Good Old Days If we are making history every day, it’s time to start getting it right
I
n this issue, we take a look at what was Delray’s oldest settlement, ca.1894, known as The Sands, and named a historic district on the Local Register of Historic Places in 1997 (page 53). The West Settlers Historic District, once a close-knit community of farmers and fishermen and, later, merchants and teachers and construction workers, gradually underwent its own diaspora over the years after the civil rights era dissolved many barriers, and schools and neighborhoods were integrated. Its main street still survives, along with some of the older houses and buildings and churches—as do other less attractive vestiges of those earlier times, like the Lake Ida wall that still separates the black community from the white. With Delray’s rapid growth, history feels more important to me these days than even a few years ago. I like that I know Swinton Avenue runs along a higher, older coastal ridge, or that around 1842, Seminole Indians camped around what is Lake Ida today. That John Shaw Sundy was Delray’s first mayor in 1910—and served seven terms. I know in the 1920s and 30s Delray had its own cartoonist colony that gathered at the Arcade Tap Room (Where the Wine Room Kitchen & Bar is now) and that during World War II, Delray citizen volunteers watched 24 hours a day from the “bell tower” of the old Seacrest Hotel (now the Opal Grand) for German U boats. It is a lively history, often flawed but fueled by a deep sense of place. Like the old saying goes, it’s important to know where you came from in order to go forward—and sometimes, especially in light of recent city government blunders, I wonder if the city has lost its sense of identity and vision. Maybe we need to take a moment to think about what kind of chapter we are creating, and how we are adding to the Delray story. It’s a story worth living up to.
FIVE (MORE) THINGS I LOVE ABOUT DELRAY [ 1 ] Putt’n Around [ 2 ] The drive-in Bodega on
Northeast Second Avenue
[ 3 ] Watching the Christmas parade
from the Porch Bar
[ 4 ] Corned beef and eggs for
breakfast at Christina’s
[ 5 ] That Pat’s Beverages delivers
20
delray beach magazine
EDITORS LETTER ND21.indd 20
november/december 2021
10/11/21 10:16 AM
