KEY 



3234 



KEY WEST 



The city contains a Federal building, erected 

 in 1911 at a cost of $75,000, a Carnegie library, 

 an armory, a Masonic Temple, Y. M. C. A. 

 building, Saint Francis Hospital, a $100,000 

 hotel and several attractive parks. C.J.K. 



KEY, kee, in modern music, a term desig- 

 nating the scale in which a composition is 

 written; it comprises not only the tones of 

 the staff itself but all the chords constructed 

 upon those tones. Each key is named for the 

 keynote, or tonic, from which it is started, and 

 there are as many keys as there are scales 

 twelve major and twelve minor. The key of C, 

 having no sharps or flats, is called the normal, 

 or natural, key. The name key is also given 

 in music to a mechanical contrivance for open- 

 ing or closing certain sound-holes on wind- 

 instruments, and to the levers composing the 

 keyboard of pianos, organs and other keyed 

 instruments. See SCALE. 



KEY, FRANCIS SCOTT (1780-1843), the author 

 of one of America's favorite songs, The Star 

 Spangled Banner. What inspired him to write 

 the patriotic verses that have made him a 

 permanent figure in the literary annals of his 

 country is told 

 in these volumes 

 under the head- 

 ing Star Spangled 

 Banner. Key was 

 born in Frederick 

 County, Md.,and 

 was educated at 

 Saint John's Col- 

 lege, in Annapo- 

 lis. Beginning the 

 practice of law 

 in Frederick in 

 1801, he rose to 

 the position of 

 district attorney 

 of the District of 

 Columbia. Be- 

 sides the Star Spangled Banner he wrote a 

 number of other poems, and in 1857 they were 

 collected and published. 



KEY 'STONE, a name given to the brick or 

 stone at the top of an arch, which is put in 

 last, giving strength to the structure, and 

 which is said to lock or key the whole together. 

 In ancient Roman architecture the keystone 

 was usually carved or otherwise decorated. 

 Pennsylvania is often called the Keystone 

 State because of its geographical position, be- 

 ing the seventh, or middle, of the thirteen 

 original states of the Union. See ARCH. 



FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 



KEY WEST, FLA., the southernmost city of 

 the United States, world famous {or the manu- 

 facture of cigars. It is a port of entry, a 

 United States naval station, a noted health 

 resort and the county seat of Monroe County. 

 Its site is on Key West Island, the most west- 

 erly of a group of coral islands in the Gulf 

 of Mexico, known as the Florida Keys. Cape 

 Sable is sixty miles northeast, Havana is nearly 

 100 miles southwest and Tampa is 240 miles 

 northwest, by water; Miami is 150 miles 

 northeast and Jacksonville 500 miles north, by 

 rail. The Oversea Extension of the Florida East 

 Coast Railway, a triumph of railway construc- 

 tion, connecting Key West with the mainland, 

 was opened to traffic in 1912, and railway con- 

 nections for the north are made at Miami. 

 Steamers ply regularly between this port and 

 the important ports on the Atlantic and Gulf 

 coasts, and with the West Indies and Central 

 America. The population increased from 19- 

 945 in 1910 to 21,724 in 1916 (Federal esti- 

 mate). Two-thirds of the inhabitants are 

 Americans and one-third are Cubans, the latter 

 being largely engaged in the tobacco industry. 

 The area of the city is two and one-half square 

 miles. 



Key West is a beautiful place with broad 

 streets, attractive homes and luxuriant tropical 

 vegetation, almond, cocoanut, palm and olean- 

 der trees being grown in abundance; its mild 

 climate attracts large numbers of transients in 

 winter and summer. The island is covered 

 only by a thin layer of soil, and its average 

 elevation above sea level is about eleven feet. 

 The harbor is safe and commodious and is 

 defended by Fort Taylor and other more mod- 

 ern fortifications. In connection with the naval 

 station there are extensive docks, repair yards, 

 barracks and a marine hospital. This naval 

 station has one of the most powerful wireless 

 telegraph plants in the world. 



Besides its extensive cigar factories, which 

 employ about 6,000 people, Key West has a 

 large fishing industry, the waters abounding 

 in a great variety of fine fish, including tarpon. 

 The headquarters of a large sponge-gathering 

 fleet is here, and the turtle-shell and coral in- 

 dustries are important. Though the govern- 

 ment has erected two lighthouses in the 

 harbor and others among the islands, a great 

 many wrecks occur each year, and they are 

 the source of a profitable wreckage business. 

 Key West has immense shipping interests, 

 local, coastwise and foreign. The buildings 

 worthy of note are a Federal building, court- 



