The areas surveyed during the course of this project contain many popular residential subdivisions that were created in Fort Lauderdale during the 1920s and 1930s.  They include Rio Vista, Colee Hammock, Idlewyld, Beverly Heights, Lauder Del Mar, and Las Olas by the Sea.  Each of these subdivisions is a visually distinct area.  They have varying street plans and are set off from neighboring developments by natural or manmade boundaries.  For the most part, these subdivisions are located southeast of the original platted section of Fort Lauderdale.  With the exception of Rio Vista, they are tied together by East Las Olas Boulevard, which runs east to west from the Atlantic oceanfront to downtown Fort Lauderdale.

Although each of the subdivisions has a separate history, they share a common period of development.  With the exception of Las Olas by the Sea, which was first platted in 1914, all of the subdivisions were recorded during the 1920s.  They all witnessed an intense period of development during the great Florida Land Boom years of the mid-1920s and continued to grow, though at a more moderate pace, during the 1930s.  The developmental history of these subdivisions is linked to the larger story of Fort Lauderdale's development as a whole.  Accordingly, a brief discussion of the city's evolution is necessary to provide a context for reviewing the historical development of the survey area.¹

The development of the area in and around Fort Lauderdale was insured after Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward in 1904 instituted a program of internal improvements for Florida.  Among the priorities of Broward's plan was the drainage of the Everglades to claim valuable land in the southern portion of the state.  Fort Lauderdale was among the areas that became a focal point for the drainage program.  By 1910 the Fort Lauderdale settlement had 143 residents.  The Town of Ft.  Lauderdale was incorporated in 1911, and subsequently began a period of rapid development.²

America's entrance into World War I ended Fort Lauderdale's first period of development.  For two years during the conflict, building in the town was brought to a standstill while its citizens turned their attention to the war effort.  At the close of the conflict in 1918 Fort Lauderdale had approximately 2,000 residents. it was the seat of Broward County, formed in 1915 out of parts of Dade and Palm Beach counties.  The economy was tied to vegetable and citrus farming.  There were three dry goods stores, ten grocery stores, one hardware and furniture store, one five and ten cent store, an undertaking parlor, two second hand stores, four garages, an ice and electric plant, two novelty works and planing mills, a city water works, a fire department, a school, two newspapers, four doctors, five lawyers, three dentists, three barber shops, two blacksmith shops, two pool rooms, two banks, and eight churches.  There was a boulevard to the beach, where the city had created a public park and D.C. Alexander had begun development of a new subdivision, which he called Las Olas by the Sea.³

David Clifford Alexander was born in Butler, Pennsylvania on March 25, 1883.  A Year later his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio where Alexander grew up and attended high school.  He went on to attend Western Reserve University in Ohio, and later graduated from Stanford in California where he established himself as an all-around athlete.  After graduation, Alexander spent some time working at a bank in Kansas before moving to Fort Lauderdale in 1909.⁴

While in California, Alexander noted the economic possibilities of developing oceanfront property.  With this in mind, he formed the D.C. Alexander and Company real estate firm and purchased a thirty-two acre tract of land between the New River and the Atlantic Ocean from Thomas E. Watson in August 1913.  The purchase of the property by Alexander removed a major barrier to the development of the beach, since most of the property there was owned by wealthy sportsmen who regarded the area as their private hunting ground.  Watson, a native of Thompson, Georgia, had built a hunting lodge on the property that would later serve as the first hotel on the beach.  Alexander planned to develop the property as a recreational area for residents and tourists.  Immediate plans called for the construction of a causeway from the mainland to the beach and the building of a dance and amusement pavilion.  These were to be finished by that November at the south end of the property on the bay.  During this time a survey of the area was made and the official plat of the area, which Alexander named Las Olas by the Sea, was finished by the New River Engineering Firm in January, 1914 (Figure 2).⁵