GLENN CURTIS Aviator with a Theme
In the early days of flying, Glenn Curtiss was the foremost man in the field next to Orville and Wilbur Wright. Pioneer merchant and businessman E. G. Sewell was chief promoter for the City of Miami. He convinced the local population to wear summer clothes year round, and at Miami's fifteenth anniversary celebration in 1911 he showed Miami its first "flying machine." The next day he took a ride on the wing, then promptly invited the Wright brothers south to open a flying school. They turned him down, but Glenn Curtiss consented and sent a representative to open Florida's first school of aviation in 1912. Four years later in Miami, Curtiss met rancher James Bright, and Curtiss moved his airfield onto land in northwest Miami, donated by Bright. They formed a partnership and soon acquired over 100,000 acres that became the Curtiss-Bright Ranch, the largest dairy and poultry farm in the area. From 1921 to 1926 they transformed their farm into a Florida fantasyland by developing it into three residential communities: Hialeah, Country Club Estates, and Opa-locka.

HIALEAH

Like most of inland south Florida, Hialeah was Everglades until a state drainage program enabled it to become "Gateway to the Everglades." The name "Hi-a-le-ah" is Seminole for "pretty prairie," but the Curtiss-Bright propaganda machine turned it into "prettiest pearl in the heap." Lots went on sale in 1921, and Hialeah became the first community in Dade County to use an abundance of Spanish Mission architecture. Curtiss and Bright donated land for schools, churches, and other community facilities. But it didn't stop there. Hialeah went honky-tonk with a greyhound race track, a jockey club, Miami's first jai-alai fronton, and an amusement park, complete with balloon ascension and parachute drop. Gamblers and bootleggers moved in, and "Hialeah rye" became a standard form of refreshment in south Florida. The town even boasted Miami Studios, a motion-picture company. D.W. Griffith's 1923 silent classic The White Rose was made, in part, in Hialeah, and the studios were leased to Pathé for the filming of Black Caesar's Clan. Hialeah did not turn out to be the "Hometown, USA" Curtiss envisioned. The Florida land boom, now racing full steam ahead, had changed the character of the place. Disillusioned, Curtiss and Bright moved on to what they hoped would be a more "genteel" development.

COUNTRY CLUB ESTATES
Curtiss did his surveying from the air and laid out a city that included boulevards lined with Australian pines, a small-business district with a circular plaza, and a golf club. Winding drives led around the residential area, where zoning restrictions required houses to have backyards and be placed at set distances from the street. Industry and big business were not invited, and emphasis was on the area's natural beauty. It was called Country Club Estates. Curtiss had introduced the American Southwest Indian pueblo style to Florida with his own residence in Hialeah, and it was this style that he chose for Country Club Estates. In contrast to Mediterranean Revival, which with its balconies, overhanging roofs, and central courtyards lent itself well to the tropical Florida climate and landscape, pueblo adobe architecture with its thick walls and small windows was more suited to the desert, where there was less humidity. But Curtiss had his vision, and it was pueblo. Moreover, in those boom-time days of stiff competition among developers, exclusive theme communities offered one effective way of attracting attention and buyers.
	The Florida land boom pueblo resembled the authentic Indian pueblo in appearance only: Instead of being made of adobe, stucco was applied to hollow structural tiles. Attached to the buildings' exteriors were fake vigas, which in authentic pueblos are the exposed wooden roof supports that protrude through the outer walls. Building codes prohibited visible roofs, allowing only low-pitched secondary roofs lined with red barrel clay tiles.
By 1926, when Country Club Estates was incorporated, it was 85 percent complete, with 135 homes, the Pueblo Hotel, a golf club, and other commercial buildings. All of this had been constructed in just twenty months. But the collapse of the boom halted work in 1926, and the Pueblo style was abandoned in later construction. On April 15, 1930, an election changed the name to Miami Springs in recognition of fifteen wells, most of them under the golf course, which had been tapped, giving Miami its municipal water supply. Curtiss also gave Miami an airport.

OPA-LOCKA: "THE BAGHDAD OF DADE COUNTY"
	If Glenn Curtiss had been reading Heidi, then Opa-locka might have been Swiss chalets. Instead, Curtiss sent a copy of The One Thousand and One Tales from the Arabian Nights to his New York architect, Bernhardt E. Muller. He designed a magic city with domes, spires, parapets, and minarets which rose from the muckland. What Muller created was like nothing that actually existed in the Arab world. It was total fantasy that could only have come from the Arabian Nights. . . or the Florida land boom.

Even though Curtiss was aware that the land boom was subsiding and backers were becoming scarce, he pressed on, financing the dream himself. It was eventually to include Egyptian, Chinese, and English sections. Construction began in December 1925, and the Administration Building had been completed only a few weeks when the deadly hurricane of 1926 struck. Curtiss put men to work immediately removing all traces of hurricane damage, and the Opa-locka newspaper reported that the hunt club bridle paths "were greatly improved by fallen trees, which made for interesting hurdles." The hurricane was the death knell for the land boom in south Florida, but Curtiss declared, "In times like this, it's men with capital who must keep things going. To hold back will bring on economic collapse."

Through 1926 and into 1927, the Opa-locka buses brought visitors from downtown Miami to visit the Opa-locka Zoo, Dade County's first. An Olympic-size swimming pool was built for the Archery Club. Poolside attractions included the Miss Miami Beauty Pageant of 1927, Johnny Weissmuller, and young swimmer/diver Jackie Ott, billed as the "Most Perfect Boy." The Seaboard Air Line Railroad was persuaded to place its main track through Opa-locka, and in early 1927, when it arrived for the first time at the newly constructed Opa-locka train station, the town put on an Arabian Nights festival that attracted nationwide attention. As 1927 advanced and economic conditions worsened, it became apparent that Opa-locka could not proceed. More than ninety Arabian buildings had been completed when, all construction stopped. Curtiss paid for the town's maintenance and, benefactor to the end, set up a small factory nearby that supported the local population until the stock market crash closed it. Curtiss died the next year at the age of fifty-two. Mrs. Curtiss did not share his passionate love for Opa-locka. When she married her husband's financial advisor, Opa-locka was disinherited and left to fend for itself. Nonetheless, the weathered Islamic buildings stand as a poignant tribute to the dreams and talents of Curtiss and Muller. Even in its dilapidated condition, what remains of Opa-locka evokes an era when nothing was considered too fantastic.