30 TEQUESTA


 The answer to the mystery of the one-story building is found in
the Florida Times-Union for May 14, 1896, with the report from the
Miami correspondent that, "W. M. Meyers [sic] has removed his
poolroom several doors down the avenue toward the river.""'8 Thus,
the picture was taken before Myers moved his business from the
one-story building to the ground floor of the larger two-story building,
located five buildings south of his first location. All of those buildings
were on the east side of today's South Miami Avenue between
Southeast Second Street and the Miami River. They were owned by
Tuttle and rented out to merchants. The exact location of the larger
building at the time of the incorporation was 350 feet south of the
spur track leading to the Hotel Royal Palm."9
 Myers sold the business to H. J. Burkhardt in June 1896, who
had closed the pool room by July 10. However, the building continued
to be referred to as "the Lobby building" and was used for large
meetings. In July 1899, the building was removed to the south end of
the west wing of the Hotel Miami. Five weeks later, P. C. Hainlin
leased the lower floor for a steam laundry to be known as the
"Magic City Steam Laundry."120 But, on November 12, 1899, during
a severe Yellow Fever epidemic, an explosion of a blue flame oil
stove caused a fire to break out in the adjacent Hotel Miami. Within
thirty minutes after the first alarm, the hotel, the Lobby building and
four other structures "were in a mass of ruins."'12 Thus, Miami's
"birth place" was gone little more than three years after incorpora-
tion while the municipality it spawned has not only endured, but it has
achieved, since that time, a prominence as one of the hemisphere's
most important cities.

 The author would like to gratefully acknowledge the help given by
Howard Kleinberg, who provided encouragement and editorial assistance.

 Endnotes

 1. Oby J. Bonawit, Miami Florida Early Families and Records
(Miami, Fla., published by author, 1980), 69. See also Francis P.
Fleming, Memoirs of Florida, vol. 2 (Atlanta, Ga.: The Southern
Historical Association, 1902), 445-46.
 2. Bonawit, Miami Florida Early Families and Records, 75-77.
See also Flemming, Memoirs of Florida, vol. 2, 735-36; Arva Moore
Parks, Miami, The Magic City (Revised Edition, Miami, Fla.: Centennial