Connecting Florida: Early Florida East Coast Railway History with Seth H. Bramson

Connecting Florida: Early Florida East Coast Railway History with Seth H. Bramson

Local historian Seth H. Bramson joins Kislak curators Dr. Carol Damian and Arthur Dunkelman for a fascinating peek into the history of the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) and its role in the growth of the state of Florida. The FEC was founded by Henry Morrison Flagler, an American tycoon, real estate promoter, and John D. Rockefeller's partner in Standard Oil, and the story of the building of the railroad is the story of the building of South Florida. Bramson, the foremost historian on the subject, will explore the railway's building and its challenges, and he will also provide the audience with the unique opportunity to view items from his personal collection—one of the largest collections of Florida East Coast Railway collectibles—during a show-and-tell portion of the event.

Seth H. Bramson is a lifelong Miamian and America's senior collector of Florida East Coast Railway, Florida transportation, and Miami memorabilia as well as other Floridiana. The most published author of Florida history, he has written thirty-two books. Among them are Coral Gables, Miami: The Magic City, and Miami Beach, all from the Images of America series. He is an Adjunct Professor of Extended Learning and Historian in Residence at Barry University in Miami, where he teaches courses on Florida history.

Dr. Carol Damian is an art historian, former Professor of Art History in the School of Art and Art History at Florida International University, and former Director and Chief Curator of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at FIU. She has contributed to numerous publications and lectures frequently on Latin American and Caribbean art, and the local art scene. She is currently Curator of the Kislak Center, part of the Miami Dade College Special Collections, housed at the Freedom Tower; and of the Chapel of La Merced Colonial Collection at Corpus Christi in Miami.

Arthur Dunkelman is the curator of the Kislak Collection of the Early Americas, Exploration, and Navigation in Special Collections at the University of Miami Richter Library, where the exhibition Open New Worlds is ongoing at the Kislak Center Gallery. Before coming to UM, he was the director and curator of the Kislak Foundation for twenty-four years. In 2004, a portion of the Kislak Foundation Collection was donated to the Library of Congress, and Dunkelman managed the transition, research, and public outreach, and edited a comprehensive catalogue of the collection that was published by the Library of Congress in 2007.

MDC Special Collections’ programs are made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. They are sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.