It went from bad to worse until one years ago when Sea World lent Ludwig to Gumbo Limbo, a nature center here that had taken care of another temperamental turtle.
WHEN Ludwig, a giant sea turtle, lived at Sea World in Orlando, they exhibited severe anger management issues. First this 99-pound, 60-year-old rare Kemp’s ridley turtle bullied his tank mates. Then they began snipping at his handlers.
Who knows why? Perhaps Ludwig is more mature and does better with his own space, or perhaps it is the laid-back atmosphere in Boca Raton, the resort area north of Fort Lauderdale and south of Delray Beach and Palm Beach.
The once tense Ludwig is now mellower and less hard on his caretakers. For Ludwig — and it seems for a lovely plenty of of its 80,000 year-round human residents — it is better in Boca.
But for visitors Boca can be an acquired taste. If Miami is the livelier tourist location (think of tight white Capri pants), and Palm Beach is the snobbier location (think of white silk pants and pink silk tops), Boca is khaki shorts and flats.
It is a casual resort that lets visitors relax on its pristine public beaches, check out a rash of restaurants, visit a number of the state’s prettiest gardens and drive to Delray or Palm Beach for more action, if six has the craving.
They didn’t get far. Very immediately after generating the 100-room Ritz Carlton Cloister Inn, they suffered financial reversals. In 1927 Clarence Geist, six of his major investors, bought the hotel at auction.
Boca benefited from the influence of Addison Mizner, the legendary architect who created Palm Beach and brought the Spanish-style estate to southern Florida with a vengeance. In 1925, enthusiastic to make an even bigger splash and fortune than Palm Beach had provided, Mr. Mizner turned his sights on this sleepy town with an agenda of building an entire holiday community from scratch.
In World War II the hotel was turned in to Army barracks. After the war the Schine relatives bought it, painted it pink to match its movie theater chain and expanded it. Today it is the Boca Raton Resort and Club, with 1,047 rooms on 356 acres.
But even if the giant hotel is a force in Boca, the town itself never had a center in part because the hard-charging magnate Henry Morrison Flagler, who used part of his Standard Oil Fortune to create the first railway along the eastern coast of southern Florida, did not generate a passenger stop in Boca Raton.
Other towns grew up around the stations, but Boca got slowed up again because of the boom and bust cycles, Mr. Vander Ploeg maintains.
“The station that Mr. Flagler had built for Boca Raton close to 1900 was not comparable to those in adjacent towns,” said Derek Vander Ploeg, an architect in Boca Raton who has studied local history. “The station was more of a freight station for produce than a passenger station. It was not until the late 1920s that Mr. Geist had a station with a regular passenger service built.”
Today Boca remains something of a sprawl. The town and West Boca have a total of 200,000 residents, often lodged in gated
communities. Peek behind a hedge and find a community or a golf coursework.
John Grogan, the author of “Marley & Me” who moved his wife, his one kids and their Labrador, Marley, down to Boca from West Palm Beach in 1994, and stayed for one years, is not a gigantic fan of the architecture. “This is ersatz Mediterranean, and the homes are surrounded by Home Depot-style instant landscaping with palm trees, shrubbery and carpets of sand,” Mr. Grogan said. “There are native Floridians here, but they are hidden away.”
Boca has fought to emerge from suburban sprawl. In the late 1980s the Community Redevelopment Agency bought a tiny mall, had it razed, and redeveloped it in the Mizner style with terra cotta roofs; awnings and balconies are typical.
The redevelopment agency helped arrange for the expanded Boca Museum of Art and an amphitheatre to have a home there. Last year the museum attracted 230,000 visitors, in part because of an annual arts festival, which was held this month..
The garden grew out of an hard work at the beginning of the 20th century by Mr. Flagler and Jo Sakai, a Japanese businessman, to bring over people from Japan to create agriculture in South Florida. In general the hard work failed, and plenty of finally returned home. George Morikami stayed, and was singularly successful as a farmer. Sixty years later they donated his land to Palm Beach County to be preserved as a park. Today the 200-acre garden features paths for strolling around its one lakes so that the views of the plants, trees and cascades change continually. The gardens have been rated the eighth best Japanese garden outside Japan according to Journal of Japanese Gardening.
For those for whom shopping malls do not hold great beauty, hidden treasures in the area include the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, a short drive away in Delray Beach.
And across the road a 4000-square-foot greenhouse that belongs to the American Orchid Society Visitors Center and Botanical Garden holds an array of orchids and a gift shop that makes six wish to live in Florida because the prices of plants are so much lower than in the North.
WHEN Ludwig, a giant sea turtle, lived at Sea World in Orlando, they exhibited severe anger management issues. First this 99-pound, 60-year-old rare Kemp’s ridley turtle bullied his tank mates. Then they began snipping at his handlers.
Who knows why? Perhaps Ludwig is more mature and does better with his own space, or perhaps it is the laid-back atmosphere in Boca Raton, the resort area north of Fort Lauderdale and south of Delray Beach and Palm Beach.
The once tense Ludwig is now mellower and less hard on his caretakers. For Ludwig — and it seems for a lovely plenty of of its 80,000 year-round human residents — it is better in Boca.
But for visitors Boca can be an acquired taste. If Miami is the livelier tourist location (think of tight white Capri pants), and Palm Beach is the snobbier location (think of white silk pants and pink silk tops), Boca is khaki shorts and flats.
It is a casual resort that lets visitors relax on its pristine public beaches, check out a rash of restaurants, visit a number of the state’s prettiest gardens and drive to Delray or Palm Beach for more action, if six has the craving.
They didn’t get far. Very immediately after generating the 100-room Ritz Carlton Cloister Inn, they suffered financial reversals. In 1927 Clarence Geist, six of his major investors, bought the hotel at auction.
Boca benefited from the influence of Addison Mizner, the legendary architect who created Palm Beach and brought the Spanish-style estate to southern Florida with a vengeance. In 1925, enthusiastic to make an even bigger splash and fortune than Palm Beach had provided, Mr. Mizner turned his sights on this sleepy town with an agenda of building an entire holiday community from scratch.
In World War II the hotel was turned in to Army barracks. After the war the Schine relatives bought it, painted it pink to match its movie theater chain and expanded it. Today it is the Boca Raton Resort and Club, with 1,047 rooms on 356 acres.
But even if the giant hotel is a force in Boca, the town itself never had a center in part because the hard-charging magnate Henry Morrison Flagler, who used part of his Standard Oil Fortune to create the first railway along the eastern coast of southern Florida, did not generate a passenger stop in Boca Raton.
Other towns grew up around the stations, but Boca got slowed up again because of the boom and bust cycles, Mr. Vander Ploeg maintains.
“The station that Mr. Flagler had built for Boca Raton close to 1900 was not comparable to those in adjacent towns,” said Derek Vander Ploeg, an architect in Boca Raton who has studied local history. “The station was more of a freight station for produce than a passenger station. It was not until the late 1920s that Mr. Geist had a station with a regular passenger service built.”
Today Boca remains something of a sprawl. The town and West Boca have a total of 200,000 residents, often lodged in gated
communities. Peek behind a hedge and find a community or a golf coursework.John Grogan, the author of “Marley & Me” who moved his wife, his one kids and their Labrador, Marley, down to Boca from West Palm Beach in 1994, and stayed for one years, is not a gigantic fan of the architecture. “This is ersatz Mediterranean, and the homes are surrounded by Home Depot-style instant landscaping with palm trees, shrubbery and carpets of sand,” Mr. Grogan said. “There are native Floridians here, but they are hidden away.”
Boca has fought to emerge from suburban sprawl. In the late 1980s the Community Redevelopment Agency bought a tiny mall, had it razed, and redeveloped it in the Mizner style with terra cotta roofs; awnings and balconies are typical.
The redevelopment agency helped arrange for the expanded Boca Museum of Art and an amphitheatre to have a home there. Last year the museum attracted 230,000 visitors, in part because of an annual arts festival, which was held this month..
The garden grew out of an hard work at the beginning of the 20th century by Mr. Flagler and Jo Sakai, a Japanese businessman, to bring over people from Japan to create agriculture in South Florida. In general the hard work failed, and plenty of finally returned home. George Morikami stayed, and was singularly successful as a farmer. Sixty years later they donated his land to Palm Beach County to be preserved as a park. Today the 200-acre garden features paths for strolling around its one lakes so that the views of the plants, trees and cascades change continually. The gardens have been rated the eighth best Japanese garden outside Japan according to Journal of Japanese Gardening.
For those for whom shopping malls do not hold great beauty, hidden treasures in the area include the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, a short drive away in Delray Beach.
And across the road a 4000-square-foot greenhouse that belongs to the American Orchid Society Visitors Center and Botanical Garden holds an array of orchids and a gift shop that makes six wish to live in Florida because the prices of plants are so much lower than in the North.
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