1675-24 Fontainebleau •
[I T E E M
EHHTEEN
T h E F •-• N T. oi 1 il E i [E 2 ri
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• ---___________ i :
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'` hen Morris Lapidus,born in Russia in 1902, {
i'. , .----•_ was 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
11‘1;14 Manhattan. At the center of the span, Harry lifted
yLi."
the boy in his arms and turned him toward the city.
-, "Look at it,Moishele,the Singer Building,the tallest
building•in the world,twenty-five stories high.Maybe
*1/4, iiii .
one day when you grow up,you will build a skyscraper,
e'vlimm. maybe one higher than the Singer Building.
.. -;-4 ..102„. _ Anything is possible here in America."' •
s --' Morris Lapidus'contribution to the American
0 ;-fir .. scene is not so much measured in height as it is in •
:)
. sweeping curves,in poles disappearing into so-called
"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,
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,
the son of a New York Catskills Mountains hotel
owner, came to Miami Beach in 1940 and in less
than a decade operated the Monroe Towers,Cornell
and Atlantis Hotels.He became a colorful and quite
quotable Miami Beach figure. (Reporters and story
1H