Building Palm Beach

If Augustus found Rome a city of brick and left it one of marble, Henry Morrison Flagler and Paris Singer found Palm Beach an island of jungle and left it one of stucco. Every great place has an origin story: Rome had the twins and the wolf; New York had Peter Minuit and his wampum; Palm Beach has the wreck of the Providencia. As the story goes, in January 1878 a 175-ton brig, the Providencia, was sailing from the Caribbean island of Trinidad (or was it Havana?—the accounts conflict) to Cadiz, on the southwestern coast of Spain (or was it Barcelona? Cadiz seems likelier). Its cargo was twenty thousand coconuts. Running aground, the allegedly drunken crew thought they had landed in Mexico.