Ragtime years

[Jason]

Ragtime years

Between the Great Fire in 1901 and the Great War in 1914 Jacksonville partied. Sharpies and shills, touts and tarts tangoed, tippled and lived it up . . . until the tinsel tattered.


Sunday, February 21, 1999

Story last updated at 4:06 p.m. on Friday, February 19, 1999

By Bill Foley
Times-Union senior writer



Ragtime Jacksonville was a toddlin' town.

Not 'til Billy Sunday did it close down.

Henry Flagler struck up the band, and the band played on 'til the Roaring '20s.

Flagler's Continental Hotel in Atlantic Beach opened a month after the Jacksonville fire.

Between the Great Fire in 1901 and the Great War in 1914, Jacksonville was where the action was. The party wound down when the glass went dry.

With Flagler's hotel came racing cars and primitive aeroplanes, movie stars and dancing masters.

Bullet Bob Burnham set speed records on the beach. Bird Man Charlie Hamilton pioneered flight over Jacksonville.

Tiny Broadwick jumped from hot-air balloons at Dixieland Park. William Jennings Bryan spoke at the Ostrich Farm.

Movies changed America and discovered Jacksonville: a balmy burg that could be a big city, a small town, a jungle, a ranch, a desert, a port on the bounding main.

The days were long and the living was easy. Jacksonville became the winter film capital of the East Coast, the last stop on the vaudeville circuit, the Mecca of the Sporting Crowd.

Free spirits of the film world brought bohemia to the St. Johns. Wretched excess co-mingled with enlightened self-interest.

Sharpies and shills and touts and tarts accompanied the horse races to Moncrief Downs. (''The effect of the races on Jacksonville and its people was no-wise good,'' wrote historian Frederick Davis.)

Con men and wire tappers flourished like germs in a petri dish. The Lady in Blue was a bad check artist; the Lady in Yellow a bookie; Three-Handed Annie a shoplifter of national repute.

''A carnival of crime abounded,'' said E.C. Broward, candidate for sheriff. He lost.

High rollers bet bush league baseball played by ringers du jour; Fish Wiggs announced games over a fog horn on a street corner. Wrestlers flocked to Professor Charles Leonhardt's downtown Institute of Physical Culture. The pool room and cigar stand became centers of commerce; formal boundaries legitimized the Tenderloin.

Jacksonville was too wild for his blood, exclaimed Rube Waddell, eccentric pitching ace of the Philadelphia Athletics. Manager Connie Mack loved the town. The A's came for spring training, year after year.

Modern hotels rose to dizzying heights. The Seminole, the Mason, the Burbridge competed in lush and commodious accommodation. Arthur Murray taught the tango to Jacksonville society. The mysterious movie star Valkyrien brought the first movie salon to Furchgott's department store.

The Hollywood fan magazine began as the Jacksonville fan magazine. In 1916, 100 film companies were cranking them out in River City.

The notorious Evelyn Nesbit Thaw knocked back a few at the Panama Cub. Carlyle Blackwell hung his hat here. Tom Mix, too. Babe Hardy was the Burbridge's genial host, before he met Laurel. Mrs. Babe led the hotel orchestra. Will Rogers opened the Arcade theater; Pavlova danced at the Duval.

For every action, there is a reaction.

The locals demurred when the movies blew up a saloon, faked a bank robbery on a Sunday morning, crashed cars into the river, drank champagne out of slippers and who knows whatall.

Economic depression on the brink of war contrasted starkly with the lives of the stars. Drums of war muted barrels of booze. Duval County voted itself dry.

Jacksonville reached a fork in the road in the city election of 1917.

Promising young man John W. Martin challenged turn-ofthe century retread Mayor J.E.T. Bowden (''Just Easy Times, Boys''). The campaign dwelled on the movies, the sports and the high life. The election was the last tango. New Mayor Martin marched Jacksonville into the '20s.

Tinsel-land was tattered. A sterner era had begun. Fish Wiggs hung up his fog horn. Valkyrien closed up shop. Tom Mix rode into the sunset.

A mob jammed the armory to hear America's most famous evangelist, Billy Sunday.

And Flagler's hotel burned to the ground.

Source: http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/022199/cel_1p8ragti.html