Chilau and Hot Night Create Shack Colony
April 1, 1945
By C.G. Berning, Staff Writer
Chilau and a very hot day in Miami city hall office in the midst of the 1937 municipal election campaign combined to create a distinctive recreational retreat in Biscayne bay called "the shacks."
Rough-looking exteriors on piles and barges, the buildings are furnished elaborately with all the comforts of home inside. The settlement, located south of Key Biscayne and east of the Coral Gables mainland, gained national attention during the pre-war days as one of Miami's unique attractions.
Restricted boating during the last few years, however, has obscured this paradise into forgetfulness, save for the limited few who owned the 12 private shacks and two clubhouses on "the flats."
Latest addition to the settlement is a $1,000 structure nearing completion for Capt. J.O. Barker of the Miami police identification bureau. A nearby "shack" is valued at more than $15,000.
In the midst of them all is the most primitive looking and yet the stoutest-the home on the flats of "Crawfish" Eddie Walker, master of chilau. It's location is marked on nautical charts.
Chilau is the name of a crawfish chowder which Thomas E. Grady, daddy of the shack settlement idea, will tell you Eddie cooks up from "the bottom scrapings of Biscayne Bay." Eddie says he makes it with crawfish trapped in the nighttime, potatoes, garlic, onions, tomatoes,sweet pepper and a dash of Spanish this and Spanish that.
His eyes practically blinded with cataracts, Eddie finds his way along Miami streets with difficulty, yet poles a boat among the flats in the bay at night with the sureness of an Indian scout. While he lives in the shack on the flats in the middle of the south bay his wife, Mattie, maintain their home at 563 N.W. 27th St.
Although 67 years old, Eddie does the work among the shacks. He repairs and watches them. He set the mangrove pilings for all of them, including Barker's current building project. Walker hews the logs, point one end of each, and with a weight on the other and "wiggles" it into the soft coral rock bay bottom.
He came to Miami from Key West in 1907 and took up fishing after 39 years in federal lighthouse services.
Boating parties frequently came to his place at midnight to eat chilau and fried crawfish in the cool isolation of the Biscayne flats.
It was on such a night that Grady, who was city rate and traffic consultant, L. L. Lee, who was city manager and Leo Edwards, automobile dealer and boat owner, skimmed along the glassy waters to Eddie's chilau pots.
"Why not build us a shack?" thought Grady aloud. And shortly thereafter the trio leased 100 acres of bay bottom for 10 years at $100 a year from the state internal improvement board and became Eddie's first neighbor.
The idea spread and more shacks were built as Miami and Miami Beach business men realized that 30 minutes boat ride would take them from the heart of the city to a retreat so cool that blankets were required at night, and so quiet that only the sound was fish asking for bait from under the window.
Clubhouse - the Quarterdeck and then the Swan, sprang up. The Quarterdeck went into receivership and the closed building subsequently was purchased by a Miami Beach hotel man who plans to reopen it in the very near future. The Swan club became the Probus club.
One of the shacks, owned by Joseph Weintraub, Miami attorney, is used as a Coast Guard Auxiliary flotilla headquarters. The buildings are equipped with windmills, pumps, electricity, running water, bottled gas stoves and modern furniture. Visitors find them stocked with food.
Another of the shacks is owned by Councilman Baron de Hirsch Meyer of Miami Beach, who now is in military service. Edward Romth, Miami banker, was among the early owners, his shack now being owned by Dan Ruskin. Other owners are Forest Johnson, Miami Boat builder and several airplane pilots who find respite from their nerve-wracking daily routine in this secluded spot, so near and yet so far from downtown Miami.