A Miami Police substation was once home to a cartoon factory

Miami Police Department's Grapeland Heights substation at
1701 NW 30th Ave. 
(Click to enlarge)

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Today it's a squat, nondescript government building that houses the Miami Police Department's Grapeland Heights substation.

But in the late 1930s it was a cartoon factory.

A 1939 newspaper story reported that the Fleischer Studio "is the only major movie concern to be established successfully outside the Hollywood area."

The story noted, "although [the studio] has one of Florida's largest payrolls, most Miamians don't even know of its existence," and adding that it took "500 girls" to create one cartoon character.

The short film below from 1939 offers a fascinating glimpse of what went on inside the studio.

FOOTNOTE: In case you're wondering why the film's narrator, Gayne Whitman, is speaking in that old-timey voice, it's because that's the way narrators and film stars were taught to speak back then.







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