Arthur Vining Davis

Arthur Vining Davis was born in Sharon, Massachusetts, the son of Perley B. Davis, a Congregational minister, and Mary Frances. After attending school in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, and the Roxbury Latin School in Boston, Davis entered Amherst College, graduating in 1888 seven years before his friend Calvin Coolidge.

As a result of his father's friendship with a former parishioner, Alfred E. Hunt, founder of the Pittsburgh Reduction Company that made aluminum, Davis obtained a job with that company. Although aluminum's favorable characteristics as an industrial metal had been known for several decades, it was expensive to manufacture; Hunt's company hoped to capitalize on Charles Martin Hall's experiments to produce the metal at low cost via electrolysis.

The work required a handyman's disposition—overalls and a twelve-hour day—as the manufacturing process was a continuous one. Davis and Hall became close associates during the experimental phase, and on Thanksgiving Day of 1888, they poured the first commercial aluminum.

Davis married Florence Isabel Holmes, of Indiana, on October 23, 1894, in Allegheny Co, PA. She died on May 3, 1909, in Pittsburgh, PA. In March 1912, he married Elizabeth Hawkins Weiman, who died in 1933. He had no children.

Before retiring from Alcoa, Davis began a second career by investing primarily in the Bahamas and Florida.

The investments included extensive real estate holdings in the Miami area (estimated at one-eighth of Dade County; see also Arvida Corp.) and on Cuba's Isle of Pines (he was said to own one-quarter of the island before his property there was nationalized by the government of Fidel Castro when it came to power), as well as ownership or control of some thirty Florida enterprises ranging from dairy farms to resort hotels. In 1959, Davis purchased "half of Longboat Key, a good part of Lido Key and all of Bird, Otter and Coon Keys," all islands on the west coast of Florida. The rapid acquisition and size of the investments resulted in considerable publicity and additional controversy with the government, this time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Davis bought 5,000 acres of land in Eleuthera in 1939 and 30,000 more acres after the war. He invested in farming and in a canning factory and introduced associated infrastructure. Davis sold most of his holdings to the government in 1950 for a resort venture; when the venture failed, Davis repurchased most of his former holdings for less money.