Manhattan Beach, a resort for African-Americans, once flourished in Hanna Park dunes

May 04--The site of what could be Florida's oldest beach resort for African-Americans is hidden somewhere in the dunes of Hanna Park, largely forgotten but kept alive by a handful of surviving photos, a few stories and a surviving 60-cent round-trip train ticket from Jacksonville to this slice of sandy paradise.

For several decades, starting about 1901, Manhattan Beach was a refuge for black beach-goers in segregated Northeast Florida, becoming a bustling place that included pavilions and boardwalks, swimsuit rentals, concessions and vacation homes.

By the mid-1930s it was mostly gone.

"It's in danger of being lost to time," said Brittany Cohill, who began digging into Manhattan Beach's history while a graduate student at the University of North Florida. "How do we not know all of these stories?"

She is now operations manager of the Beaches Museum & History Park and is trying to raise awareness of the old resort. She'd like to see a historical marker placed in what's now Hanna Park, the oceanfront park owned by the city of Jacksonville. And she's also hoping to hear from anyone who has old family stories or photos.

The resort began life around 1900, as railroad magnate and developer Henry Flagler built the grand old wooden Continental Hotel in rural Atlantic Beach, on the oceanfront between Seventh and 10th streets.

Many who helped build it and staff it were black, but they could not use the resort for recreation. So Flagler, having little need for the oceanfront he owned to the north, set part of it aside for blacks to use.

It was along an extension of Flagler's East Coast Railroad, which went from Pablo Beach -- now Jacksonville Beach -- to Mayport, stopping at the Continental Hotel and then, beginning in 1907, at Manhattan Beach.

Cohill isn't sure how the rather grandly named stretch of dunes got its name, though she notes that Flagler had lived in Manhattan before moving to Florida.

It soon became an attraction for blacks who lived at the beach and to the residents of Jacksonville, where blacks then made up more than 50 percent of the city's population.

"It was a popular destination for church congregations. They would have children's days. Black labor unions would come out to the beach. People would come from all over the Southeast. There was no other beach for them to go to," she said.

Racial segregation was very much a reality in those days; indeed in 1924, Pablo Beach passed a law making it illegal for whites and blacks to bathe together in the ocean.

Cohill believes Manhattan Beach may predate any other black beach resort in the state. "I call it Northeast Florida's first African-American beach. It may be Florida's first; I still have to do a little more digging before I can make that official claim," she said.

No confirmed physical evidence of Manhattan Beach has been found: Storms scoured the beach and dunes where it once stood and developers later demolished the remaining buildings. But Cohill believes, based on old maps and photographs, that it was near the high dunes at parking lot 8, toward the south end of what's now Hanna Park.

Black entrepreneurs such as Mack Wilson and William Middleton ran beach pavilions there with lodging and entertainment. Photos from the 1920s show the two resorts, built into the dunes and sprawling onto the beach.

Wilson's place had a cafe and a bathhouse, and offered "bath suits, dancing, and rooms." Cohill read in the museum's archives that Wilson had 1,000 bathing suits for rent, possibly an exaggeration. "He did rent bathing suits. I don't know if he had 1,000 bathing suits."

A photo of Middleton's resort showed a pavilion built high over eroded dunes, just to the east of a couple of substantial buildings where women in white dresses and men in hats, vests and dark pants take in the sea air.

Philanthropist Eartha White, founder of the Clara White Mission, brought the needy to her Fresh Air Camp in Manhattan Beach, including 86 children suspected to have tuberculosis. They spent four weeks living in tents near the beach, under the care of doctors and nurses.

In the early years, blacks were able to buy property in Manhattan Beach, which Flagler owned. His Atlantic Beach hotel wasn't hugely successful, and he needed money more than he needed the land, Cohill said.

Around 1915, though, white investors began buying land throughout the area, planning a resort that would stretch to the St. Johns river jetties. They refused to sell to blacks, Cohill said, and set up restrictive rental policies.

"They were scheming from the very beginning to try to remove African-Americans from the land, once Henry Flagler started selling off his land holdings," she said.

Manhattan Beach hung on though, and by 1931 a group called the Manhattan Beach Amusement Corporation was boasting in a brochure of its resort, which "offers only amusement of the better class."

Still, the beach faced several challenges to its survival.

Erosion was an ever-present threat to the area's pavilions, which photos show extended onto the sand. When the property was gone, it was gone -- there was no recourse. No beach renourishment or big seawalls were there to offer even temporary protection.

Train trips to Manhattan Beach ended in 1932, making it difficult for many to get there.

Soon black residents of Jacksonville had another beach to visit. By 1935, A.L. Lewis, president of Afro-American Life Insurance Company in Jacksonville, had opened up American Beach on Amelia Island. That went on to be a thriving black beach as Manhattan Beach faded away.

Cohill said a letter in the museum's archives shows developers bought Mack Wilson's property and in 1934 demolished the buildings.

In 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers put a four-gun artillery battery on leased land at Manhattan Beach for coastal defense. There would be no frolicking on the beach there.

"After World War II, there wasn't any of the lively boardwalk-style community there," Cohill said. "That was all gone. But people still talked about Manhattan Beach, the name remained."

Marsha Dean Phelts, who wrote a book about American Beach called "An American Beach for African Americans," said she heard many stories about Manhattan Beach. Some were from her mother and her grandparents, who told her of big crowds and long weekends and the train rides to and from the beach.

"As Manhattan Beach was lost, American Beach was developed," Phelts said. "But Manhattan Beach was the thing. It was the Daytona Beach of black Jacksonville. It was no secret."

Matt Soergel: (904) 359-4082

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