Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine

21. Returning to St. Augustine, 1906–1911

442 21 ∑ Returning to St. Augustine, 1906–1911 I have never changed my feelings of affection for St. Augustine. —Henry Flagler to civic leaders, 1907 During 1906 St. Augustine took two important steps in becoming a modern city: itacquiredamunicipalelectricpowerplantandstartedlayingtrackforastreetcar system. Up to this time only Flag­ ler’s Ponce de Leon, Alcazar, and railway depot had enjoyed the benefits of electricity. In the spring of 1905 the gas company, originally established by W.G.Warden and Dr. Anderson twenty years earlier, purchased a dynamo capable of furnishing electric power both to the city government for street lighting and to private homes and businesses. However, the gas company’s contract with the city expired in April 1905, and the city council negotiated a new agreement with an outside company called the St. Johns Light and Power Company. It promised to build a much larger electric power plant and develop an electric trolley line through the town’s streets and all the way acrossthebayouttoSouthBeach.Itbeganconstructionofabig facility onSouth Ribera Street and, in the meantime, purchased the gas company’s generator to supply electricity until its own much larger plant was completed. In February 1906somebusinessestappedintothenewelectriclines,andinMarchelectricarc lights began to appear along city streets. Since the old gaslights still served some areas of town for a while longer, citizens could see how much more brightly the new electric lights illuminated the night.1 Proposals to build a streetcar line had long been a point of friction between Henry Flag­ ler and many people in St. Augustine. An effort to establish a trolley Returning to St. Augustine, 1906–1911 · 443 system had first been made in 1886, only to founder, at least in part, because of Flag­ler’s opposition. He envisioned King Street as the Fifth Avenue of St. Augustine , anattractiveboulevardlinedwithstatelyhomesand fineestablishmentslike his hotels. Flag­ ler and his neighbors in New York City had managed to prohibit streetcars on Fifth Avenue. He desired to keep the clatter and clanging of trolley cars away from his resort hotels in St. Augustine. However, King Street had long served as the main east-west transportation axis of the town, and local interests saw a modern streetcar line both as a practical and beneficial improvement to the old town and as more convenient transport to South Beach.2 In the summer of 1886 a number of business and professional men, including some close to Flag­ ler, wrote him a letter declaring that the street railway was a “public necessity” and that they felt “the sentiments of a majority have been thwarted” by Flag­ ler’s opposition. In replying to this letter Flag­ ler skirted the issue, saying he desired only the “highest good of the City” and had no personal interest in the matter, especially of a financial nature. “I think it must be evident to every person that a desire for gain was not the motive that has prompted my investments in St. Augustine. I can make more money in this city [New York] in a month than I can in St. Augustine in a life time. The improvement of the place has been, and will be, a source of great gratification.” The latter comment was a gentle reminder that the community stood to gain a great deal by not antagonizing Flag­ler.3 This first streetcar proposal quickly went away, but similar propositions by other investors continued to arise over the following years. When another prospective builder came forward in 1890, Flag­ ler asked a lawyer to investigate whether he had the legal right to block a trolley track on King Street. After all, Flag­ ler maintained, he and Anderson had donated land to the city so that the streetcouldbewidened.ThelawyerrepliedthatFlag­lercouldreclaimthelandhe had given to the city, but he could not block construction of track on the original line of the street. In 1894 Flag­ler discouraged yet another proposal to build a trolley line on King Street by refusing to allow the line to extend up Malaga Street to the depot. However, the issue never came to a confrontation because the company advocating the line eventually walked away from the venture. Building a streetcar system that could pay its way in a small town was a difficult proposition even under the best of circumstances.4 The St. Johns Light and Power Company’s effort in 1906 finally prevailed, perhaps because Flag­ ler realized that his vision of King Street as a splendidly landscaped Fifth Avenue had failed to materialize. In October the company purchased the South...