1925 Robb-Buchanan Cadastral Map of Pinewood, Fort Pierce, Florida

Peak of the Florida Real Estate Boom.

This is a 1925 cadastral map by Elmer Robb and Nathaniel C. Buchanan of a planned housing development in Fort Pierce, Florida, drawn for the development's financiers, the Colonial Land Company of Trenton, New Jersey. It was prepared during the height of the Florida Real Estate Boom of the 1920s and represents both the potential benefits and the pitfalls of the era's heady atmosphere.

A Closer Look

The map covers a planned development in Fort Pierce between Georgia Avenue in the north, Coconut Drive (now Ohio Avenue) in the south, South 10th Street in the west, and South 3rd Street in the east, with an extension including a business section towards the tracks of the Florida East Coast Railroad and Indian River Drive. Streets, blocks, lots, two proposed parks, and other features are labeled throughout, with their dimensions noted. Extensive annotations shade different lots, likely indicating sold versus unsold lots. A section at the bottom right is crossed out, suggesting that it was determined not to build homes there. At the bottom are schematics of the fronts of homes and planned curbs, sidewalks, and gutters along Sunrise Boulevard, a main thoroughfare in the development.

Pinewood

The Pinewood development was a project of the Colonial Land Company, based in Trenton, New Jersey, and operating developments there and elsewhere in New Jersey. The company also had at least one other development in Florida, a 65-acre plot in West Palm Beach; a 1923 advertisement for that development claims that both B.N.B. and E.G.B. Miller were residents of West Palm Beach. The company, founded around the turn of the century and initially located in Jersey City, disappears from records after 1933, likely a victim of the Great Depression.

The Pinewood development looks to have suffered a similar fate. It was poised to benefit from the 1920s Florida Real Estate Boom, and was fitted out with the latest amenities, including a main thoroughfare (Sunrise Boulevard) flanked by streetlights. In 1926, just after this map's publication, the Colonial Land Company bought an additional 130 acres of land to the west of Pinewood (the Fairlawn Subdivision). But the Fort Pierce venture ran into problems well before the stock market crash of 1929, likely an early victim of the collapse in Florida real estate that began in 1926, similar to the planned Indrio resort community just north of Fort Pierce (Lakewood Park). Delinquent tax lists published in the Fort Pierce Tribune from 1929 and 1930 list dozens of properties owned by the Colonial Land Company. Today, the Pinewood and Fairlawn neighborhoods boast some Spanish Revival homes of the era. However, most are mid-century ranches, built in the Postwar period, indicating that most lots remained undeveloped until the late 1940s or 1950s.

Florida Land Boom(s)

In the second half of the 19th and throughout the early 20th century, Florida experienced a series of land booms and crashes. The initial land boom established Florida as a center for the citrus industry in the 1880s-1890s, and its collapse allowed for the easy acquisition of large tracts of land at cut-rate prices. Moreover, railways were offered very generous land grants by the state in exchange for laying track, which could be parlayed into a cycle of financial benefit as railways served the new communities whose growth they had enabled. Industrialist and founder of Standard Oil, Henry Flagler (1830 - 1913) seized these opportunities to build his Florida East Coast Railway and extend it to the state's southeastern coast. Henry B. Plant's eponymous system of railroads and steamships accomplished similar results in the Tampa Bay region.

Flagler, Plant, and other Florida boosters successfully promoted the state as a paradisical escape from the grimy cities and cold weather of New England and the mid-Atlantic. Land prices shot up at an astronomical rate, and developers carved entirely new cities out of wetlands in mere months. In addition to railways, the arrival of the highway system in the 1920s made the region more easily accessible. But speculation in land prices in Florida had reached unsustainable heights, and a delayed realization of 'irrational exuberance' plus the damage from two hurricanes, followed by the financial crash of 1929, led to a collapse in the real estate market, ruining many investors in the process.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by the engineers Elmer Robb and Nathaniel C. Buchanan for the Colonial Land Company of Trenton, New Jersey, in 1925. We have been unable to locate any other examples in institutional collections or market history.

Cartographers

Elmer Robb (March 2, 1870 - June 23, 1952) was a civil engineer active in Florida in the early-mid 20th century. Robb was born in Michigan and lived there until his early 30s, attended the Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University), majoring in civil engineering. He was such a gifted student that as a sophomore, he was given the task of surveying a new sewer system for the college's campus. However, he left college early after one of his brothers died to help work his parents' farm, then took jobs in many different parts of the country, mostly working as an engineer for various railways. He finally settled in the Fort Pierce, Florida area in 1909, working initially as the chief engineer of the Florida East Coast Realty Co. When Robb relocated to Florida, his mother moved with him (his father having already died); Robb never married. He was known as an expert in drainage engineering throughout Florida and wa consulted by the state and federal government. Robb operated independently and in conjunction with others (such as Nathaniel Buchanan) during his Florida years, before eventually founding the Sunrise Engineering Co., which operated from about 1935 until soon after his death. A section of Fort Pierce is known as Elmer Robb's Subdivision.   Further Details...

Nathaniel Claiborne Buchanan (c. 1885 - 1969) was a civil engineer active in Florida in the early 20th century. Details on Buchanan's life are somewhat scant. He was either born in Kentucky or born in Missouri and moved to Kentucky at a very young age. In 1910, he married Nina Butt of Springfield, Ohio, with whom he had four children. After marriage, Buchanan lived with his family in Scioto County, Ohio. From 1925, he was in Fort Pierce, Florida. He had training as a civil engineer and surveyor, but his only known cartographic work is a 1925 cadastral map of Fort Pierce. By 1940 Buchanan was working for the federal government. He may have also worked for the Florida State Road Department office in DeLand in the late 1940s.   Further Details...

Condition

Average. Laid down on archival tissue. Slight loss near center at old fold line. Some staining. Pencil marks.