1674-15 Morris Lapidus -Tal
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~' : I Ihen Morris Lapidus,born in Russia in 1902, i
' ' !----• .7_,_"----------_____:-.--- an immigrant boy living in the Williamsburg
�" section of Brooklyn, his Uncle Harry came by one
Sunday morning to take him on a rare trip outside
the shtetl in which the Lapidus family lived. Uncle
Harry walked young Morris onto the new
Williamsburg Bridge spanning the East River to
NNW. lb Manhattan. At the center of the span, Harry lifted
. •It the boy in his arms and turned him toward the city.
r • r . , "Look at it,Moishele,the Singer Building,the tallest
7 ` -- building in the world,twenty-five stories high.Maybe
one day when you grow up,you will build a skyscraper,
4451 '� ---"""" maybe one higher than the Singer Building.
.,.. ,..,, '�r ,fr,,' y g g
rs Anything is possible here in America."'
` ---4.1*,, Morris Lapidus'contribution to the American
• °` -'x' "."-m'�' scene is not so much measured in height as it is in
X • ' ,,:i� '�- sweeping curves,in poles disappearing into so-called
a "cheese holes" in the ceiling, in the hotels, stores
- and malls he created internationally. And his most
` * indelible mark is on Miami Beach. In 1949,
:: �., ` _ 4-- .,_ Lapidus—by now an architect—was little known
,. outside New York City, where he earned a living
Architect Morris Lapidus left his mark on Miami Beach. designing stores.His ambition was to create a building
(MN; HASF) of his own,to do what his Uncle Harry had visualized.
It was then that a client introduced Morris to Ben
Novack, a hotel owner in Miami Beach, who also
had come out of Brooklyn's neighborhoods.Novack, i
the son of a New York Catskills Mountains hotel I
owner, came to Miami Beach in 1940 and in less I
than a decade operated the Monroe Towers,Cornell
and Atlantis Hotels.He became a colorful and quite
quotable Miami Beach figure. (Reporters and story
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