1674-14 Morris Lapidus Page 1 of 10
Subj: Re: Jeff Denberg obit '(fi 0- ' " 14196
Date: 3/19/2004 10:54:50 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: pkaplan@ajc.com
To: HKMiarri@aol.com
sounds like a fun book...check out the wonderful piece (below) that jim
auchmutey did for us a few years ago on morris lapidus....i'm working on a
project fulltime now — the G-8 summit at Sea Island, Ga. in June I'm
covering the protest community, which always turns out to be THE story when
these summits occur, because there's no other news....fascinating folks and
hopelessly idealistic, which is charming if nothing else be
well....paul
Sunday , 03/12/2000
Section: Dixie Living Letter: M Page: 1 Words: 2577
I, LAPIDUS LIVING LONG HAS BEEN THE BEST
REVENGE FOR THE ONCE VILIFIED ARCHITECT OF
MIAMI BEACH'S FABLED PLEASURE DOMES
By Jim Auchmutey / Staff
Miami Beach -
Morris Lapidus knows what it's like to die.
When he retired in 1984, the architect of Miami Beach's most fabulous
resort hotels invited his associates, past and present, to drop by his office and
take what they wanted.
"My draftsmen made a party out of it," Lapidus remembers. "They had
sandwiches and an open bar. But for me, it was a wake. I hated the profession.
It had raked me over the coals. Made a nobody out of me. I wanted to throw
everything away."
Lapidus instructed his secretary to hire a truck. It backed up to his office,
and they filled it with thousands of drawings and blueprints, half a century's
creations pitched from a second-floor window like chunks of plaster from a
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gutted room. Two truckloads went to the incinerator.
It has been 16 years since Lapidus ended his career in a funeral pyre of
frustration. But an unexpected thing has happened since then: The ashes have
stirred, the spirit has rekindled. At 97, one of the most controversial architects
of the 20th century has come out of retirement and is polishing his reputation
in a new millennium.
"I may not be Picasso or Raphael," he says, "but I'm still Lapidus, and you
cannot ignore me."
Working with a young woman who wasn't alive when he hit his stride in
the '50s, Lapidus has begun to sketch again. They've collaborated on a store in
Toronto, a restaurant in Miami Beach and several other proposed projects. In
the process, a new generation has discovered the hippest nonagenarian on the
planet. MTV, Vanity Fair, National Public Radio and a dozen other media
outlets have made the pilgrimage to Miami Beach.
Lapidus is luxuriating in the warm bath of attention. After all, it wasn't too
many years ago that tastemakers ridiculed his buildings as the pinnacle of
tackiness. The New York Times, which has featured Lapidus twice recently,
once dismissed his work as "uninspired superschlock."
"We all laughed at Lapidus," admits the renowned architect Philip Johnson.
"Now we've had to eat our words."
How that happened is a story of old hurts, new relationships and the
ageless swing of the pendulum of fashion. It starts with an immigrant kid who
wanted more than anything to be accepted in his new homeland.
Morris Lapidus inhabits the American Dream, circa 1962. His condo
overlooking Biscayne Bay is such a time capsule that a local museum has
arranged to display the Jetsonian furnishings after their owner has gone.
"This place is me," says Lapidus, appearing at the door behind a walker,
the result of a deteriorated spine. "There isn't anything here that isn't my work."
Where to begin? The living room has a 12-foot crescent-shaped sofa facing
golden chairs with plastic sleeves on the armrests. The dining room shimmers
with walls of treated oyster shell and Lucite chairs surrounding a glass table. A
spiral staircase lit by a swirl of jelly bean-colored lights leads to a den with a
leopard-skin bar. Liberace would have loved the white grand piano trimmed in
gold.
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"It used to be mahogany," Lapidus says. "I turned it into a modern piano."
The man himself resembles one of his objets d'art. With a long nose and
white hair swept back from a high, sloped forehead, he has the streamlined
profile of a '54 Cadillac. His courtly manners and learned tone of speech make
him seem rather professorial. But every now and then, when he talks about his
woik, his accent strikes an off key and reveals his roots in the cold-water
tenements of New York City.
Lapidus was born in Russia, into a Jewish family that fled religious
persecution for America in 1904. On his first day of school in Brooklyn, he
knew so little English that he couldn't ask the teacher for a bathroom break; he
wet himself and went home crying. He adapted and soon grew to love
American theater and movies. He wanted to be an actor or a set designer.
When he heard that you needed some schooling to dress a Broadway stage, he
enrolled at Columbia University and began studying architecture.
While Lapidus never made it in the footlights, he did bring a theatrical flair
to his first job as a retail designer. Through the 1930s and '40s, he traveled the
country reworking hundreds of stores with a sleeker, more modern look that
used lots of curved glass, bold colors and dramatic lighting. He developed
three trademark flourishes that he's used the rest of his life: skinny columns
called "bean poles," peekaboo cutouts known as "cheese holes" and
amorphous rounded shapes someone else dubbed "woggles."
Lapidus did considerable work in the South. One of his stores, a Mangel's
shop for women, still stands under a different guise on lower Peachtree Street
in downtown Atlanta.
"When I came South," he says, "l tried not to sound like a Yankee. Would
you like to hear my accent? We're gonna do the best store in town, so y'all
don't worry."
Not bad --- he sounds like he's running the only kosher deli in Macon.
After World War 11, Lapidus was invited to Miami Beach as interior
designer and associate architect on several resort hotels. He was nearing 50 and
was acutely aware that he had never done an entire building. His chance finally
came in 1954.
The Fontainebleau, named for a royal chateau outside Paris, was to be the
largest hotel in Miami Beach. Lapidus saw it as a grand stage for the nouveau
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riche.
"I knew the kind of people who would be staying there from Brooklyn," he
says. "They'd made a lot of money after the war, and they wanted to show it
off."
Lapidus gave them a sinuous hotel with a serpentine cabana fronting the
beach. He pulled out all the stops in the lobby, filling it with woggles and bean
poles and stagey lighting and a kitschy mixture of expensive antiques and
cheap reproductions. The crowning touch was the "stairway to nowhere," a
sweeping staircase that led to a dead end on the mezzanine but let couples in
furs and white dinner jackets descend into the lobby like stars in a Hollywood
musical. Lapidus signed his design with a black bow-tie pattern on the marble
floor --- he always wore bow ties.
The hotel was a smash. But there was one discordant note. The editor of
Architectural Record, which had featured many Lapidus stores, phoned to say
that the magazine would not be writing about the Fontainebleau. It was just too
. . . out there.
What was the problem? He beeped when he should've bopped. At the
Fontainebleau and a dozen other swank resorts in Miami Beach, Lapidus
dared to curve and adorn at a time when the glass boxes of Mies van der Rohe
and Le Corbusier --- the International style --- had become the new orthodoxy.
"Less is more," Mies decreed. "Too Much Is Never Enough," Lapidus
answered in the title of his memoir.
Fashion swung back toward Lapidus during the '80s, when postmodernists
started mixing and matching historical styles. Today his influence can be seen
in the stage-set trickery of Las Vegas, the sumptuousness of restaurant
interiors, the curvaceous facades of countless buildings.
"Lapidus showed that you don't have to be grim to be modern," says
Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the architecture school at Yale University. "He
mixed Busby Berkeley with Le Corbusier and came up with something really
hot."
But hardly anyone who mattered saw it that way when Lapidus was in his
prime. The disapproval of his peers could get humiliating. In 1963, when the
American Institute of Architects held its convention at his Americana Hotel in
Bal Harbour, Lapidus listened in the back of the hall as speaker after speaker
fired off snide comments about the building. "They were making fun of him,"
recalls Stern, who was there as a student. "At the end, this hand went up. It
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was Lapidus. He defended his work with what I thought was great dignity."
The scene was repeated a few years later when the Architectural League of
New York, under the protest of many members, staged a one-man show on
Lapidus. Again, the knives were unsheathed at a panel discussion. But this
time the notoriety had a higher cost.
Aristotle Onassis had chosen Lapidus to design an office tower next to St.
Patrick's Cathedral. The prospect of Mr. Miami stringing his tinsel in Midtown
Manhattan was more than some sensibilities could bear. On the same day the
Times trashed his retrospective, the lead editorial opposed the project under the
headline "Goodbye to Fifth Avenue." Onassis, stung by the publicity,
dismissed Lapidus.
The architect's enthusiasm waned during the '70s. He began to travel more
and grew less involved in his firm's work.
"I think his designs got noticeably worse," says his architect son, Alan
Lapidus, who headed the New York office. "He was trying to conform to
popular taste, and the work got terribly dull."
After he closed his practice in the early '80s, Lapidus stopped drafting
altogether and turned his energies to writing. Diane Camber, director of the
Bass Museum in Miami Beach, found him in a dejected mood when she
approached him about acquiring some examples of his work. "His attitude
was: This is junk; why would you want it? He was genuinely depressed."
The architect's spirits plummeted even further when his wife of six
decades, Beatrice, died in 1992. She had always complemented him; she was
extroverted and social where he was self-absorbed and work-obsessed. Now
he was alone and outcast.
It was about that time that a German publisher contacted Lapidus about
publishing a monograph of his career. European architects were curious about
this embodiment of American excess. A professional society in the
Netherlands wanted to mount an exhibition of his work.
His granddaughter, Atlanta publicist Liz Lapidus, accompanied him on the
trip to Rotterdam. She's never forgotten his poignant display of pride when the
pilot wandered back to the cabin.
"You might as well know," Lapidus told him. "I'm a famous architect, and
I'm going to Europe to receive an award."
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Then he turned to his granddaughter and said, "Bea used to do that for me."
The woman who does the horn-tooting for Lapidus these days is Deborah
Desilets, a 41-year-old architect who has her own practice in Miami Beach.
They met a few years ago when he visited Arquitectonica, the hot design firm
where she worked. They went to lunch. He tripped over a cable on the
sidewalk and fell on his face. She took him back to his condo and dabbed the
blood off his chin. They started talking, and she decided he was a forgotten
treasure who needed to be presented to the world again. She became his
manager, collaborator, best friend.
And here she is, arriving to take Lapidus to lunch and then on a drive
around Miami Beach to show off his architecture. A lithe blonde with bright
pink lipstick, she comes on like Hurricane Deborah, talking a mile a minute,
constantly fishing a cell phone out of her purse.
Desilets knows their relationship has raised eyebrows. As she swings her
black BMW onto Collins Avenue, she bluntly confronts the question she
figures some people have been whispering about.
"Morris, have you ever asked me for sex? Have I ever asked you? I'd like
to disable that thought now."
Lapidus casts a wistful look toward the driver's seat. "I was disabled long
before I met you, dear." He isn't talking about his back.
The two talk daily and dine together several times a week. She drops by his
condo and picks up his soft, swirly sketches. He comes by her office and
watches her flesh them out on a computer screen. She schedules his lectures
and reminds him of appointments and sometimes even tells him what to wear
("Pink. You look good in pink, Morris."). In turn, he pays her the highest
praise he can pay an architect who works with him; Desilets, he says, almost
always knows what he would do.
"It's amazing how his personality has changed since he met her," says
Robert Swedroe, a Miami Beach architect who started out with Lapidus during
the early '60s. "Morris has always had an ego that's as big as egos get. I think
he developed it because of all the disapproval. But he used to be humorless
about it. Now he's much more docile and easier to talk to."
Not that he still can't be as cantankerous as Frank Lloyd Wright.
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The first stop on the tour of Lapidus Land is the Di Lido, a 1953 hotel
being renovated by the Ritz-Carlton chain. In years past, many of his hotels
were altered with no regard for their original look. Now that Lapidus is
somebody again, hoteliers respectfully solicit his advice and consent.
In this case, Lapidus wishes they hadn't bothered. "I never wanted to do
this job," he says, looking up at a blue tongue-shaped canopy over the entrance.
"What's that supposed to be? its ridiculous."
"Oh, Morris," Desilets objects, "this is a great hotel."
The next stop is the Fontainebleau, which Hilton remodeled, covering
much of the marble floor and its signature bow-tie pattern with carpeting. "An
abortion," Lapidus grumbles.
He doesn't even want to see the Americana, which he considers his best
work. Sheraton bought it and removed the huge lobby terrarium that used to
crawl with live alligators. "I'd have a heart attack if I saw it now," he says.
Strangely, the best-preserved Lapidus structure in Miami Beach may not
be a hotel but a house --- one of only two he did. He reluctantly agreed to
design it in 1958 for his dentist. ("He threatened to drill into my bone if I
didn't.") Now it's owned by a doctor who reveres Lapidus and eagerly displays
his handiwork to a visitor as the master waits in the car.
Driving away afterward, Lapidus can't resist mentioning one little thing.
"Did you see those columns in the living room? Those aren't mine. I wish
he'd get rid of them."
Dinner finds Team Lapidus at Aura, a restaurant they recently designed on
fashionable Lincoln Road in South Beach. The voluptuous look of the place
recalls the stores Lapidus was doing decades ago --- curves, color, a wall
perforated with cheese holes displaying liquor bottles instead of women's
shoes.
"My old bag of tricks," he says, sipping a cocktail.
Desilets has a few more tricks in store. As part of her plan to market
Lapidus, they've collaborated on a tea set for Alessi, a pen for ACME, a tie
she's still shopping around. She'd love to get him on one of those "Do you
know me?" commercials for American Express.
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aimmak
Page 8 of 10
Of the several buildings they've designed together, their favorite is an office
complex proposed for a municipal redevelopment site in Miami Beach. It
could serve as a metaphorical summary of Lapidus' career: An undulating tile
base supports a glass cube topped by a bright palette shape straight out of the
Fabulous Fifties.
Lapidus does not expect to see it built, not at his age. But it almost doesn't
matter. How many people live long enough to witness their own resurrection?
Lapidus has.
One of the sweetest moments came last fall when he had lunch with Philip
Johnson at the Four Seasons in Manhattan. It was the first time in several years
that Lapidus had seen the old modernist, who has long since adopted curves
and ornamentation and been relabeled a postmodernist.
"You know what he did?" Lapidus says. "He put his arm around me and
said, 'Morris, you were the father of us all.' "
Lapidus did not disagree.
Graphic Name:
Graphic Type: Photo
Caption: Morris Lapidus designed everything in his Biscayne Bay
condominium. The plastic and glass dining room set will end up in a Miami
museum. / TAIMY ALVAREZ / Special
Graphic Name:
Graphic Type: Photo
Caption: The Eden Roc, designed by Lapidus in 1955, was recently restored
to mint condition. You half expect Sinatra to swing through the swank lobby. /
TAIMY ALVAREZ / Special
Graphic Name:
Graphic Type: Photo
Caption: Deborah Desilets, who wasn't alive when Lapidus did his greatest
work, has become his collaborator. She's sitting beneath a "woggle" at Aura, a
new Miami Beach restaurant they co-designed. / TAIMY ALVAREZ / Special
Graphic Name:
Graphic Type: Photo
Caption: Lapidus had already fallen in love with curves when he designed the
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interior for the Distilled Spirits Institute Building at the 1939 New York World's
Fair. / Special
Graphic Name:
Graphic Type: Graphic
Caption: THE LAPIDUS FILE
Background: Born in Russia, 1902; came to America as an infant
and grew up in New York City.
Education: Architecture degree, Columbia University, 1927.
Career No. 1 : Retail design. Did hundreds of stores during the
1930s and '40s, revolutionizing the field with a more
theatrical presentation.
Career No. 2: Hotel design. Moved to Miami Beach during the
'50s and made his reputation with splashy resorts like the
Fontainebleau and Eden Roc (recently renovated, it's the
best-preserved Lapidus hotel). His firm also did offices,
apartments, theaters --- even a cruise ship --- through the
late '70s.
Career No. 3: Designing again after almost two decades of
retirement, Lapidus has a hotel, restaurant and office complex
on the drawing boards with associate Deborah Desilets.
Passive aggressive: His greatest commission almost ended in
disaster. On the day the Fontainebleau opened, Lapidus got in
an argument with the developer over his fee, picked up a piece
of lumber and chased him through the hotel, screaming, "He
must die! He must die!" The architect passed out before he
could make good on his threat.
Books: Wrote several during retirement, including his 1996
memoir, "Too Much Is Never Enough" (Rizzoli). The Bass Museum
in Miami Beach plans to publish a career retrospective.
Personal: Beatrice, his wife of 63 years, died in 1992. Two
children: Miami lawyer Richard Lapidus and New York architect
Alan Lapidus, best known for Trump Plaza in Atlantic City.
Granddaughter Liz Lapidus works as a publicist in Atlanta.
Design philosophy: "Let's say you like ice cream. Why have one
scoop? Have three scoops."
Type: Profile ears ago...auchmutey is our best writer, and the piece really
resonated
Friday, March 19, 2004 America Online: HKMiami