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History of Hollywood
From its formal incorporation by adoption of a municipal charter on November 28, 1925, the City of Hollywood has transformed itself. Beginning as an undeveloped tract of pine forests, palmetto plants, and tangled undergrowth interspersed with tomato farms and low lying marshland, it has become the second-most populated city in Broward County and the ninth largest city in the State of Florida. Founded by the planning visionary Joseph Wesley Young, a Washington state native and former resident of California and Indiana, the original one square mile of farmland has grown to over 28.87 square miles with a gross taxable value of real and personal property in 1998 of over $5,408,266,000.
With the formation of the Hollywood Land and Water Company, composed of twenty-six departments covering every aspect of city-building, Joseph Young began earnestly bringing to reality his vision of Hollywood. In February 1921 Young purchased at approximately $175 per acre the first parcel of land that would evolve into present-day Hollywood. Young was successful in attracting numerous potential Hollywood residents to visit and eventually purchase property in Hollywood. By 1925, the Florida real estate market had reached all-time highs with speculators constantly bidding up Hollywood real estate in a frenzy of buying. Construction continued at a rapid pace with the building of the Hollywood Boulevard Bridge across the Intracoastal Waterway at the cost of $110,000. By January 1926, Hollywood numbered approximately 2,420 dwellings with approximately 18,000 people, thirty-six apartment buildings, 252 business buildings and nine hotels either completed or under construction. The city had grown to include 18,000 acres, six-and-a-half miles of oceanfront and an assessed value of $20,000,000. With this phenomenal growth, residents from the neighboring communities of Hallandale to the south and Dania to the north petitioned the legislature and the Hollywood City Commission to permit their annexation into Hollywood.
During this period, Hollywood had also been expanding its residential stock of homes by building new residences in the western reaches of Hollywood in an area that would become the Hollywood Hills section. Young had contracted with the Highway Construction Company of Ohio and its founder, Samuel Horvitz, to begin construction in this area. By February 1927, in the aftermath of the hurricane and the ensuing collapse of the real estate market, construction had ceased as Young found himself unable to meet financial commitments to Horvitz and other lenders.
Undeterred, Joseph Young's vision of his "Dream City" included one last inspiration. While grounded in a speedboat on a mud flat in shallow Lake Mabel one afternoon, Young developed his visionary concept while awaiting rescue from his predicament. His idea was to dredge a deep-water seaport from the shallow lake north of Hollywood to the Atlantic Ocean, so that ships from around the world could dock and disembark eager visitors and tourists to Hollywood. In February 1928, Young's vision became a reality. From that initial predicament, the present day Port Everglades grew from a shallow lake into one of the busiest seaports in Florida.
Despite his best efforts to promote the new seaport and the City of Hollywood, Young's precarious financial situation caused him to ultimately lose control of his vast Hollywood holdings to a sheriff's auction on the steps of a Fort Lauderdale courthouse in 1930. Young continued to live in his beloved city until April 1934, when he collapsed in his Hollywood Boulevard home and died of heart failure at the age of 51.
In the wake of Young's financial collapse and untimely death, two of his principal creditors formed new corporations in an attempt to renew the growth of Hollywood. Led by Hollywood, Inc., a slow but perceptible growth was re-ignited in Hollywood in the decade of the 1930s. Early in the 30s, construction began on Federal Highway (U.S. 1), the main north-south route to the industrial northeast, from Dania to Hollywood. Construction also began on the Hollywood Hills Inn on the site of the westernmost circle. In 1932, the inn was converted into the Riverside Military Academy and the circle renamed Academy Circle. By 1934, the city added to its recreational facilities with the opening of the Orangebrook Golf and Country Club and Dowdy Field, a local baseball park that later became the spring training home of the Baltimore Orioles for a short while. In 1935, the city added a water softener system to its municipal water plant and the original Fiesta Tropicale celebration was inaugurated.
Continuing its growth into the decade of the 1950s, a $1,000,000 bond referendum providing funds for the construction of Hollywood Memorial Hospital was passed in 1951 after an initial rejection by the city's electorate. The hospital was opened in February 1953, providing 100 hospital beds and a major medical facility for southern Broward County. In 1952, Joseph Watson became Hollywood's twenty-second city manager since the city's incorporation in 1925. During the next eighteen years, Hollywood would know only one city manager. In 1954, Hollywood Boulevard was extended from State Road 7 westward to U.S. 27 along the eastern edge of the Everglades in Broward County. This triggered the westward expansion of the city. The remainder of the decade saw the continued growth of Hollywood as Hollywood, Inc., moved ahead with the development of the Hollywood Hills section and set aside a tract of land for the future Hollywood Mall. In 1958, Hollywood celebrated the opening of the Diplomat Hotel on Hollywood Beach and for years thereafter, the Diplomat Hotel became the temporary residence of many of America's celebrities, entertainers, and dignitaries as they visited, performed, and basked in Florida's warm winter sun.
By the beginning of the 1960s, Hollywood had over 12,171 single family homes and 2,422 hotel units in addition to thousands of other housing structures. In 1964, the county's tallest cooperative office-apartment building at the time, the eighteen-story Home Federal Tower, was constructed in downtown Hollywood. A spurt of growth during this decade resulted in an increase of the housing stock to 35,045 single-family residences with a similar increase in other accommodations. In the middle part of this decade, Hollywood's municipal boundaries continued to expand from its eastern border on the Atlantic Ocean to new areas of unincorporated Broward County to the west, north, and south. From a population of 22,978 in 1955, Hollywood grew to 35,237 in 1960, almost doubling to 67,500 in 1965, expanding to 106,873 by 1970, and finally reaching over 121,400 by 1975. During this period of explosive growth, Hollywood instituted a growth management program which revised land use controls in an effort to manage and improve the quality and quantity of development so that needed public improvements and services could be coordinated with the barely controllable population growth
Celebrating the city's Fiftieth Anniversary in 1975, Hollywood adopted the nickname the "Diamond of the Gold Coast." In its anniversary year, Joseph Young's "Dream City" had grown to include over 27,500 single-family residences, 34,581 apartments and other types of residential structures and a population exceeding 125,400 people.
In recent years, Hollywood has continued to add luster to its reputation as the Diamond of the Gold Coast with the opening of the Anne Kolb Nature Center located in Hollywood's West Lake Tract. The center boasts over 1,500 acres of mangrove preserves and is the site of a protected bird rookery and sanctuary as well as a fish nursery ground. On Hollywood's North Beach, a sea turtle hatchery and preserve has been developed. The historic downtown arts district along Harrison Street and the Hollywood Art & Culture Center have become centers of activity in the cultural arts and entertainment communities of South Florida.
Prior to 2000, the four members of the City Commission and the Mayor were elected in citywide elections with the Mayor serving a two-year term and the Commissioners a four-year term. In November 1998, residents' indicated their willingness to consider expanding the number of Commissioners to six, each elected by a distinct district rather than citywide. In March 1999, voters narrowly approved a charter revision to divide the city into six districts; each represented by its own commissioner and expanded the term of the Mayor from two years to four years. The primary and general elections in February and March 2000 were the first held under the new system. In 2010, additional revisions to the Hollywood Charter were approved by the electorate to establish term limits and staggered terms for elected officials. To facilitate the change; the Mayor and Commissioners elected in even number Districts in 2012 will serve a four-year term. They will be eligible for reelection in November, 2016. Commissioners in odd number Districts elected in 2012, will serve a six-year term. They will be eligible for reelection in November, 2018. Individuals are eligible to serve twelve consecutive years as Mayor, and from a particular district as a Commissioner.
What is next for Hollywood? While buildings and roads and infrastructure are important, the real future of Hollywood lies with its new generations that will mature to lead the City to even greater heights barely imaginable by Joseph Young in 1925. As important as our history might be, the past is merely prologue to the future.