Quarterdeck Club

Biscayne Bay became known as a party place in the early 1940s after Commodore Edward Turner built the Quarterdeck Club on a barge a mile south of Cape Florida, near an area eventually known as Stiltsville. The club, which had a bar, a dining room, a game room and charter members with vice-commodore titles, was featured in Life magazine in 1941 as “an oceanic heaven” where commuting to the mainland was done by speedboat. After World War II, the watery playground was raided on suspicion of gambling though no evidence was found. Twenty-one years of checkered history ended September 5, 1961 when it burned to the water’s edge.

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