Henry Flagler's Hotels
In the beginning, Flagler was not primarily in the business of building railroads. This was a secondary venture to make wealthy investors want to come to Florida for vacations, and ultimately, to invest in Florida’s economy. Historians note that it was difficult to draw conclusions regarding the financial success of Flagler’s hotel company because at the end of each season, Flagler added the excess or the deficit to the “profit and loss account." Nonetheless, the tourist industry grew as he built luxury hotels, all the while improving the communities by installing electricity and sewage and building roads and walkways.
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"All of his hotels were 2, 3 ,4, steps away from the end of the railway line. In other words, he did not want the tourists to walk. He did not want them to get wet. He wanted to make it as convenient as possible. It's what today we would call an inter-modal transportation system . . . That's when he realizes, he needs to get into the business of the railroads." "Flagler also built a chain of high-end hotels to accommodate his wealthy guests once they arrived in Florida." Above: Dr. Seth H. Bramson, MBA, MS; Company Historian - Florida East Coast Railway
". . . he went gradually down the east coast, building not only railroads but hotels in various places, such as Palm Beach and Miami." "Flagler's hotels set the stage for rapid growth in a state that at the turn of the 20th century, had only slightly more than half a million inhabitants. What had begun as a leisure-based seasonal community gradually became a mature zone on the settlement, the geographic vanguard of what would later be known as the Sun Belt, the newest urbanizing region of the 20th Century United States." |