The West Settlers Historic District charts community and change in Delray’s oldest neighborhood BY RICH POLLACK ennis Murray was 5 years old in 1950 when his family moved from a farmworker’s camp west of Delray Beach to a home of their own on Northwest Fifth Avenue, then the heart of the city’s tightly knit Black community. “It was the first time we had indoor plumbing and running water,” says Murray, whose family set roots in the area almost a century ago. “The bathtub and the shower were new inventions to us; we’d never seen them before.” Outside the home, Murray and his family found a thriving African-American business community lining Fifth Avenue in the 1950s and ‘60s, filled with restaurants, grocery stores as well as a pool Photos Courtesy of Delray Beach Historical Society and Spady Museum delray beach magazine
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