3 days ago
Before there was West Palm Beach's Phillips Point, there was The Hut
As West Palm Beach's iconic Phillips Point high-rise undergoes a major facelift, newcomers to the area might be surprised to learn that the spot on Flagler Drive was once home to an even more iconic building of its era: a drive-in restaurant called The Hut.
And for decades, it was one of the city's most popular hangouts.
Palm Beacher Mimi Maddock McMakin told the Palm Beach Daily News in 2021 that in the 1960s, she and her best girlfriends would sneak away from slumber parties in their pajamas, to tool around town in her dad's white Cadillac, before heading over the Royal Park Bridge to West Palm Beach.
'There we'd be, these three young girls driving around late at night in a giant white Cadillac with red interior,' McMakin recalled. "Our destination was always the same: The Hut. Where else?'
Carolyn Stroupe Stambaugh, who also grew up in Palm Beach and graduated in 1951, relished visiting The Hut in the late 1940s and early '50s.
'Whenever we weren't in school, The Hut was the gathering place.'
Students from Palm Beach High School (now Dreyfoos School of the Arts) also gravitated to the spot, including soon-to-be budding celebrities George Hamilton and Burt Reynolds.
"The Hut is where you went," Reynolds once recalled. "If you were lucky enough to have a friend with a car, you parked by some girls, your arm hanging out against the door so that it looked like you had a bicep."
The Hall family opened the place in 1930, calling it The Tropical Hut. By 1937, under a new owner, The Hut was doing 90% of its business via "curb girls," who hustled out to parked cars or the patio.
During World War II, The Hut's neon signage beckoned servicemen and women stationed in the area to its food stand, as Big Band music sounded over the jukebox. Cheese-covered hot dogs were 20 cents, and milkshakes were made from ice cream from the local Alfar Creamery.
'We'd pile into the car and my parents would take us — I was probably 8 or 9 — for barbecue and frosted root beer,' Palm Beacher David Reese told the Daily News about his 1940s Hut visits.
'Then, when I was in high school, everyone would go on Friday nights and we'd congregate for curb service in our cars,' Reese said. 'I had this great girlfriend with a car and one night, the guys on the football team picked up her car and turned it all the way around. We laughed, of course, and she kept saying, `Put me down!''
The Hut was considered so all-American that The "Saturday Evening Post" featured it on the cover in 1946, when the average check at the food stand was 40 cents.
Reynolds recalled that The Hut was flanked by an asphalt apron accommodating up to 40 cars parked three-deep. For somebody up front to back out, he or she had to flash the lights and the cars immediately behind would back onto the two-laned Flagler Drive. Perpetual musical parking was followed by musical car-hopping. Reynolds said seniors and football players got the front spots.
Business continued to boom even as The Hut changed hands again after 1959, when a Miami restaurateur bought the business and added fried chicken and strawberry shortcake to the menu.
But by the early 1970s, times had changed. Nearby Palm Beach High School had closed and merged with another school. Downtown West Palm Beach was in a downturn, as consumers preferred shopping and dining in expansive, air-conditioned malls.
The Hut closed in 1973, reopening for a short stint in 1977. In 1982, the building was razed to make way for the Phillips Point high-rise.
'It's been so long,' McMakin recalled in 2021. 'But I don't think any of us has ever forgotten The Hut.'
Reporting from former staff writer Eliot Kleinberg and Palm Beach Daily News writer M.M. Cloutier contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: The Hut: West Palm Beach soda shop drew teen Burt Reynolds, others
