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Happy Birthday Margate
• The City that Jack Built
Sunday,
May 30, 2010
Margate celebrates its 55th birthday on May 30, 2010. Happy birthday one and all!
Nicknamed “the City that Jack Built” after Margate’s founding financier, Jack Marquesee, the name also applied to the city’s original “Builder of Margate,” Jack Sullivan, as acknowledged by Margate Commissioner David McLean at last week’s city commission meeting.
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McLean took a moment to honor the passing of Sullivan, which happened on Friday, April 2, 2010 at the Lodge at Cypress Cove in Ft. Myers, FL.
Sullivan was the last remaining of Margate’s four founding fathers: Victor Semet, Jack Marqusee, Jack Sullivan and Winthrop Rockefeller.
Sullivan invented the cement roof, still found on many of the homes in Margate Shores, McLean said, and built the city’s first municipal building, the city’s water / sewer plant, the Margate Lounge and the city’s first shopping plaza.
News clips at Margate City Hall point to the naming of Margate as attaching the prefix of Marquesse’s last name to the word “gate” standing for "Margate, Gateway to the Everglades,” which is what the city was 55 years ago; a border town to the everglades - 1700 acres of eggplant, pole beans and peppers.
But Sullivan had his own spin on the naming of Margate.
According to former Margate Assistant City Manager, the late George Mudd, in a press clip from 1992, Sullivan recounted a story of Marquesee reading about how Napoleon Bonaparte hid in Margate, England when the French dictator fled France in 1815.
Marquesee was vacationing in London at the time and said to one of his partners:
“That’s it, let’s call it Margate,” Marquesee said.
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