Victorian Florida: America's Last Frontier"The muffled blast of a hunter's gun and the eerie night sounds of an Everglades swamp. The rustle of petticoats and the carefree clink of champagne glasses. The delicate aroma of orange blossoms wafting through the Florida air. Victorian Florida, It was a time and place of elegance and grace, ambition and exploration, gaiety and wealth. By train and by steamship, the inquisitive and the adventurous came to sample the exotic fruits of this last frontier. Among them was railroad and resort entrepreneur Henry M. Flagler, whose grand hotels the Ponce de Leon (St. Augustine), the Royal Poinciana (Palm Beach), and the Royal Palm (Miami) — were models of opulence and luxury and drew to their doors the cream of American society. The real stars of Victorian Florida, however, are not the tourists or the sportsmen or the developers. They are the eyes of the photographers and the natural beauty of the state itself. Scores of amateur and professional photographers, including such well-known and highly respected practitioners of the art as William H. Jackson, O, Pierre Havens, and Benjamin F. Upton, traveled to Florida to take advantage of its unique photo opportunities. The incongruity of the Victorian tradition imposed upon this lush, untamed wilderness created compelling and fascinating images which linger in the mind's eye. Floyd and Marion Rinhart recapture this elusive era in the southernmost state within this exquisite volume. Collected over the course of the Rinharts' thirty years of study and research into the history of photography, these photographs, most published here for the first time, tell the story of a lifestyle long passed and yet still cherished."--Dust jacket flaps. |
Contents
Introduction | 7 |
Winter Migration | 15 |
Fernandina and Fort George Island | 31 |
Copyright | |
12 other sections not shown
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