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1675-5 Ritz-Carlton PRT Choose print destination or operation STANDARD ALTERNATE TO SII TRANSFER CANCEL 'TRANSFER Choose item to transfer DOCUMENT HEADLINE-LST CURR-ITEM ā¯‘DOCUMENT Enter document number to transfer C Pause after every page? YES NO mh RESTORED RITZ-CARLTON FITS SOBE'S GLAM ROW 01/25/2004 THE MIAMI HERALD Copyright (c) 2004, The Miami Herald DATE: Sunday, January 25, 2004 EDITION: Final SECTION: Tropical Life PAGE: 3M LENGTH: 129 lines ILLUSTRATION: color photo: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel lobby (a) , poolside at the Ritz South Beach (a) ; photo: the original lobby of the DiLido Hotel (a) , the DiLido lobby after a $20 million renovation (a) SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: BY BETH DUNLOP, bdunlop@herald.com RESTORED RITZ-CARLTON FITS SOBE'S GLAM ROW The new South Beach Ritz-Carlton is an ode to a time and place that never really was - a sophisticated and glamorous Miami Beach that could have existed five decades ago. The hotel is largely housed in the DiLido Hotel, which the late and legendary Morris Lapidus designed in 1953 even before he created the Fontainebleau and the Eden Roc. The DiLido was never the lavish, outlandish or at the very least over-the-top setting that Lapidus was to become known for, but rather a stripped-down modern building. In more recent times, most of us have known the DiLido as the home of the Lincoln Road Denny's. How times have changed. Now, with a $20 million restoration and adaption, the Ritz-Carlton is the worthy cornerstone of what one might call celebrity row, the strip of trendy and sophisticated hotels stretching north along Collins from Lincoln Road - including the Sagamore, National, Delano, Shore Club and Townhouse, with more still to come. The designers of the Ritz-Carlton opted not for trendiness but for timelessness, however. Its look and feel are what one might call "early modern, " but this is a cosmopolitan European-inspired modernism, with a muted tropical color scheme and modern furniture that largely came from France. The hotel complex actually incorporates two postwar structures at the corner of Lincoln Road and Collins Avenue - the DiLido and the One Lincoln Road Building, which was designed by another of Miami's postwar architectural legends, Igor Polevitsky. Interestingly, Lapidus, who died in 2001 at age 98, didn't publicly own up to the DiLido, which he actually created with architect Melvin Grossman, though it's clearly his work. In his autobiography Too Much Is Not Enough, he mentions it not by name but describes being brought in after the building had been framed out as associate architect and interior designer, a role he describes as "designing and doctoring a hotel. " KEEPING FAITH The renovation architects (John Nichols and Anne Jackaway from Nichols, Brosch, Sandoval & Associates) and designers (Zeke Fernandez from Jeffrey Howard Associates) were respectful of Lapidus' design, but not constrained by it, which means that they ended up with something that Lapidus would have liked, maybe even enough to mention the DiLido by name in his book. The original black terrazzo floor is there, with a high sheen. A great curved "bubble wall" still stands in the lobby, but what once was painted stucco is now clad in cherry. The aluminum railings along staircases and at the edge of the mezzanine are Lapidus' original design but redone a bit to fit the rhythm of the changed space. The front desk moved from the Collins Avenue end to the Lincoln, and though the original design was kept, the countertop is now backlit onyx. The mezzanine still opens over the tall two-story lobby, but lights are recessed into dramatic coved ceilings, which seem a Lapidus trademark but actually are a current innovation. Some of Lapidus' more dramatic flourishes - which found full spectacular expression in the Fontainebleau just a year later - are alluded to but not fully executed. Still to come are shops and a restaurant that fills the space of the original Collins Avenue entrance. The original front desk will eventually be a bar. To get 375 rooms, the architects had to add to the hotel; it, of course, is within both the local and national Art Deco historic districts, though this is an International Style building, a postwar modernist building with clean lines and an absence of decoration except for a painted mural, now restored (but hidden behind a glass wall) . OLD VS. NEW Nonetheless, the architects were expected to follow the Secretary of the Interior's guidelines for additions to historic buildings, which stipulated that one should be able to differentiate old and new, that the new portions should be "of our time" (a notion often misinterpreted to produce building additions that could be anywhere and any time and are not either referential or deferential to history) . This addition is different, which is to say, successful. The architects retained the sleek, simple geometry of the International style, but differentiated the new from the old by using dark glass and more metal. The additions actually look like they might have been made in 1955, and they are straightforward expressions of architecture, not of an architectural ego, which means that it all works as a whole. The work is quite nautical, enhanced by the rooftop enclosure that hides the mechanicals and harkens to the idea of a ship's smokestack. Poolside is, as is de rigueur on celebrity row, an exercise in over-the-top minimalism. The pool has "infinity edges" and the ocean is beyond, giving it all a further shiplike feeling. The indoor restaurant and bar look out on this with ocean views, and down on the sand is a second restaurant (with wonderful tile-cladding) . Start at the Ritz-Carlton and head north, and for five blocks or so, you are in the presence of the hotels that movie stars and moguls select as their South Beach hideaways these days. If your trip is along Collins - where there are just about the same number of unrenovated hotels and where the west side of the street is awaiting attention - you might wonder what all the fuss is about. THE GRAND TOUR The beach side imparts a slightly clearer picture, but it is the grand tour that tells it all - one great set for glamour after another. There is the moonscape-spare Sagamore with its superb art collection, and the white-and-black Shore Club with its Moroccan-sybaritic outdoor terraces. There is the architecture-as-performance-art Delano with its wide array of chairs and huge flowing curtains. There's the crisp beachy red-and-white Townhouse, tucked on a side street. And there is the South-of-France-meets-South- Beach-High-Deco embrace of the Raleigh. And not least is the National, which was actually restored to the level of splendor it had when it opened in 1940. These are all elite hotels, to be sure, and expensive, but we should be glad to know that in Miami Beach, the hotel lobbies are now considered historic public places, and of course many have restaurants and bars that are open to all eaters and drinkers, even if the poolside is private. And the beach is there for us all with a view back onto the oceanfront cityscape of hotels from the 1930s, '40s and '50s to be shared by all. We tend to take beach access for granted, but we shouldn't. NAME'S SIMPLICITY Fifty years ago when the DiLido was being built, there was another structure on the site as well - the Town and Beach Club motel. By the time the Ritz-Carlton got under way, all that was left of the motel were some block walls, but the simplicity of the name resonates, for that's what we have here - town and beach, and the history of how Miami Beach became just that. This new Ritz-Carlton opens a new chapter in that history, but it doesn't close the book, and for that it will probably outlast some of the nearby glitter that is not actually gold. CAPTION: TONY BERMUDEZ-SALVETTI/HERALD STAFF PAUSE TO REFLECT: Above, puttin' on the Ritz on South Beach. Right, poolside is an exercise in over-the-top minimalism, with 'infinity edges' and a view of the ocean, which gives the complex a shiplike feeling. BEFORE AND AFTER: Top, the original lobby of the DiLido Hotel; above, the lobby after its $20 million renovation. DONNA E. NATALE PLANAS/HERALD STAFF INNER BEAUTY: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel lobby - with its original black terrazzo floor and curved 'bubble wall' - gets some last-minute dusting before its opening in December.