Between 1909 and 1910, Palm Beach Farms Company, owned by brothers Frederick E. and Harold J. Bryant, along with William Greenwood, purchased thousands of acres of land in Everglades and a piece along the coast. Chicago businessmen Greenwood and Bryant promoted the ground throughout the United States and Canada. They offered 5 acres of western land for $250, $10 down, $10 per month. As an extra “free perk,” those who chose to buy would also receive a 25 by 25-foot piece of land on the shores of Lake Worth. The subtropical wetland ecosystem proved unfarmable. A lotto system assigned the shoreline lots, and by 1912, 308 new settlers decided to put their roots down on the shorefront property. These original homesites eventually became the city of Lake Worth, leaving the western acres were essentially desert until the real estate boom of the 1920s when the City of Greenacres founder Lawrence Carter Swain came into the picture.
The city gained the slogan from founder Lawrence Carter Swain, who moved his family from Massachusetts in the 1920s. At this time, the Town of Palm Beach and coastal resort areas were doing very well for the upper-class society. Swain recognized the need for middle-class housing, started buying up land, approximately 1,000 acres half a mile west of Military trail, known as the original land that made up the city of Greenacres.
A local contest gave a list of potential names for the city, and Swain’s staff voted on a list. In 1926, Greenacres became an official municipality. Over the next few years, two catastrophes plowed through Greenacres: the Miami Hurricane of 1926 and the Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928. Both natural disasters caused massive destruction to the young city. The city survived, repaired, and rebuilt. Swain passed in 1944, his legacy honored by the name of a street, Swain Boulevard, and the L.C. Swain Middle School.
In 1945, controversy struck when a group of angry townsfolk, potentially from being denied homestead exemption, petitioned the Florida State Legislature to remove municipality designation to the city of Greenacres. In April of that year, the State passed a law to disincorporate the town. However, the legislation was missing the governor’s signature at that time, Millard Caldwell. The Mayor at the time, Charles A. Grabowski, fought this, and by 1947 Greenacres was reincorporated.
In the 1960s, the first City Hall Complex, complete with a public library, was built at Perry Ave and Fourth Street and a community center nearby. Greenacres continued to grow, and by the 1970s, the city established an official Fire-Rescue Department and a Police Department. In the 1980s, the city’s growth rate had increased at such a rate that the City Hall could not accommodate. A new City Hall construction began at 10th Ave North and Sherwood Forest Blvd. The city of Greenacres growth spurt continues, and in 2007 the building was completed of the City Hall Complex where it sits today on Melaleuca Lane. (MAP)
