 History
When Augusta Was Much Closer to Miami
For a few glittering decades at the turn of the 20th century, Augusta was one of the most popular winter destinations around.
by David Foster
A friend was in town and we were driving up Walton Way toward Augusta State. Suddenly he asked, “My goodness, what is that?” He was staring agape at the massive white facade of the former Bon Aire Hotel. “Pull in, pull in,” he demanded. “Let’s look.” And as we pulled slowly through the horseshoe drive he became as ecstatic as a child with a new toy. He noted the grand portico with the massive one-time restaurant on its roof, the shuffle board flats below the lobby, the vast number of room windows that at one time had an exceptional view of downtown. He didn’t see the golf course, the riding trails, the fancy doormen, the hacks that came and went from Union Station. All those had faded into history, but for those with enough imagination to breathe, the grand old white building itself, which has stood over Augusta for more than a century, can fill in a lot of details.
And the most amazing thing? The Bon Aire, a mere shell of its former grand self, is still there, serving primarily as privately owned public housing. Across the street, though not nearly as physically prominent as the massive white building of the Bon Aire, is the Partridge Inn, itself a landmark American hotel at the turn of the 20th century. Unlike the Bon Aire, the Partridge remains Augusta’s landmark historic hotel. Both are living reminders of one of the city’s most interesting periods as the winter playground for Yankees of all stripes who came here to escape the cold of the north during the “winter season.”
In other words, Augusta was the first subtropical gilded escape in the United States for the rich and famous of the Gilded Age. And to some degree, it maintained that status until well into the 20th century, though other locations—from Jekyll Island to Miami—gradually eroded its popularity. By the early 1930s, the Bon Aire was still open, but on very shaky financial legs. Yet for nearly 50 years, it, the Partridge Inn and a host of other luxury hotels in the CSRA (especially the Hampton Terrace in North Augusta) brought the city major economic impact and made Augusta a household name across the eastern seaboard. And one only need see the Bon Aire to at least feel the magnitude of this interesting, but seldom explored, period in Augusta’s history.
Ask most any Augusta promoter and they will admit that Augusta was not blessed by its geographic location. Just a little too far out of the way of everything to ever become a major city, say, like Atlanta. And because Augusta’s 19th century leadership tended to think much bigger than leaders today, they ironically helped retard the city’s growth. Strike one (and two and three) was the railroad they built to today’s Atlanta creating a geographically permanent settlement first named Terminus (OK, Marthasville, so no letters please). That terminus became a terminus for everything from roads to highways to railroads to airplanes, creating the sixth largest city in the United States. It today has an economy some 600 times the size of the CSRA, which is what Augusta’s leaders were hoping to create for Augusta when they built the railroad during the 1850s.
But Atlanta, while a terrific business city, has never amounted to much when it comes to the romance department (Gone With the Wind excepted and that is gone with the wind). Just not much romance in a bunch of warehouses, or so the well-to-do Northerner of the 1880s thought. Augusta, on the other hand, had it all. It was a pretty little Southern city with a gusto for its well-heeled Northern guests, great hotels (and cuisine) and enough rail service to make it available by rail to, say, the New Yorker in 24 hours or less.
Here’s how that worked (and it got more efficient over the years). You would book a berth for Friday, say 3 p.m. The family would meet you at Pennsylvania Station and begin the trip. After dinner, passengers relaxed or whatever and then went to bed. The next day, the train rolled into Augusta’s Union Station and you were whisked off to the hotel of choice by eager hacks. By the 1930s, though most of the winter crowd had moved south with the railroad lines to even warmer havens, golfers heading for the National could do the same trip in 12 hours, very much a leg up for the survival of that golf course.
“But Daddy, what did they do?” For a modern teen, just the thought of coming to Augusta for a vacation seems duller than a night at home watching television. And besides, as one person pointed out to me, it really ain’t all that warm in Augusta. Hardly a tropical paradise.
Second thought first. As Augusta was just being discovered in the late 1880s, the world was still coming out of the so-called Little Ice Age. Winters in the northeast, therefore, began earlier, lasted longer and generally colder (and wetter) than today. Same was true for Augusta, but compared to the North our winters were tropical heavens. And besides, there weren’t many other places to go, efficiently at least. Thomasville, Ga., had a small population of winter visitors who concentrated on quail hunting and bird dogs.
The Augusta visitors, after the cool of the morning (and very long breakfasts) had passed, participated in all manner of pastimes, from horse back riding and golf to shuffle board and even attending local churches. (One enterprise offered excursions out of town to “See How the Country Folk Really Live!”) At night, most dinners were formal and entertainment lasted well into the night. Sometimes local people would invite visitors over to their homes for parties. Maybe that’s where the cliché “and a good time was had by all” was coined. Oddly, hanging out at the beach was not all that popular anywhere until the Gay ’90s when America discovered or invented the amusement park, that county fair that came to town and never left. New York’s Coney Island was the top dog in that business, a regular turn-of-the-20th century Disney World.
And the railroads were reaching deeper and deeper into Georgia and Florida. By mid-1915, Palm Beach and Miami had already become popular with visitors and just the idea of jumping around in the ocean in January was highly appealing to shivering Northerners. And so, they began to bypass Augusta…in droves. By 1930, the industry had pretty much dissolved. The same people came to Augusta on the same trains, but instead of getting off, well, you know the rest of that story.
By 1940, south Florida had become the playground of the average American’s dreams. After World War II, the newly found affluence of the middle class turned south Florida into more than a middle-class dream and by 1980 the area from Orlando south had become the largest tourism area in the country, Augusta’s day in the sunshine long since forgotten.
But you can still stand in the old formal ballroom of the Bon Aire and almost hear the tinkle of crystal and polite laughter of the ladies. The place would have been filled with the smoke of cigars (and later, as the ladies loosened up) cigarettes. Fine wines would be poured and the new cocktails served to the truly sophisticated who were proud to know all the names. In some ways, it was America’s first taste of popular decadence. Right here in little old Augusta.
Man, wouldn’t you have liked to have seen that?
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