The Rio Vista neighborhood is a community of over 1,000 homes, situated next to downtown
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Fort Lauderdale () is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the county seat of and largest city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth ...
. Its name means "River View" in Spanish. It is one of the oldest communities in Fort Lauderdale and features tree-lined streets, sidewalks and unique architecture.
At the close of
World War I, Ft. Lauderdale had approximately 2,000 residents. An era of prosperity and new transportation in the 1920s allowed Fort Lauderdale to begin the migration from an agricultural community to a
resort town
A resort town, often called a resort city or resort destination, is an urban area where tourism or vacationing is the primary component of the local culture and economy. A typical resort town has one or more actual resorts in the surrounding ...
. Residential areas, such as Rio Vista and Colee Hammock, began to develop. The first plat of the area was recorded by Mary Brickell (wife of
William Brickell) of Miami and major landholder. Upon her death, the land was purchased by C.J. Hector, who began his "River View" development. By February 1923, the Ft. Lauderdale Herald (now the
Sun Sentinel) reported that Rio Vista was booming, with over 5,000 feet of
sidewalk
A sidewalk (North American English), pavement (British English), footpath in Australia, India, New Zealand and Ireland, or footway, is a path along the side of a street, street, highway, terminals. Usually constructed of concrete, pavers, brick ...
laid and
streetlights were installed.
The
land boom
A real-estate bubble or property bubble (or housing bubble for residential markets) is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real-estate markets, and typically follow a land boom. A land boom is the rapid increase ...
reached its zenith by 1925, when Ft. Lauderdale's population reached 16,000. On September 18, 1926, the coast of
South Florida
South Florida is the southernmost region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is one of Florida's three most commonly referred to directional regions; the other two are Central Florida and North Florida. South Florida is the southernmost part of th ...
was devastated by the
1926 Miami Hurricane
The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 was a large and intense tropical cyclone that devastated the Greater Miami area and caused catastrophic damage in the Bahamas and the U.S. Gulf Coast in September of the year 1926, accruing a US$100 mill ...
which put the area into a depression, three years before the rest of the country entered its
economic depression
An economic depression is a period of carried long-term economical downturn that is result of lowered economic activity in one major or more national economies. Economic depression maybe related to one specific country were there is some economic ...
. With the onset of
World War II, thousands of servicemen discovered this area and settled here after the war. Rio Vista development began again, and today, the area reflects the history.
The community is bounded by Federal Highway (
U.S. 1
U.S. Route 1 or U.S. Highway 1 (US 1) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway System, United States Numbered Highway that serves the East Coast of the United States. It runs from Key West, Florida, north to Fort Kent, ...
) on the west, bordered on the east by the
Intracoastal Waterway, south of the
New River and north of SE 12th Street (north of the neighborhoods of Harbordale and Lauderdale Harbours.)
References
External links
Rio Vista Civic Association(Official Homepage)
The Council of Ft. Lauderdale Civic Associations, Inc.: Rio Vista Civic Association
{{Coord, 26.1112111, -80.1302969, display=title
Neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Geography of Fort Lauderdale, Florida