City Of Hollywood

     Located between Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Hollywood boasts five miles of protected beach along the translucent waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Hollywood is a recreational magnet and residential haven, bolstered by its proximity to Dania and Hallandale. The world-famous Boardwalk provides beach-goers with a place to stroll, bicycle or skate and take in the beautiful setting of its most precious natural resource... the beach.
      Hollywood also hosts an annual Jazz Festival which attracts visitors from around the country to share in performances that showcase musicians on the vanguard of traditional, contemporary and Latin jazz. Take time to stroll through the City of Hollywood, with 126,000 year-round residents you'll see why we're a great place to live.
     The City of Hollywood is a mature and built-out community, where rapid population growth in the 1950s and 1960s has given way to a population that is stable in size but undergoing significant changes in its composition.     
     Joseph Young first arrived in South Florida in January 1920 to survey several parcels of land that would be suitable for the site of his "Dream City in Florida." His initial vision included a wide boulevard extending from the ocean westward to the edge of the Everglades with man-made lakes paralleling each side of the roadway. One end of each lake would empty into the Intracoastal Waterway and the other would serve as a twin turning basin for private yachts. Hollywood, in Joseph Young's vision, "will be a city for everyone - from the opulent at the top of the industrial and social ladder to the most humble of working people." Unique in Young's city plan was the incorporation of three large circles of land located along his planned principal boulevard. These circles became the sites of a ten-acre park, the City Hall complex, and a military academy. Academy Circle, now Presidential Circle, is the current site of a focal commercial structure. 
       During this period, construction along Hollywood Beach was rapidly transforming the coastline. Construction was underway on the Hollywood Broadwalk, a unique cement promenade, thirty feet wide, stretching along the shoreline for a distance of one-and-a-half miles and patterned after Atlantic City's famed boardwalk. Hollywood Beach also boasted Florida's largest and best appointed bathing pavilion, the Hollywood Beach Casino located on the Broadwalk.A shopping arcade and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The "Atlantic City of the South" added more allure with the opening in February 1926 of the Hollywood Beach Hotel, which was situated on an 800-foot expanse of oceanfront property at the eastern end of Hollywood Boulevard. 
      On Sept. 18, 1926, disaster struck Joseph Young's "Dream City." A vicious hurricane slammed into the S. Florida Atlantic coast with Hollywood among its targets. The city was devastated by the hurricane's high winds and surging floodwaters. Millions of dollars in property losses were incurred and the seemingly unlimited growth of Hollywood stopped overnight without warning. Again, Joseph Young took up the challenge and led in the rebuilding of Hollywood as head of the Hollywood Relief Committee.
      Undeterred, Joseph Young's vision of his "Dream City" included one last inspiration. While grounded in a speedboat on a mud flat in shallow Lake Mabel one afternoon, Young developed his visionary concept while awaiting rescue from his predicament. His idea was to dredge a deep-water seaport from the shallow lake north of Hollywood to the Atlantic Ocean, so that sailing ships from around the world could dock and disembark eager visitors and tourists to Hollywood. In February 1928, Young's vision became a reality. From that initial predicament, the present day Port Everglades grew from a shallow lake into one of the busiest seaports in Florida.
      Upon the celebration of the city's Fiftieth Anniversary in 1975, Hollywood adopted the nickname the "Diamond of the Gold Coast." 
     In recent years, Hollywood has continued to add luster to its reputation as the Diamond of the Gold Coast with the opening of the Anne Kolb Nature Center located in Hollywood's West Lake Tract. The center boasts over 1,500 acres of mangrove preserves and is the site of a protected bird rookery and sanctuary as well as a fish nursery ground. On Hollywood's North Beach, a sea turtle hatchery and preserve has been developed. The historic downtown arts district along Harrison Street and the Hollywood Art & Culture Center have become centers of activity in the cultural arts and entertainment communities of South Florida.