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Regulating Resort Revelry: Alcohol, Music, and the Entertainment Market in Miami Beach, 1935–1955
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 April 2021
Abstract
Miami Beach was the nation’s premier winter resort between the 1930s and the 1950s. The city attracted a diverse crowd of visitors, some interested in a peaceful respite from the frigid north, others drawn by the drinking, dancing, and musical entertainment offered by its many bars and nightclubs. As part of an elaborate effort to sustain the city’s lively symbiotic urban leisure-services economy, the Miami Beach City Council addressed three types of market failures: chaotic competition, interproducer conflicts, and monopolistic business practices. This article demonstrates how these practices expressed a coherent vernacular philosophy of regulated capitalism arising from the city’s identity as a collective economic enterprise.
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- © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.
References
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Google Scholar
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Google Scholar
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Google Scholar
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Google Scholar
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Google Scholar
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Miami News
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Google Scholar
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Boyer, Paul. Urban Masses and Moral Order, 1820–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Braden, Susan R. The Architecture of Leisure: The Florida Resort Hotels of Henry Flagler and Henry Plant. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Brown, Dona. Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Corbett, Theodore. The Making of American Resorts: Saratoga Springs, Ballston Spa, Lake George. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Czitrom, Daniel. New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal That Launched the Progressive Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Davis, Marni. Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition. New York: New York University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Dorr, Lisa Lindquist. A Thousand Thirsty Beaches: Smuggling Alcohol from Cuba to the South during Prohibition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Findlay, John M. People of Chance: Gambling in American Society from Jamestown to Las Vegas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Foster, Mark S. Castles in the Sand: The Life and Times of Carl Graham Fisher. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Gilfoyle, Timothy J. City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790–1920. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.Google Scholar
Kolko, Gabriel. Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamonaca, Marianne, and Mogul, Jonathan, eds. Grand Hotels of the Jazz Age: The Architecture of Schultze & Weaver. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi R. The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895–1904. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lerner, Michael A. Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ling, Sally J. Run the Rum In: South Florida During Prohibition. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007.Google Scholar
McCracken, Robert D. Las Vegas: The Great American Playground. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1997.Google Scholar
McCraw, Thomas K. Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
McGirr, Lisa. The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State. New York: W. W. Norton, 2016.Google Scholar
Merrill, Dennis. Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Twentieth-Century Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mormino, Gary R. Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.Google Scholar
Murdock, Catherine Gilbert. Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870–1940. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Novak, William J. The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, Sheilagh. The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Okrent, Daniel. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Scribner, 2010.Google Scholar
Peretti, Burton W. Nightclub City: Politics and Amusement in Manhattan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Rod. Alcohol: A History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Revels, Tracy J. Sunshine Paradise: A History of Florida Tourism. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011.Google Scholar
Sandoval-Strausz, A. K. Hotel: An American History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Rosalie. Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Sherry, Madam. Pleasure Was My Business. As told to S. Robert Tralins. New York: Paperback Library, 1963.Google Scholar
Stanonis, Anthony J. Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918–1945. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Stanonis, Anthony J. Faith in Bikinis: Politics and Leisure in the Coastal South since the Civil War. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Sterngass, Jon. First Resorts: Pursuing Pleasure at Saratoga Springs, Newport & Coney Island. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Tarr, Joel, ed. Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Willis, Lee L. Southern Prohibition: Race, Reform, and Public Life in Middle Florida, 1821–1920. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Beito, David T., and Beito, Linda Royster. “The ‘Lodger Evil’ and the Transformation of Progressive Housing Reform, 1890–1930.” Independent Review 20, no. 4 (Spring 2016): 485–508.Google Scholar
Boudreaux, Donald J., and Meiners, Roger. “Externality: Origins and Classifications.” Natural Resources Journal 59, no. 1 (Winter 2019): 1–34.Google Scholar
Campbell, Ballard C. “Understanding Economic Change in the Gilded Age.” OAH Magazine of History 13, no. 4 (Summer 1999): 16–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clemente, Deirdre. “Made in Miami: The Development of the Sportswear Industry in South Florida, 1900–1960.” Journal of Social History 41, no.1 (Fall 2007): 127–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Vries, Jan. “Review of Sheilagh Ogilvie, The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis,” EH.net, March 2019, https://eh.net/book_reviews/the-european-guilds-an-economic-analysis/.Google Scholar
Erenberg, Lewis A. “From New York to Middletown: Repeal and the Legitimization of Nightlife in the Great Depression.” American Quarterly 38, no. 5 (Winter 1986): 761–778.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guthrie, John J. Jr. “Property, Privacy, Police Power, and Prohibition Enforcement: The Judicial Response to the Intoxicating Liquor Laws in Florida, 1885–1935.” PhD diss., University of Florida, 1993.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Shane. “The Populist Appeal of Deregulation: Independent Truckers and the Politics of Free Enterprise, 1935–1980.” Enterprise & Society 10, no. 1 (March 2009): 137–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keire, Mara L. “The Committee of Fourteen and Saloon Reform in New York City, 1905–1920.” Business and Economic History 26, no. 2 (Winter 1997): 573–583.Google Scholar
McCormick, Richard L. “The Discovery that Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism.” American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (April 1981): 247–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nord, David. “The Experts versus the Experts: Conflicting Philosophies of Municipal Utility Regulation in the Progressive Era.” Wisconsin Magazine of History 58, no. 3 (Spring 1975): 219–236.Google Scholar
Quance, Peter. “Introduction: Regulation and Municipal Licensing.” In Regulation by Municipal Licensing, edited by Bossons, John D., Makuch, Stanley M., and Palmer, John, 3–22. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Revell, Keith D. “From Urban Citizens to Ocean Liners: Miami Beach Hotels and the Enclosure Movement, 1935–1955.” Journal of Urban History, Online First (https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144220904950).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Revell, Keith D. “Luxury Hotels and Urban Hostels: Carl Fisher, Resort Architecture, and the Contrasting Worlds of Miami Beach’s Pre-Depression-Era Lodging.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 79, no.1 (March 2020): 39–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Revell, Keith D. “The Rise and Fall of Copa City: Nightclubs and the Evolution of Miami Beach.” Florida Historical Quarterly 95 (Spring 2017): 538–576.Google Scholar
Rosen, Christine Meisner. “The Role of Pollution Regulation and Litigation in the Development of the U.S. Meatpacking Industry, 1865–1880.” Enterprise & Society 8, no. 2 (June 2007): 297–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, Jay. “The Wet War: American Liquor Control, 1941–1945.” In Alcohol, Reform, and Society: The Liquor Issue in Social Context, edited by Blocker, Jack S. Jr., 235–258. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Schantz, Eric M. “All Night at the Owl: The Social and Political Relations of Mexicali’s Red-Light District, 1913–1925.” Journal of the Southwest 43, no. 4 (2001): 549–602.Google ScholarPubMed
Schantz, Eric M. “Behind the Noir Border: Tourism, the Vice Racket, and Power Relations in Baja California’s Border Zone, 1938–65.” In Holiday in Mexico: Critical Reflections on Tourism and Tourist Encounters, edited by Berger, Dina and Grant, Andrew, 130–160. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schragger, Richard C. “Mobile Capital, Local Economic Development, and the Democratic City.” Harvard Law Review 123 (December 2009): 482–540
Google Scholar
Stack, Martin. “Local and Regional Breweries in America’s Brewing Industry, 1865 to 1920.” Business History Review 74 (Autumn 2000): 435–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szymanski, Ann-Marie. “Regulatory Transformations in a Changing City: The Anti-Smoke Movement in Baltimore, 1895–1931.” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 13 (July 2014): 336–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carl Graham Fisher Papers, HistoryMiami, Miami, Florida.Google Scholar
Claude Renshaw Papers, HistoryMiami, Miami, Florida.
Google Scholar
Governor Spessard Holland Papers, Series 406, State Archives of Florida, Tallahassee, Florida.
Google Scholar
Henry Hohauser Scrapbook, Wolfsonian Museum, Miami Beach, Florida.
Google Scholar
Miami Beach City Council Minutes, Office of the Clerk, City of Miami Beach, Miami Beach, Florida.
Google Scholar
Miami Beach City Council Supporting Documents, Office of the Clerk, City of Miami Beach, Miami Beach, Florida.Google Scholar
Miami Beach Tourist Commission Minutes, Pamphlets and Miscellany Files, City of Miami Beach Historical Archives, Office of the Clerk, City of Miami Beach, Miami Beach, Florida.
Google Scholar
Special Collections, Otto G. Richter Library, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida.Google Scholar
Vertical Files, HistoryMiami, Miami, Florida.
Google Scholar
Billboard
Google Scholar
Chicago Tribune
Google Scholar
Fortune
Google Scholar
Miami Herald
Google Scholar
Miami News
Google Scholar
Variety
Google Scholar