FLORIDA, UNLIMITED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 168, 18 July 1932, Page 6

FLORIDA, UNLIMITED.

A LAND BOOM AND ITS CRASH

The tend boom in Florida was tho greatest speculative ramp Hie world Ims ever soon since the South Sea Bubble, and its extent can only 1)0 grasped by viewing the aftermath (writes Lieutenant-Comninndcr J. M. Konworthy in an .article called ''The American Scene" in the current ••Nineteenth Century"). Florida i* blewed with probably the. most beautiful climate in the world, boon use of the proximity of the Gulf Stream. which keeps the temperature even. The land speculator* apparently thought every family in the United Slates would buy il plot and build a home in Florida whore they would spend their holiday?, and where the older generation would eventually retire (o live out their remaining roars. They actually laid out twice as many plots and sites as there are families in the United States. If every head of n household, actual or prospective, had bought » *ito in Florida only half the bind so prepared would linve been taken un; and most of the bind ottered for sale, and eagerly purchased, was artiflrially pumped up from the -en. A new city to accommodate 1,000,000 people —Hollywood. Florida—was laid out, on the plan of Washing-ton, with the broad avenues running out like the spokes of a wheel, the hub beinar the great central square, with its municipal building*, concert balls, banks, store* and blocks of offices. There are miles of concrete streets on which a motor car has never driven, thousands of street lamps that have never been lighted, half a do/en parks, in which nothing grows, complete with ornamental lakes, fountain* and bandstands; and living to-day, in this P keletou of a city, arc about !.">() poverty'-strickm people, some of them ekeing out an existence by "rowing vegetables on the plots of land they bought and with which they were left stranded. Land was sold that was ofill at the bottom of the -ea. For here it was intended to enclose a space, as has been done in the case of thousands of aerci* all along the Florida .shore, and to force the snn.l from the sea bottom by suction pumps in order to make an artificial island mil then enclose the v'hole by a surrounding concrete wall. At Fort Lauderdale, a colony laid out in imitation of Venice, ami as large, the artificial islands arc -till joined to each other by 200 beautiful concrete bridges looking like marble and modelled on the Rinlto ;il a cost of £-2000 each. The islands arc t!:ere. and so are the bridges, hut the roads have never been constructed nor the houses built. Xot only can much laud in Florida be lnul for nothing, but the unfortunate owners will pay a premium to anyone who will take it over, together with its liability in" rates and State taxes. The collapse of the great Florida land boom in 1020 was to the observant the first sign of the coming storm.