LOST LAUDERDALE
The vanished works of Francis Abreu
text John T. O’Connor
Money was migrating to the balmy shores of Florida, and with it came developers, builders and of course, architects. Fort Lauderdale’s star architect of the time was most certainly Francis Louis Abreu. Abreu, Cuban by birth, came from a well-to-do family and grew up in an antebellum Greek Revival mansion along In spite of being one of Fort Lauderdale’s finest the Hudson River in New York. Abreu received his ararchitects during the land boom of the 1920s, much of chitecture degree from Cornell in 1921 and worked first in West Palm Beach before settling in Fort Lauderdale, Abreu’s work has been lost to neglect, indifference, setting up his practice here at age 28.
TO SAY THE 1920S WAS A HEADY TIME for South Florida would
be putting it mildly. With a percentage of Americans seemingly awash in cash, and with the horrors of World War I over, a large percentage of Americans had the time and wherewithal to
and real estate’s tragic “highest and best use” edict. travel to the “Sunshine State” and invest in real estate. Henry Flagler, his railroad built, shuttled this group up and down the coast, and placed Palm Beach, Miami and finally Fort Lauderdale in the public eye. 22 ISLAND MAGAZINE
The 1920s was a period in architecture known for “revivals”. While in the suburbs of established Northern cities like Chicago, Boston or Detroit architectural style of the ‘20s veered towards Georgian Revival, Tudor Revival or Dutch Colonial, the swaying
