Before anyone else was selling a dream with an ocean view, there was Ocean Beach Realty Company, Miami’s first full-service realtors.
The Ocean Beach Realty Company opened in Miami Beach in 1912, paving the way for the development of what is now South Beach.
A snapshot of today’s booming Miami skyline—and the cranes building it—is indicative of the city’s layered history encompassing over a century of real estate development. More than 100 years ago, one real estate firm, the Ocean Beach Realty Company, started it all and helped create the city we know today as Miami Beach.
In 1911, a group of visionaries had converged around the idea that Miami Beach could be the country’s next greatest tourism destination. Land developer, businessman, and agriculturalist John S. Collins had begun developing various orchards along the Miami Beach peninsula; his son-in-law, T.J. Pancoast, relocated from New Jersey to support the developments.
“Mr. Collins’s idea was to pattern it after Atlantic City, NJ, as Atlantic City at that time was the summer playground of the United States, and to make this the winter playground,” said Arthur Pancoast, Collins’s grandson, in the book The Magic of Miami Beach. “From that point on, of course, his showmanship and salesmanship took over, and the city has gradually evolved until it really is fabulous.”
Collins quickly realized the potential for Miami Beach, and with Pancoast, and funds from two local banks headed by brothers J.N. and J.E. Lummus, began construction on the Collins Toll Bridge to connect downtown Miami to the Beach. Then, with half of the bridge completed—and out of funds—the Lummus brothers left their positions in finance for a more lucrative venture in real estate and created the Ocean Beach Realty Company, pictured here in 1912. They snapped up 605 acres of swamp land from what is today’s South of Fifth neighborhood to Lincoln Road, paying anywhere from $150 to $12,500 per acre, starting what would one day be known as South Beach.
A year later, in 1913, Collins was able to complete his toll bridge, allowing residents to come to and from Miami Beach, thus launching a flurry of real estate action. Today, a multitude of real estate developers plan, build, and sell some of the world’s most sought-after projects in this oceanfront community, upholding the vision Collins, the Lummus brothers, and Ocean Beach Realty Company had for Miami Beach.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STATE ARCHIVES OF FLORIDA, FLORIDA MEMORY