As Grovites discuss the future of Big Hill Park – the small waterfront property at the end of Royal Road – and its missing benches, it’s worth considering this tiny sliver of land’s long history. Nearly a century ago, many residents will be happy to know, the property was intended for neighborhood use.
Like many developments in South Florida, the story of this tiny bayfront parcel begins amid the frenzied real estate boom years of the 1920s. In the winter of 1925, real estate investor Morrison B. Page purchased a 21-acre estate along Main Highway and announced plans to subdivide into nearly 100 smaller parcels.
He hired noted realtor Irving J. Thomas to develop “The Royal Gardens,” a new subdivision named for the stately palms lining the path down to the bay. A few of those palms (or their descendants) still remain and the path today is known as Royal Road.
Previously owned by pioneer Sam Brown, the historic subdivision included seven acres east of Main Highway between the Adirondack-Florida School (present-day Ransom Everglades School) on the north and the property owned by the industrialist William Deering on the south. The subdivision included an additional 14 acres west of Main Highway on land currently occupied by St. Hugh Church and School and other landowners.
The path’s row of majestic royal palm trees, planted by Brown decades earlier and often portrayed in early Miami postcards, was left intact to serve both as a “distinctive feature of the subdivision” and “provide access to the bay for all property owners in the subdivision,” according to a Miami Herald article from June 1925.
Like the four corners on Plaza Street in nearby Cocoanut Grove Park, the land at the end of Royal Road – today’s Big Hill Park – purposefully remained undeveloped to give neighbors access to the waterfront. Thomas built a concrete dock and beach at the end of the road, which has long since disappeared.
Real estate advertisements from the mid-1920s stated that the homes in The Royal Gardens came with “perpetual right of way to the beach and dock facilities.” The subdivision included the 26 lots on Royal Road as well as another 70 lots west of Main Highway along Franklin Avenue and Royal and Franklin Courts in the West Grove.
The Royal Gardens was among the first subdivisions to break up the Grove’s so-called Millionaire’s Row – a stretch of large bayfront estates along Main Highway which, at one time, included La Brisa (now part of Ransom Everglades), Pelican Lodge, El Jardin (now part of Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart), and Four Way Lodge, among many others.
Throughout the boom years of the 1920s, other nearby properties, including The Moorings, a subdivision created from the estates of Jessie S. Moore and Frank L. Church, were broken up into smaller parcels.
By the 1960s, most bayfront properties along Main Highway, save a few notable exceptions, were subdivided. Today only one remains in solely residential use: the Deering property – the southside abutting neighbor to Big Hill Park – which remarkably is still owned by the family’s descendants.
“We believe that the breaking up of the famous [Sam Brown] estate will be a good thing for Coconut Grove,” said Thomas in August 1925. “It will afford sites for hundreds of fine homes instead of a score. With the present price of land, the wealthy class do not want to maintain estates as large as they did formerly.”
Given the bust of South Florida’s real estate market in the late 1920s, the timing was not on the developer’s side. Most of The Royal Garden subdivision was never developed and was subsequently purchased by other developers.
And yet, 100 years later, the property is still making waves… Today, like a century ago, the “present price of land” means only a precious few can access the waterfront, and the arguments about who and how it should be used continue.
Iris Guzman Kolaya is a historian based in Miami. She researches and writes about Miami’s past and is particularly interested in Coconut Grove’s rich history.
