PBSCV1599
Gen. James Patton Anderson Camp 1599
Celebrating 34 Years 1992 - 2026
Blue Heron Hotel - Never Completed - Demolished 1940
The History of Singer Island
www.singerisland.com/the-history-of-singer-island/​
First occupied by the Jaega Indians approximately 3,000 years
ago, the first record of a non-indigenous settlement on Singer
Island was in 1906 with Inlet City. Inlet City was a spontaneous
community of fishermen and squatters, most of whom came from
nearby Riviera Beach and the Bahamas. Fishermen were attracted
to the island as a place to dry the cotton nets that they used in those
days, and for its proximity to the fertile Gulf Stream (the waters of
the Gulf Stream are closer to land on Singer Island than any other
place in North America).
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Singer Island history begins with Paris Eugene Singer, the famous developer of Palm Beach and 23rd child of Isaac Singer, the sewing machine magnate (Paris also fathered a son with legendary dancer Isadora Duncan in 1910 who died in an automobile accident in Paris in 1913). In 1920, he visited Palm Beach and met Addison Mizner. He agreed to pay the architect a $6,000 a year retainer for life if his work was confined exclusively to the Palm Beach area. With Mizner, he created the Palm Beach we know today with its Spanish architecture, picturesque streets and exclusive shops. Singer often took his friends on picnics to the beautiful island directly north of Palm Beach. In anticipation of the Florida real estate boom, he and Mizner planned to develop a luxurious resort (the Paris Singer Hotel) on the south end of the island and a modest hotel (the Blue Heron) on the north end with a 36 hole golf course between the two structures.
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The estimated price was four million dollars – a fantastic amount in those years. Mizner was to design the hotels, but it is said Singer was so eager to start, construction of the Blue Heron was begun before the drawings were started. The opening date was set for 1926. The hotel’s service wing was the first and the last to be completed. Singer’s original plan was to finance the building from the sale of lots throughout the island. The Florida land boom was already slowing down in 1925, and the combination of 1928 hurricane and 1929 stock market crash dealt a mortal blow to Singer’s finances. The shell of the Blue Heron (pictured below) remained for 14 years, until Paris Singer’s dream finally came to an end when the the abandoned, incomplete hotel was razed in 1940 (the Hilton Hotel stands there now).
The Palm Beach Post Sun, Apr. 7, 1940
Page 11
BLUE HERON SKELETON WILL BE RAZED SOON
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Announcement was made Saturday that the incomplete structure of the old Blue Heron Hotel on Singer's Island north of Palm Beach Inlet is to be razed within the next 10 months.
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Orrin Randolph confirmed the report. The hotel shell has been standing 15 years and is regarded by many as a menace. L. T. Gaylord, vice-president of the Atlantic Gulf and Pacific Company, New York, which purchased the structure, has informed Mr. Randolph that the company has entered into a contract with Scott and Whitaker, of Miami, the firm that razed the old Poinciana Hotel, to remove the structure within 10 months.
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However, the company has reserved the right to let the two lower floors stand, if they decide to do so. Preliminary work in razing the old building is underway. The company owns 1,300 feet of ocean front in connection with the building, and the removal of the Blue Heron is expected to be a step forward in the development of the section.
Sources:
Palm Beach Post, Dec. 11, 1925
Palm Beach Post, March 17, 1925
Tuckwood, Jan, ed. Palm Beach County at 100. Jupiter: Palm Beach Post, 2009.
By Jane Feehan
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​Paris Singer (d. 1932), of the sewing machine family and fortune, was a key player in the early days of Palm Beach. He and friend Addison Mizner collaborated on the Everglades Club in 1918. Boom times eventually beckoned both to separate projects. Mizner’s next phase awaited him in Boca Raton. Singer set his eyes on a piece of land north of Palm Beach, known to us today as Singer Island.
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Singer, once paramour of American dancer Isadora Duncan, had big plans for his new development. “He was destined to make the north end of Palm Beach another Coney Island,” newspaper accounts claimed in 1925. “Eventually he will present to Palm Beach and the world a popular playground where the common folk may enjoy the advantages offered by Coney Island, Brighton Beach and other watering places throughout the country.”
Work began on a $2.5 million hotel, the Blue Heron. It was half-finished when the bottom dropped out of the land market in the late 1920s. A skeleton of a developer’s dream-turned-nightmare, the Blue Heron, which was to include an 18-hole golf course, stood as mournful reminder of the collapse until it was finally demolished during World War II.
Paris Singer
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory
A bridge from the mainland to Singer Island was completed in 1926. A second one replaced it in 1949. By 1976, the Blue Heron Bridge, named for the long-gone Singer hotel, opened. A taller, grander one than its predecessors, this bridge (and boulevard of the same name) serves as a salute to Singer Island, a somewhat different version of the original Paris Singer dream.