Historian Janet Naughton traces little-known chapters of West Palm Beach history on City Center podcast

Janet Naughton, a faculty librarian and history professor at Palm Beach State College, told listeners of the City Center podcast that West Palm Beach holds many overlooked stories about its past, and “you just have to look for it.” The interview, hosted by Jerry Marsolo of the City of West Palm Beach communications department, ran through local episodes including early festivals, artists who trained locally, neighborhood development during the 1920s boom, and the city’s aviation beginnings.

Naughton said the Seminole Sundance Festival — a three‑day event staged by local merchants from about 1916 into the mid‑1920s — featured parades, dress‑up contests and a “prettiest baby” competition meant to extend the winter tourist season. “It brought a lot of business to the city of West Palm Beach,” she said.

Naughton highlighted Augusta Savage, who lived in the area during her formative years and later became an important sculptor of the Harlem Renaissance. Naughton recounted that Savage was aided locally by an artist, George Graham Curry, who helped her exhibit at the South Florida Fair; Savage won a blue ribbon and $25 at that fair and later showed a large sculptural work called The Harp at a national fair, though she lacked funds to have it bronzed. Naughton said a few souvenir replicas of The Harp exist and suggested a local replica on display would honor Savage’s connection to the city.

The conversation also covered women who broke local political and professional barriers. Naughton described Agnes Ballard — an architect who ran for and won the office of superintendent of the Palm Beach County Board of Instruction in the wake of the suffrage era — and Nurse Rosa Brown, a Red Cross traveling nurse who directed a segregated tent city after the 1928 hurricane, later teaching public‑health subjects to local students. Naughton said there have been suggestions to name county schools after both women.

Naughton placed West Palm Beach’s early 20th‑century building boom in context: developers created planned subdivisions such as Grandview Heights, Flamingo Park, Northwood and El Cid with larger Mediterranean‑influenced homes tied to architects like Addison Mizner. She described how the boom faltered after the 1928 hurricane, transportation embargoes and the 1929 stock‑market crash.

On transportation history, Naughton said West Palm Beach hosted a seaplane base as early as 1911 where Curtiss seaplanes offered sightseeing flights — and later longer runs to Havana. She traced the city’s airport history to Morrison Field, a flying field dedicated in the 1930s (named for pilot Grace Morrison), which served as an Army Air Forces base during World War II and later evolved into what is now Palm Beach International Airport.

Naughton also described civic planning and cultural institutions: the City Beautiful movement’s influence on Flagler Park (the waterfront Y at Clematis), band shells and the old Memorial Library; Yesteryear Village at the South Florida Fairgrounds, a living‑history cluster of authentic relocated buildings; and the 1926 Seaboard Airline passenger station (today part of the Tri‑Rail complex), designed by architects Harvey and Clark.

Throughout the interview Naughton drew attention to primary sources and local collections. She mentioned a book she co‑edited, Overdue in Paradise: The Library History of Palm Beach County, and pointed listeners to the Historical Society of Palm Beach County (the Richard and Pat Johnson Museum) and the Mandel Public Library’s Florida Room for maps, artifacts and archival material.

The interview ran through a range of vignettes rather than proposing policy or new municipal action. Naughton emphasized preservation and public awareness as reasons to collect and share those stories: “Anything that's preserved, whether it be through a story, a photograph, a postcard, or something, then it's really not forgotten,” she said.

For listeners seeking more detail, Naughton recommended local archives and cited specific local resources where researchers can view postcards, photographs and other primary materials that document Clematis Street, Flagler Drive, early schools and civic landmarks.