Boca Raton is turning 100 this year, and city officials have put together ways to celebrate with the residents while reflecting on the city’s history.
The city was officially incorporated in May 1925 when the population was about 5,000 and farming was a key highlight. The rustic community grew as a destination through the decades. In recent years, it has featured one of the region’s fastest-growing downtowns, sprouting more developments. The city’s population nowadays has reached about 100,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
So what brought and kept so many people to a city that’s now known internationally? And why celebrate it?
Understanding the history of the city where one lives gives people “a better understanding of where you are, why it is that way, who formed it to be that way,” said Shannon Patron, the Boca Raton Historical Society education director. “It gives you that sense of place and then a sense of community.”
And with the potential for more growth, without preservation efforts, the city’s history could vanish forever, says Historical Society curator Susan Gillis. It’s something she’s fighting against.
“Once it’s gone, it’s gone. It’s not Disney. You can’t recreate it,” she said on a recent morning from her office adorned with old Boca Raton memorabilia, including a poster of Charlie Chaplin posing with an IBM computer.
The Boca Raton Historical Society, along with past and present city officials, recently spoke with the South Florida Sun Sentinel about the city’s rich history as the city celebrates its centennial. Here are some highlights.
A brief history
Well before Boca Raton was marked by wealth in the form of luxury sports cars, apartments overlooking the ocean with soaring rent prices and real-estate-tycoon residents donning expensive watches, the Abaniki Indians, who pre-dated Christopher Columbus, established homes on the shores of Lake Boca Raton and Lake Wyman, according to city archives.
Along with the indigenous groups, old maps indicate the Boca Raton inlet served as a pirate refuge. And though the city’s name translates in Spanish to “rat’s mouth,” Boca de Ratones was more likely referencing the navigational term referring to a rocky or jagged inlet, according to the Historical Society.
From 1895 to 1925, the population grew from 10 to 5,000, with farming being a key driver for this uptick. Boca Raton’s land was advertised as being “below danger of frost,” which was a delight for farmers who grew a variety of crops including pineapples, oranges, grapefruit, strawberries, bananas, mangoes, beans, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, onion, squash and more.
“It was really, really rustic here,” Gillis said.
It was around 1925 that Addison Mizner, a famous architect whose namesake is found across the city, not only discovered Boca Raton but decided to “put us quite literally on the map,” Gillis said.
“It was a glorious time to be a property owner,” she said.
The population boomed even more during World War II when the land that now houses Florida Atlantic University became a military base, bringing in many families to Boca Raton.
“That was an incredible boon to the local economy,” Gillis said.
A few decades later, the arrival of IBM and its quick ascent into becoming the city’s primary employer signaled another significant shift.
“IBM Boca was the center of IBM world for a while, and it brought all sorts of people to town and, of course, a lot of money,” Gillis said. “All these families came to town, and they had money, and they were well-educated and they wanted cultural institutions. They wanted good educational institutions. They wanted good religious institutions. So all of those things improved because of this massive group of people that needed this.”
‘More cosmopolitan’
Boca Raton may have become somewhat of a paradise among an undeveloped South Florida, or a “desolate, raw area,” as city Mayor Scott Singer put it, but Singer also has theories on how it has maintained its prestige.
“Not only do we have a new office that was approved two years ago and is underway, but we had proposals from some of the leading developers in the world to invest more than a billion dollars in our downtown through a public-private partnership,” Singer said.
“We’re pushing for something more than just a city hall, an integrated whole to create a place for residents that they want to be, and that can help attract jobs and create vibrancy because we understand that cities need new refreshed investment and revitalization to remain current.”
The billion-dollar downtown project will be brought to the city’s government campus at the intersection of Palmetto Park Road and Northwest Second Avenue and will include, among other features: more than 1,000 apartments, offices, a new city hall, shops, restaurants and “pedestrian experiences.”
And the former IBM site, which drove so much of Boca Raton’s growth in its heyday, is now set for a dramatic transformation: The Boca Raton Innovation Campus, also known as BRiC, will be like a “micro-city” within Boca Raton as the current organization behind it has leased out much of the office park to various science, tech and health care industries and now plans to add apartments, restaurants and shops.
Mixed-use projects such as the one coming to BRiC and the city’s government campus have taken off in Boca Raton, further illustrating the city’s growth. Many more plans are afoot: The city’s Tri-Rail station could see an eight-story development with homes, restaurants and shops. And in the city’s Midtown area, a six-story residential community is soon set to rise at 1800 N. Military Trail.
The goal for Boca Raton officials is to entice not just various wealthy industries but to bring in new residents and tourists, too.
“There’s been a care and concern embedded in our code for a little more refined appearance. As a result, you had a little more refined clientele for a more refined choice of restaurants and shopping and dining. You get name brands here,” Singer said. “Many choices at all ends, but particularly at the medium and high end that attract residents, residents and visitors, and that helps create an image of a more pristine community.”
To kick off the city’s 100th anniversary, city officials unveiled a sculpture in Sanborn Square called “Reflections of Time,” which is essentially a replica of a landmark that welcomed people to the city in the 1960s.
Later this year, to draw people into the centennial celebrations, the city is hosting a concert and drone show on Memorial Day Weekend, which falls on Saturday, May 24, and Sunday, May 25. (Memorial Day will be Monday, May 26.)
And residents have until May to submit an “Ode to Boca,” which is a poem based on one’s ZIP code.
“We have a special place that we are going to protect,” Singer said. “And even now, even as we’ve gotten more cosmopolitan and attracted top-flight brands in retail, in restaurants, in business, we still have small-town charm, tons of natural beauty, tons of planned beauty from our public art to the parks to the beaches, to the appearance codes, to the fact that we have an open stretch of South Florida beach when most cities don’t. All these things are part of that indescribable quality.”
“And the visitors who come here, starting with our roots in what was an elite resort 100 years ago, have that sort of special premium feeling.”
