Historic Lemon Avenue

Lemon City began as an agricultural community of homesteaders in the 1870s. In 1889, entrepreneur Eugene C. Harrrington, credited as the father of Lemon City, bought an 11-acre strip of land from homesteader John Saunders, sold an acre of bay-front land to Charles S.B. Moffat, and subdivided the rest as Lemon City, a name reportedly inspired by the abundance of lemon trees in the area. The first official mention of the name appeared in the 1889 Harrington-Moffat land sale. Eighty-one small lots were platted with Lemon Avenue running down the middle, and in 1890 the lots sold for between $35 and $65. Lemon Avenue, originally extending from the bay to Rock Road (NE 2nd Ave.), was forty feet wide, made of sand and exposed rock, and became the community's main street. Much of Lemon City's development took place along it, including the first hotel in 1892, operated by Harrington's mother, Cornelia Keys. In 1895, Harrington deeded the street to Dade County. Because Lemon City had no municipal government, residents financed their own improvements, and in 1896 the all-woman Village Improvement Association was organized in Cornelia Keys's home. Its first goal was to rock Lemon Avenue from the bay to the railroad crossing, a project begun in 1897 and completed in 1902 with the aid of a new 20,000-pound steamroller purchased by Dade County. Alongside the paving of Lemon Avenue, Rock Road, now NE 2nd Ave., was surfaced south to Miami and completed in 1902, making ground travel easier between Lemon City and Miami without taking the train. The rocking of Lemon Avenue helped Lemon City expand westward as construction revived, and the street later became the site of the Lemon City Library in 1904 and the first independent post office in 1905. When Miami annexed Lemon City in 1925 and introduced a numbered street system beginning in downtown Miami, Lemon Avenue was renamed NE 61st Street.

Miami, Florida · United States