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A Century In The Making

As Boca Raton Celebrates Its 100th Birthday, We Trace The Visionaries, Milestones And Moments That Have Shaped Our Beloved City

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As the city celebrates its centennial in 2025, it’s hard to imagine Boca Raton as the sleepy farm settlement it started out as. Our dynamic and vibrant community — now home to more than 100,000 residents — can thank the pioneers who persevered through the heat and the hardships of life here in the early years, as well as the visionaries with big dreams and innovative spirits who put Boca Raton on the map and set the stage for the development of the city. Boca Raton’s evolution over the decades is a confluence of historical events, geography and the wisdom and ingenuity of resourceful residents and entrepreneurs who embraced progress and the concept of community.

The Railway: An Engine For Growth

Oil tycoon Henry Flagler paved the way for commerce and population growth by continuing the construction of the Florida East Coast Railway from West Palm Beach to Miami in 1895. Florida, only 50 years into its statehood, gave Flagler 8,000 acres of land for every mile of railway he built.

In 1896, Flagler hired surveyor and civil engineer Thomas Moore Rickards to map the area. Rickards, regarded as the founding figure of Boca Raton, platted the city’s first waterfront neighborhood, Por La Mar, which he filed with Dade County, then the county seat. (Boca Raton became part of Palm Beach County in 1909.) Rickards bought land for himself and built a home and 50-acre farm on the Intracoastal south of the Palmetto Park Road Bridge. Over time, he continued acquiring more land, further establishing his presence in the area.

As an agent for Flagler promoting agriculture, Rickards surveyed and sold tracts of land to farmers from up north who came to grow pineapples, citrus, tomatoes, green beans and other crops. Flagler’s railway provided the means to transport produce.

Among the key pioneers of the time was Frank Howard Chesebro, a farmer who came in 1903 from Michigan with his family to escape from the cold. He bought 100 acres from Rickards in the area where Royal Palm Yacht Club stands now. 

Chesebro, whose farm provided a livelihood for many workers, was a conscientious citizen, donating land for a cemetery, building the first school and forming with other early residents Boca’s first civic improvement organization, The Board of Trade.

Farming continued to be a primary occupation through the ’30s. Augustus H. Butts, for whom Butts Road is named, was a major employer during the Great Depression. His 3,500-acre green bean farm near Glades Road between Florida’s Turnpike and Interstate 95 provided jobs in hard times.

Yamato Colony

Rickards was instrumental in arranging for Jo Sakai, founder of the Yamato Colony, to settle in Boca Raton. Sakai was born in Japan, moved to the United States and graduated from New York University. With the purchase of land from a subsidiary of Flagler’s railway in 1904, Sakai and a group of Japanese men seeking opportunity settled near what is now Yamato Road to grow pineapples and other crops.

Yamato, an ancient name for Japan, thrived for a time and grew to include a community with women and children, but with a pineapple blight and competition from Cuban pineapple growers, by 1908, the colony had dwindled. Members moved further south or returned to Japan.

While Yamato Colony was short-lived, it’s a chapter of local history that lives on through the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach. Original colonist George Morikami, who came to Yamato as a young man, donated 200 acres of farmland he bought after World War ll in 1973. A cherished cultural destination today, Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens features a model of a Japanese villa with an exhibit about the Yamato Colony.

Pearl City

Black settlers arrived from other parts of the South and the Caribbean to work in Boca Raton as farmhands and sharecroppers.

George Long, a pioneer who owned a pineapple packing house and served as Boca Raton’s first postmaster and mayor, suggested designating a community for the Black laborers who trekked daily from Deerfield Beach and Delray Beach. Parcels of land, smaller and more expensive than those offered to white residents, became available to Black residents in the three-block area south of Glades Road between Dixie Highway and Federal Highway.

The neighborhood of Pearl City was established in 1915. The name is thought to be derived from the on-site packing shed for the Hawaiian Pearl variety of pineapple.

Pearl City was designated a historic district by the Boca Raton City Council in 2002 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service in 2023.

Alex Hughes purchased one of the first lots for $25 and built a home. Hughes Park, a 3.2‑acre playground facility, was named after its distinguished first resident.

A memorial to civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., dedicated in 2000 in front of the historic Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church Boca Raton, is the site of annual holiday commemorations.

Learning From History

“Boca Raton’s founding citizens saw promise in the jungles and sugar sand of the raw wilderness here in the 1890s. Addison Mizner, too, was inspired to design the ‘Dream City of the Western World’ in what was a tiny farming town of 200 souls in 1925.

"A century later, his dreams have been realized — a city with envious cultural and educational institutions, beautiful parks and buildings; one of our country’s most desirable addresses. As we move into our second century, let us respect our historic structures and sites as tangible links to the past. Let us respect and learn from our history so we don’t repeat our mistakes.

"With reflection, I recall the prediction for Boca Raton’s future from that visionary architect 100 years ago, ‘My future must be glorious.’”

— Susan Gillis, curator at the Boca Raton Historical Society since 2002

Addison Mizner: A Blueprint For A Dream

The Florida land boom in the early 1920s brought a frenzy of real estate development and dramatic changes to bucolic Boca Raton. The town was incorporated in May of 1925 and hired Palm Beach architect Addison Mizner as city planner. (Boca Raton officially became a city in 1957.) As a developer, he bought 1,600 acres in southeast Boca, envisioning a resort he called Castillo Del Rey and a city of amenities for wealthy society. Mizner introduced his signature Mediterranean Revival style to the architectural design and decor that would shape Boca Raton’s aesthetic for decades. 

When the Ritz-Carlton took over Castillo Del Rey, Mizner built the Cloister Inn, a smaller hotel on Lake Boca Raton, and began grand plans for the town. The Old Floresta neighborhood, now a historic district, was a Mizner project, as was the Spanish Village neighborhood and Boca’s original town hall. The Mizner Development Corporation’s administration building, one of the best examples of his architecture, still stands today as The Addison, an event space at Dixie Highway and Camino Real.

The Cloister Inn opened as a seasonal hotel on Feb. 6, 1926, but by the following year, the bubble had burst: the land boom was over and Mizner’s dream began to unravel. He filed for bankruptcy soon after and died in 1933, leaving behind an architectural legacy that continues to define Boca Raton’s character.

Clarence H. Geist bought Mizner’s assets and turned the Cloister Inn into the prestigious Boca Raton Club, cementing the club and Mizner’s place in Boca’s history. Although it furthered his own interests, Geist’s building of a water treatment plant and construction of a new railway depot benefited the town’s infrastructure. Geist secured a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project to build the airport, which opened in 1936.

The resort brought jobs and a boost to the economy along with a new awareness of Boca Raton as a seaside playground.

The storied hotel and club went through more owners and iterations. Now owned by MSD Partners and renamed The Boca Raton, the hotel and resort celebrates its centennial next year and continues to be a jewel in the city’s crown.

World War ll

Boca Raton became the U.S. Army’s only top-secret radar training site during the war. Good weather and a flat landscape made it ideal for aviation training. The town’s small population, which in 1940 was 723, made land appropriations easier. Lands seized by eminent domain included acres owned by Japanese farmers of the former Yamato Colony.

With the airport expanded and configured for military use, the base opened on June 1, 1942, bringing with it 15,000 soldiers, their families and civilian employees. The Army commandeered the Boca Raton Club to serve as housing for soldiers and officers. 

By 1947, the radar training moved elsewhere and the base closed. In the late ’50s, the government turned its properties over to the city and state, with some acreage reserved for educational use. That land became what is today Florida Atlantic University (FAU).

Postwar, G.I.s with their young families were part of the migration to Boca Raton. In 1950, the population was 992. By 1960, it was 7,000 and by 1970 it had reached 28,500.

Arvida Era

Arthur Vining Davis, chairman of Alcoa Aluminum, invested in real estate in Florida, buying thousands of acres through his company Arvida. Davis also purchased the Boca Raton Hotel and Club and constructed its 26-story tower in 1969. He developed the Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club and the “pink plaza,” now known as the Royal Palm Place shopping center.

Davis, called the “father of the gated community,” aggressively sought to expand Boca Raton to the west with subdivisions featuring grand entrances. The introduction of pesticides and the widespread use of air conditioning made living in Boca Raton year-round more feasible.

In 1957, the Florida Turnpike did not have a Boca Raton interchange. Davis paid for the Glades Road exit, dedicated in 1961, which served his future developments in Boca West and University Park.

Boca West originally served as a golf course for the Boca Raton Hotel and Club. Residential development began later, with Boca West condos opening in 1974.

The 1960s saw beachfront condo development, including Arvida’s Sabal Ridge, Sabal Shores and Sabal Point. Concerned that Boca Raton might soon resemble Miami Beach, residents voted to preserve beachfront property through six bond issues passed between 1966 and 1974. The purchases included the 46-acre Spanish River Park, South Beach Park and later the 67-acre Red Reef Park.

IBM’s purchase of Arvida property led to the creation of 8,000 jobs and the much-celebrated development of the personal computer in Boca Raton. The former IBM property is now the Boca Raton Innovation Campus (BRiC), a tech and business hub reimagined for the modern workforce. The 700-acre Arvida Park of Commerce, renamed The Park at Broken Sound, is currently a mix of commercial, residential and retail space.

Jewish Boca

The Jewish community in Boca Raton has grown tremendously since the ’60s and ’70s, when Jewish migration began. The exponential growth over the last 20 years can be attributed to a community infrastructure already in place, the city’s reputation as a desirable place to live, school voucher incentives, strong clerical leadership and a feeling of safety and support. 

Today, Boca Raton is home to 22 synagogues, while Delray Beach has nine. As the Jewish community continues to grow, so does the demand for educational institutions. Twelve day schools are at capacity with waiting lists and plans for expansion.

A 2018 demographic study by the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County (JFSPBC), which includes Delray Beach and Highland Beach, recorded 134,200 Jewish residents. Rabbi Josh Broide, founding director of the Federation’s Deborah and Larry D. Silver Center for Jewish Engagement, estimates that the number has grown to 175,000 or more in the region today.

The Boca Raton Jewish community will continue to grow, predicts Broide. “The best is about to happen,” he says.

South Florida has the second-largest population of Jews in the United States, after New York, with Los Angeles third.

The first known Jewish pioneers in Boca Raton were Harry and Florence Brown, who arrived from St. Louis in 1931. They were later joined by Harry’s sister and brother-in-law, Nettie and Max Hutkin, in 1936. Florence and Harry (later Florence with their sons, after Harry’s passing) operated a grocery store and later a diner called Brown’s on Federal Highway, where Flanigan’s stands today. The Hutkins also ran a grocery store, helping to lay the foundation for a growing Jewish community in the area.

As the community expanded, so did its spiritual organizations. In 1967, Max was one of the founders of Boca Raton Hebrew Congregation, now Temple Beth El, and served as its first president. Temple Beth El is now one of the largest Reform synagogues in the area.

With restrictive real estate covenants gone in the ’60s, obstacles for Jewish residents were removed. The opening of FAU in 1964 and the arrival of IBM in 1967 attracted Jewish professionals to the area. The fiscal crisis and unrest in New York City during the ’70s motivated Jewish retirees to pull up stakes as new communities were developed in West Boca. The opening of Interstate 95 made travel easy.

To fulfill the needs of a growing Jewish population, a small satellite office of the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach opened downtown in 1976. By 1979, the JFSPBC was incorporated as a separate entity to provide for its constituency. The Federation is a network of Jewish and social service organizations, synagogues and schools that provide services and programs.

In 1981, Roy Flack, Stanley Katz and Richard Siemens donated 20 acres of land in West Boca to the Federation. Today, the Richard & Carole Siemens Campus sits on 100 acres and houses the Federation, Donna Klein Jewish Academy for K-12, Ruth & Norman Rales Jewish Family Services (Rales JFS), Jewish Association for Residential Care (JARC), Adolph & Rose Levis Jewish Community Center, Katz Hillel Day School of Boca Raton, Katz Yeshiva High School, Jewish Community Foundation, The Toby & Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences Boca Raton and other programs and services.

Jews of all backgrounds live in a strong community in Boca Raton through the leadership of rabbis of all denominations coming together to address common goals. The Federation received the prestigious Jerusalem Unity Prize from Israel honoring its success in uniting the streams of Judaism. 

Jewish philanthropists have made transformational contributions to the development of community life in Boca Raton, supporting education, health care and the arts and sciences. The Boca Raton Regional Hospital (BRRH) Foundation, FAU, Lynn University, the Boca Raton Museum of Art and Festival of the Arts Boca are just some of the beneficiaries. The generosity of the Jewish community can be traced back to Max, who paid for Christmas lights for the city.

Moving Forward

“Today, at the dawn of the new century, we commit to reaching even higher,” said Mayor Scott Singer in his City Address in March at Mizner Park Amphitheater. “At our core, Boca Raton’s DNA is about innovation, it’s about making opportunity a reality. It’s about progress, about accountability and it was, and must continue to be, about getting things done.”

The City of Boca Raton has plans to expand its 30-acre government campus, which includes City Hall, the community center and the police station, to replace outdated facilities. The current City Hall has been in use since 1964. The proposed mixed-use transit-oriented master plan, through a public-private partnership with Terra and Frisbie Group, will transform the area into a civic and mixed-use center with housing, public facilities and services that meet the evolving needs of the city and community.

A master plan and partnership agreement are expected to be completed by the end of October, with the project’s estimated cost totaling $2 billion. The campus is expected to take approximately nine years to complete.

“Our city is known for forward-thinking decisions,” Singer said. “For our next 100 years, we need to lean into that legacy.”