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BEACH
A H 1 S T () R Y
BY HOWARD
KLEINBERG
MEW
incorporated into a municipality in 1947 and,through With the Firestone property in his hands,
his leadership,passed a bond issue to build yet another Novack announced plans to build a luxury 500–
causeway across Biscayne Bay. If the Collins Bridge room hotel on the site. It came as a surprise to his
opened the way to the development of Miami Beach, partners in the Sans Souci and to other Miami Beach
• the soon-to-be-named Broad Causeway would have hoteliers.They believed that Novack purchased the
the same effect on Bay Harbor Islands, Bal Harbour, property to shelve it as a potential competitor to
Surfside,Sunny Isles and Golden Beach.The north existing Miami Beach hotels. On January 1, 1953,
end of the narrow peninsula no longer was accessible five stockholders of Novack's Sun 'N' Sea ,
primarily from the north; it now was within easier Corporation,which owned the Sans Souci,filed suit
reach from mainland Miami. against Novack, contending that they and Novack 1
But the courts doomed the battle to hold down decided more than a year earlier to buy the estate to
the growing number of rooms. When the Firestones prevent it from being developed.9 But,they claimed, j
won their case in early March 1950,it led the way to when Novack finally made the deal on the property,
a series of continuing rezoning cases for much of the he kept the purchase agreement for himself and
land north of the Firestone estate. Over the next refused to turn it over to the corporation. The
decade, there were significant rezoning changes— stockholders said it was their plan,and Novack's,to
some politically questionable—as the previously share the cost of purchasing the property from the •
guarded properties opened up to development. The Firestone heirs and turn it into a park to serve as a
early Midwest dollars that helped create an ambiance buffer to further hotel and apartment development.
of new wealth in Carl Fisher's Miami Beach were A move by the city council to condemn the land for
going elsewhere. The city now was increasingly in park purposes was voted down 4-2 in February 1953.10
the hands of New Yorkers and other Easterners,and One-by-one, estate property owners used the
the Jewish presence was becoming dominant. In the courts to win their battle for rezoning until the Miami
summer of 1952, with the rezoning approval safely Beach Council caved in and permitted rezoning, at
tucked into their pockets, the Firestones sold their raised land values,for some of the parcels." A Miami
estate for $2.3 million to a syndicate headed by Herald story announcing the granting of the permit
Novack.'Although the Miami Beach City Council to construct the Fontainebleau Hotel,again failed to
opposed rezoning the estate, Mayor D. Lee Powell use Lapidus'name,describing the curves and designs
described the sale as"a great tribute to Miami Beach." of the future hotel without mentioning their author.12
The Firestone estate became the headquarters for Ben Novack while the Fontainebleau Hotel was built around it. (SPA)
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Novack offered him an associate architect's job.'"
f a �" - This was too much for Lapidus. He came back at
i d
� �' Novack, demanding an opportunity to do the main
rave job. Novack saw it as an opportunity to get an
ch ` Jt:�, architect cheaply. "A minimum fee for a hotel such
is �-�; as this would be at least four percent of the cost,"
ow4.
ift,„, noted Lapidus: •
ters ,i. ::
r' The cost was approximately $12 million,
ani%` and at four percent, the fee should have
. been$480,000. When I finally succeeded in
•
col �j getting Ben to let me be his architect, I had
'f p f,`' to agree to carry out the entire assignment,
d>5 including engineering and interiordesign,
be'
for a miserable fee of$80,000.''
t tl Ben Novack and his wife dine with television personality '. argue can ar u e forever as to whose idea it was
.co Steve Allen and his wife, Jayne Meadows, while Allen was to curve the Fontainebleau Hotel building. Lapidus
so; doing the "Tonight" show in 1957 from the Fontainebleau's
La Ronde Room. (MN; HASF) contends he submitted 26 drawings and not one
tial showed the building as a rectangle. But Novack felt
Inc Within days of issuance of the permit, construction he designed the hotel. Lapidus wrote that he let
10. began. By mid-January 1954, bulldozers and drag Novack believe that because once he was convinced
Mi lines were ripping into the site. Novack took offices he had, Novack approved the Lapidus design."
tic in the Firestone mansion which was to remain
by esentially intact throughout the construction of the describe rthehsrelat of ship between Nova k"love–hat " is not the bestaand
:Ze hotel."When, on February 21, 1954, Miami Herald Lapidus. Perhaps "cat and mouse" would be more
w Real Estate and Business Editor Fred T. Bill did a 28- accurate.The architect recognized much of Novack's +�
e paragraph story on the hotel, expressly detailing its ability as an innovator and as a shrewd hotel operator
ig unique interior and exterior design, Lapidus' name but when Ben began trying to design Morris'building,
e did not appear until the 25th paragraph, and then an imaginary line had been crossed. Lapidus refered
h only as shared billing with Novack in mentioning to his relationship with Novack as three years of
ia that orientation of the buildings on the site would acting, brain–washing and deception: ,
iu admit sunshine to the cabana area all da .14
•
As
l Prominence continued to.avoid Lapidus. His look utback, I realize hawho was ts weth ing whNobrain-
ID contributions, much like those of the architects of washing each other. . . As we jockeyed
the Modeme and Streamline hotels of the 1930s and design,it was his taste,the taste of his clients,
early 1940s, would achieve esteem in retrospect. that won out in the end. It was my task to
Shortly after the Sans Souci opened, other Miami interpret these likes and, at the same time,
c Beach builders hired Lapidus, but not as architect carry out my own theories of design so that I
`
and designer from the ground up. Four hotel jobs could create a hotel—interiors and
followed the Sans Souci. But on the new Nautilus, exterior—that was a product of my talent
i
DiLido, Biltmore Terrace and Algiers, Lapidus was and ability, albeit under Ben's direction.
the relief pitcher again for builders who were not
Lapidus resolved that he would not use straight .,
fully satisfied with their original architects or lines in his hotel,just as he had avoided them in his
designers. "In short," observed Lapidus, "Iores.
never been commissioned to design a hotel from the trying t Dgetid lhm to him tell acceptvaccu ed buildink] that I had g
very beginning.""
gallr
•
When Novack announced his plans to build a gottenaloTwhatt Lapidus contemplated.
Leth mdgo`o"What
oving thr? I at
r.c
world-class hotel on the Firestone site, he told it was ``
reporters that Morris Lapidus would be his architect. his own brilliant idea."19 ;
Harold Gardner, who was Novack's public 1
When Lapidus, in New York, got word of this, he relations director for the better part of 24 years,
immediately contacted Novack and inquired if,first, beginning in July 1954 and interrupted only
it was true and,second,why Novack didn't talk(and temporarily when he did work for the Eden Roc and
negotiate)with him before telling reporters.Lapidus Diplomat Hotels, confirms the Lapidus version of
claimed that Novack told him his name was the first how he got Novack to accept his ideas but ad
s that
that entered his mind when reporters asked about an Novack continually insisted the idea of the cured
bearchitect but that he wasn't going to get the main job building was his. "I saw some of the [Lapidus]
cause he wasn't prominent enough. Instead, drawings,"said Gardner, "and some of them did not
In
I have the curve. They did have a graceful sweep to In October, with construction of the
them but I couldn't call it the curve we have in the Fontainebleau just two months from completion,
completed Fontainebleau."20 Novack moved out of the Firestone estate and
For lack of a name at the beginning,the hotel consigned it to the wrecking ball. It was one of the
was called, internally, the Estate after the Firestone first mansions of Miami Beach to go down as rubble, i'
estate.But Novack,cilia European trip with his wife, to be replaced by the formal gardens that would help 1
whisked past the Fontainebleau Palace, liked the make the new hotel famous. The gardens recreated
name and bestowed it upon his hotel. This was not those of the French kings at Fontainebleau and 11 1
exactly pleasing to Lapidus who had designed a Versailles. By mid-December, with opening just a
contemporary building that now had the name of old few weeks away, reporters were allowed on the
French royalty. Upon hearing that Novack had premises and laden with press kits filled with trivial 6
piping publicly announced that the interior design of the pieces of information. "If all the
p" gin the
hotel would be French Provincial,Lapidus considered Fontainebleau were stretched out,"observed a Miami li
resigning."I had devoted my entire career to modern Herald reporter,"it would reach to Fort Pierce,more
architecture, twentieth-century architecture," he than 100 miles away."24 The$15 million, 565-room
complained....Now to go back to corny traditional? hotel opened on December 20, 1954,with pomp and
This was a disaster."21 He mulled his options and ceremony, including the presence of the mayor of
decided compromise was best for all. Lapidus the City ofFontainebleau,France."Sixteen hundred
presented Novack with illustrations of French invited guests stormed the hotel for a $50-a-plateg
Provincial interiors, although he considered them charity dinner to benefit St. Francis and Mt. Sinai ed
preposterous for the hotel. "I wouldn't have these Hospitals. "Everything was French, including the he
old-fashioned interiors on a bet," Novack told confusion," reported Miami Herald writer Nancy th
Lapidus. "I want that modern kind of French Woodward."Millionaires in their elegant,glamorous iii
Provincial."Flabbergasted,Lapidus invented Modem attire lost some of their dignity as they scrambled for
French Provincial. Instead of traditional French tables.One couldn't enter the banquet room without
Provincial columns, he created oval columns; he the precious table number."26 One guest remarked,
created a feeling of luxury by using marble trimmed "You can't get in,you can't get a drink,you can't get
with thin rods of gold metal.22 Out of his creativity anything, but isn't this the grandest hotel you ever
emerged Miami Beach's most favored, most adored, saw?"27
most panned, most reviled hotel. Lapidus related the story of a conversation he
had that night with Hubert Pajot, the mayor of
• Fontainebleau:
The stairs leading from the lobby to the mezzanine in the
Fontainebleau were more for design than function; there was In one conversation in my halting
French, I asked him what he thought of the
very little on the mezzanine. However,guests rode the eleva-
tor to the mezzanine and descended the grand staircase much hotel named after his city. "C'est une
as would have Scarlet O'Hara. (MN; HASF) bouillabaisse."(It's a bouillabaisse—a soup in
– which shrimp and lobster and squid and
� clams and seven varieties of fish and an
,irk ti-� r. 1.
. endless variety of vegetables and spices are
?i!tr. �: K.+ • ,�CV a" ` blended.) I didn't know whether this was a
'. .;1 � i �, , • i,^,�'\ .`} complimentoradevastatingcriticismofthe"'' :� ^�� T • �? i \`1 kettle of soup I had kicked up. "Aimez-vous
I.._ J.j 1;�if ! _ �, '« _ •• i 1 ' , I la bouillabaisse,monsieur?"I wanted to know.
. ,_4 }, �,� '; ,\ i' J �� Yes,he liked bouillabaisse,but only once in
f i a while.Well,that wasn't too bad.After all,
t` -� j \ �1 \lI ll_ no one would want a steady diet of an
14r-,;::. \: ±� I
f indefinite vacation at the Fontainebleau.
�, j\.\ l I Once in a while, O.K., that's what it was lane
i 1 1 �1 „,, c designed for.28 ack
On Christmas Eve, the hotel's soon-to-be- ims
II
famous LaRonde Room opened with Vaughn Monroe
V., • ''1" s 7 and his orchestra.In the years to follow,the LaRonde
" Room was to host performers such as Frank Sinatra,
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis,Liberace and a constant
- -, _._, flow of other headline entertainers. The
_.r. "_ _As....- .,,1„ Fontainebleau Hotel achieved immediate worldwide
163
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An early Miami Beach landmark, the Firestone estate was leveled once the Fontainebleau Hotel began to take shape in 1954.
Its site became a formal garden on the hotel grounds. It was the first of the grand estates in "Millionaire's Row" to be
demolished. (MN; HASF)
status. It became Miami Beach's signature building them condemned him. He had broken the mold of
and remains so to this day. So well known was the the traditional,he eliminated straight lines and 90-
Fontainebleau that until Steve Muss and the Hilton degree angles. He even created an interior design
people took over the hotel in 1977, there was not that was French Provincial but was not. One
even a sign in front showing its name. architectural publication derisively described the
Lapidus'anonymity quickly evaporated.Fellow hotel as"Miami Beach French."It would not be the
architects took note of his accomplishment.Many of last controversy in Morris Lapidus'career,which has
11 $4