Coral Gables is a posh city in Florida, and a restaurant and bar in East Lansing, Michigan. The restaurant has (or had, back in the day when I frequented the place) a tropical flair, and I've always assumed that it was named after the famous Floridian city. But from where did the city get its name?

I finally scratched that itch via a TV show recently. The program reviewed the history of the city, and explained the origin of the name.

Coral Gables was established by a landowner as a residential development, and the landowner's family home was located near the site of the development. That home, designed and built by the family, was constructed of coral rock, a locally plentiful resource. The front elevation of the house presents a double gable, and hence the house was known as coral gables, and the city took its name from that house.