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Miami’s most enduring element is its nickname: “The Magic City,” which has been a part of its story since the early days following the incorporation of the City of Miami in July 1896. Incorporation came on the heels of the entry of Henry M. Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway in April 1896. A tiny community, with just nine persons living along the mouth of the Miami River in 1895, Miami was positioned, with the entry of the railroad and its consequent connection to points north, to grow quickly into one of Florida’s most important cities.
Ethan V. Blackman is responsible for Miami’s moniker, The Magic City, which came within weeks of its incorporation. Thirty years after Miami’s incorporation, Blackman reflected on his selection of the sobriquet. To a reporter from the Miami Daily News, the city’s first newspaper, originally called the Miami Metropolis, Blackman explained: “What inspired me to call Miami” the Magic City was “the enthusiasm of Mr. Flagler plus a blue print of the city. You see the time I wrote that phrase I had never even seen Miami.” Blackman, in fact, was living at the time in Daytona and working as a journalist when he received a request by letter from Henry Flagler in the late summer of 1896 to write an article about the new city of Miami for The Home Seeker, a Flagler magazine employed to market the railroad baron’s properties. The blueprint of the city accompanying the letter “influenced Blackman to see the magic possibilities” for Miami.
Blackman explained, “In looking over the material, I got so enthusiastic over the possibilities of the city that bordered on the Gulf stream and faced the broad waters of Biscayne bay (sic), that I referred to it as ‘the Magic City.’ That article was printed in “’The Home Seeker…’” (For the record, Birmingham, Alabama was already calling itself “The Magic City of the South.”) Shortly after this article appeared, Flagler appointed Blackman editor of The Home Seeker, a position he held for sixteen years.
In the same interview, Blackman reflected on his first impressions of the crude, undeveloped settlement he found, but loved anyway, explaining: “I found everything that I had sought, since my primary purpose in coming here (Miami) was to find health. There was the balmy air, the beauties of the bay and sky and the wonderful palm trees.
“From the first moment when I looked out over the waters of Biscayne Bay, I knew that Miami would remain—if I could make it, the Magic City. So I talked and thought and wrote ‘Miami, the Magic City’ and the name stuck and the town grew as the phrase stirred the curiosity of the outside world and it came to see.”
Blackman was also a Methodist minister who soon moved to Miami and became one of the young city’s most important chroniclers. He lived in the Riverside Heights neighborhood in a striking Belvedere Bungalow home three blocks south of today Miami Marlins ballpark.
Blackman believed the moniker assisted in Miami’s rising recognition and growth, while he was one of the young city’s most enthusiastic champions. Blackman explained, “While I was writing Miami, ‘the Magic City’ and mailing it to all parts of the country, people read the catchy line and then read more to find out what the magic was. There is something in the word ‘magic’ that catches the attention of everyone and they wanted to know what it was that was almost too good to be true. So it was they came to Miami to find out.
“Once here, they found the warm air, the palm trees and flowers that seem like fairyland to most people. They also found the men of action with the zest for life, belief in great things and those other qualities that made it possible for Mr. Flagler and men like him to perform feats that might well have baffled (others)…”
As Blackman believed, the nickname for the neophyte city quickly caught on. The Official Directory of the City of Miami and Nearby Towns for 1904 devoted a full page to the term “Miami The Magic City.” In the 1910s, the Magic City Dredge Company was at work in Biscayne Bay. The Magic City Coronet Band, based in the city’s segregated quarter, Colored Town (today’s Overtown), was active in World War I in support of the war effort, which included the sale of war bonds to help finance the cost of the United States’ involvement in the conflict. On Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, the Magic City Coronet Band kicked off the wild celebration of the war’s ending by marching and performing along Twelfth Street, later called Flagler Street, the main thoroughfare in the downtown sector of the city. At the same time, Magic City Motor Company was operating in downtown Miami, along with the Magic City Transfer Company.
The nickname continues to appear and resonate with great regularity, an admirable feat for an ever-evolving city whose history should be written in short paragraphs because of the accelerated changes that define and redefine it.
Paul S. George, Ph.D., serves as Resident Historian, HistoryMiami Museum. He conducts history tours throughout the county and even beyond for HistoryMiami. Additionally, he teaches classes in Miami/S. Florida and Florida history for the Museum. Dr. George has also led, since 2002, tours of Little Havana as part of Viernes Culturales, a monthly celebration, held every third Friday, of the culture and history of that quarter. The tours are open to all and are free!
