Henry M. Flagler
 of Palm Beach, Florida

Added: Sunday April 17, 2011
 

The Town of Palm Beach, Florida is Celebrating the 100th
Anniversary of its  Incorporation on April 17, 1911.

By WILLIAM KELLY - DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Posted: 6:25 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11, 2010

The town launched its Centennial celebration Saturday by honoring the man who
transformed Palm Beach from a swampy coastal settlement into a world-class
destination for the elite.

A bronze statue of Henry M. Flagler was unveiled at 11 a.m. on the westernmost
median of Royal Poinciana Way before a crowd of about 200 people. The
11-foot-tall likeness of the industrial titan faces west, welcoming drivers and
pedestrians arriving in town from a bridge also named in his honor.

“No other individual has had a more positive or lasting influence than Henry Flagler
has had on Florida,” said G.F. Robert Hanke, Flagler’s great-grandson and a retired
Marine Corps colonel who donated the statue.

The statue is a replica of a monument unveiled in St. Augustine in 1916. Other
replicas were erected in Miami and Key West in 2006
.
Flagler objected to the display of the original statue, commissioned in 1902 by his
third wife, Mary Lily Kenan. As a result, it was stored in a railroad depot, on the
spot in present-day Bradley Park where Saturday’s ceremony took place, until its
erection in St. Augustine three years after his death, said Bill Bone, chairman of
the town’s Centennial Commission.

Flagler Museum Director John Blades proposed installing a replica of the statue in
Palm Beach in 1999. But the project languished because of disagreement over where
it should stand. This year, the Town Council approved the Royal Poinciana Way median
as a temporary site. The statue will probably be moved to a different location, farther
east on Royal Poinciana Way, after construction begins next year on a new Flagler
Memorial Bridge.

Born in 1830 in Hopewell, N.Y., Flagler co-founded Standard Oil before turning his
attention in the 1880s to the development of Florida’s east coast. He founded Palm
Beach, West Palm Beach, Miami and what became the Florida East Coast Railway to
carry guests to the hotels he built between St. Augustine and Key West.
“He was a visionary and a dreamer,” Mayor Jack McDonald said. “His vision shines
brightly today.”

When Flagler arrived here in 1893, he found scrub land and swamp, with a local
population that spread from Hypoluxo Island to Juno Beach, local historian Jim
Ponce said. Flagler decided to build a resort on Palm Beach, named for non-native
palms planted from coconuts that washed ashore after an 1878 shipwreck.
“He found a wilderness here and he made the wilderness bloom"