Exhibit sprouts from fortunate photo find
Nancy, Leila and Dorothy Pierson (l-r) display decorated coconuts at their roadside ‘Cocoanut Stand,’
possibly to raise money for the Red Cross during World War I.
A hand-tinted photograph of what is now State Road A1A.
Photos courtesy of Janet DeVries
Leila Pierson leans against a cocoanut palm in this early 20th-century image.
Her husband, Romeyn Pierson Sr., stands near the boat named for his wife.
Romeyn Pierson Jr. poses with his rifle.
Photos courtesy of Janet DeVries
By Ron Hayes
You say “coconut.” They say “cocoanut.”
The Oxford English Dictionary says cocoanut-with-an-a is the “old-fashioned spelling.”
That’s why local historians Janet DeVries and Ginger Pedersen call their exhibit of old-fashioned Florida photographs, “Cocoanut Dreams.”
“We spelled it that way on purpose,” says DeVries, without apology. “I actually had one person correct a press release and want to spell it without the ‘a.’”
“Cocoanut Dreams,” on display through Sept. 14 on the second floor of the Boynton Beach City Library, features 30 historic photographs of Ocean Ridge, Manalapan, Hypoluxo Island, Lantana and Lake Worth, taken between 1912 and 1925, when cocoanut palms were more common than condos and air conditioning was only a dream.
For DeVries, a librarian at Palm Beach State College and immediate past president of the Boynton Beach Historical Society, finding a crumbling photo album on eBay in 2014 was a dream come true.
The owner was asking $200 but let her have it for $150. Inside, she found 108 photographs annotated with titles like “Boynton Hotel Cottages,” “Along Lake Worth” and “Manalapan.”
Three years later, she has identified the photographer as A. Romeyn Pierson Jr., whose family owned a house on the dunes built in 1894 by Elnathan T. Field of Manalapan, N.J.
Based on the ages of his children and other records, DeVries was able to date the pictures as having been made between 1912, when the family bought “Manalapan Cottage,” and 1925.
“For the exhibit, I chose the ones that were really idyllic and depicted the area at that time, and also several of those he had hand-tinted,” she explains.
Here’s Ocean Boulevard when it was only an unpaved road, a Red Cross volunteer selling cocoanut milk for 10 cents a serving, a Naval seaman in his “Cracker Jack” uniform.
Here’s Leila, the boat Pierson’s father named after his wife, and here’s Leila herself, leaning against a palm tree.
And there are cocoanut palms, of course. Lots and lots of cocoanut palms.
“These people were planting cocoanut palms and trying to make money off them,” DeVries says, “and now we have coconut milk and coconut oil and people are touting the health benefits.”
At 5:30 p.m. June 7, the library will host a reception during which DeVries will discuss her discovery, the Piersons, the photographs and the area as it was a century ago.
The exhibit is sponsored by the city’s Art in Public Places program, whose manager, Debby Coles-Dobay, promises gifts for some who attend.
“We’ve got 20 cocoanut palms sprouting in plastic pots that we’re going to give away,” Coles-Dobay said. “We’ll put names in a pot and draw 20, and those winners will take home their own cocoanut palm to plant. We’re sharing the dream.”
But dreams die in time.
Romeyn Pierson Sr. and his daughter, Dorothy, died in the flu epidemic of 1919, and his son, the photographer, succumbed to alcoholism in 1929.
Their granddaughter, Nancy Tilton, inherited Manalapan Cottage, and after her death the house was razed in 2000.
“It was a dream,” DeVries says, “but sometimes life gets in the way and the dream doesn’t survive the four D’s — divorce, disease, death and developers.”
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