newspaper. In reality, “the newspaper was run by Flagler’s people; most of the people in town worked for Flagler — either on the railroad or on the hotel he was building near where the river met the bay,” observed Howard Kleinberg.
The first issue of the Metropolis read: “It is the first paper ever published on Beautiful Biscayne Bay. The most southern newspaper on the mainland of the United States, published at the most southern railroad point in Uncle Sam’s domain, and at the most southern telegraph terminal and express office on the mainland at Marvelous Miami, the town with over a thousand souls and the survey of the place not yet completed.”
That first issue called on the citizens to incorporate, citing that “there would be 1,500 persons living here by July.”
The Incorporation
The edition of July 31, 1896, reported: “J. A. McDonald, Chairman of the Citizens Committee on Incorporation, called the meeting to order in the hall over the Lobby at 2 p.m. last Tuesday [July 28].”
“It was the same place, day and hour as advertised in the notice of intention to incorporate. The Chair announced that the law required two-thirds of all registered voters residing within the limits which were proposed to be incorporated must be present before any business could be done; to ascertain if the required number were present, he directed the secretary to call the role of the registered voters. After some delay waiting until the hall could be filled, it was ascertained that 312 voters were present, 275 being two-thirds of all registered voters residing within the proposed limits. There were thirty-seven more voters than the required number present. It was then moved by W. S. Graham that the vote on the territory to be incorporated, the name of the city and device for a corporate seal be by acclamation. This was carried and the metes and bounds, as advertised, were adopted as the limits or boundaries of the City of Miami. A round seal was adopted, two inches in diameter with the words City of Miami arranged in a semicircular form constituting the border around the top, and the words Dade Co. Florida around the base, the design of a royal palm tree in an upright position in the center of the seal, and the inscription Incorporated 1896 inserted just below the center of the seal.”
About the newspaper coverage, Howard Kleinberg added in an article for the Tequesta Magazine: “The Metropolis covered the birth of the city — a distinction few newspapers elsewhere ever have achieved. Not only that, but its editor, W.S. Graham, played a major role in the incorporation and, that same day, was among those elected to be the first seven aldermen of the new city.”
The Metropolis appeared each Friday. Subscription rates for the newspaper were $2 on an annual basis, or five cents per issue. The charge for a half-page advertisement for a full year was $400, while classified ads were five cents a line. The Metropolis operated from a wooden building near the Miami River.
A Fire and Yellow Fever
On November 12, 1899, a fire destroyed Miami — the second in its brief history. The first had occurred on Christmas night, 1896. The second, in 1899, consumed The Metropolis building, as well as Julia Tuttle’s Miami Hotel, where the fire had started. Despite the severity of the loss, The Metropolis reported the story of the fire in the November 17 issue:
“The second destructive fire in the history of Miami occurred last Sunday. The first alarm was given at 1:30 and within 30 minutes, the Hotel Miami, The Metropolis’ office, Greer’s grocery, Mrs. Knapp’s boarding house, machine shop of the Flagler interests, and Hainlin’s steam laundry with their contents were in a mass of ruins. The fire started in one of the rooms in the Hotel Miami, where Mrs. John Smith was preparing food for Mrs. Pell who was ill with yellow fever. A blue flame oil stove was the cause of the fire, which when discovered was beyond control …”
The Metropolis’ building was the oldest in the city, having been built in April 1896 — right after the railroad reached Miami. Construction of The Hotel Miami began before The Metropolis building but was not finished for months, Howard Kleinberg observes:
“There were some earlier buildings then, either built upon a cheap plan — shacks in other words — which have long since disappeared… The books and subscription list of the paper were rescued as was much of the printer’s type. The files of the paper, including the first-off-the-press inaugural issue, were lost to the flames. One small press and a perforator were all of the machinery that could be saved.”
The small press was not adequate to publish a newspaper and within 24 hours of the loss, the owner of The News in West Palm Beach offered the use of its plant as a temporary solution. The Metropolis could not accept the generous offer. Miami had been placed in a quarantine by the yellow fever epidemic. By that time, The Metropolis had a competitor, the Miami News, which offered the use of its facilities, a generous act the Metropolis accepted.
The arrival of the twentieth century was not received with fireworks and champagne, but in isolation and with fear.
The Name “Miami Metropolis”
On June 4, 1923, former Ohio governor James M. Cox bought The Metropolis and renamed it the Miami Daily News-Metropolis. Cox had a new building erected for the newspaper, and the Miami News Tower opened on July 25, 1925. This building would become Miami’s famous Freedom Tower. Howard Kleinberg would be the last editor of the Miami News-Metropolis, which had the unusual honor of publishing its own obituary.
I invited Howard Kleinberg to a Downtown Arts + Science Salon, and asked him why they named the newspaper Metropolis, when Miami was far from a metropolis? His succinct reply: “Henry Flagler wanted it, and what Flagler wanted, Flagler got.”
DOWNTOWN MIAMI HISTORY
[This article has been excerpted from DOWNTOWN MIAMI HISTORY, a compilation of essays by prominent historians, journalists, professors and biographers, chronicling 125 years of Downtown Miami History.]
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