Perla Lichi’s contemporary showroom in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is one of two contemporary showrooms showcasing her innate flair as a luxurious house designer and her home interior company’s exclusive line of luxury design furniture. She will be opening Perla LIchi Design Canada this fall in Woodbridge, near Toronto. In the 1950s, Fort Lauderdale was known as the place “where the boys are” but, long before that is was dubbed the Venice of America.
Robert Nolin, writing for the Sun Sentinel, said the moniker, “was a masterstroke of marketing.”
He then goes on to say, “In the 1920s, progress across Broward County was booming. Courthouses, hotels, bridges and emporiums arose. Homes were built in the region’s unique Mediterranean Revival style. Development was taking its first wobbly steps as mangrove swamps in eastern Fort Lauderdale were dredged to create finger island subdivisions for new landowners.
“And New York investor J.C. Turner uttered the words that would become part of the city’s seal: ‘Lauderdale should be called the Venice of America.’
“The phrase has also been credited to Commodore Auylan Harcourt Brook, another of the city’s early boosters. Who actually coined the comparison is shrouded in historical conjecture.
“But the comparison is hardly valid. Fort Lauderdale is way wetter than Venice, with 165 miles of waterway. Venice, with 177 canals, has a paltry 26 miles of waterway. But then, Fort Lauderdale is way larger too, with 36 square miles compared to Venice, whose city limits span but 3 to 4 miles.
“So should Venice be calling itself the Fort Lauderdale of Italy?”
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