1628-6 Various Miami Beach KEYWORDS:
MIAMI MODERN LOVE 11/02/2001
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 2001, The Miami Herald
DATE: Friday, November 2, 2001 EDITION: State
SECTION: STREET PAGE: 14MS LENGTH: 203 lines
ILLUSTRATION: color photo: a hole-punch screen at Union Planters Bank at 1133
Normandy Dr. (n) , Randall Robinson (a) , the Sunshine State International Park
parabola (n) ; photo: Norman Giller (n) , house at 275-301 S. Shore Sr. (n)
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: BY EMMA TRELLES, etrelles@streetmiami.com
MIAMI MODERN LOVE
The wild, fanciful buildings that went up in the postwar boom are finally
getting some respect - some hope it's not too late
Norman Giller's office would set any retro collector's mouth a-watering. By
the doorway: a pristine set of vinyl-back chairs. Then the button-studded
couch, the serpentine desk and the waterfall of chrome conical lamps suspended
from the ceiling. Quite swank, in a postwar, late-'50s kind of way, and
appropriate, considering Giller first opened his firm in this Miami Beach
building - which he designed - in 1957. ' It's pretty much the same as it was
then, " says the 83-year-old architect about the room he's planned and dreamed
in for 44 years. "For a while, people wanted me to get rid of all this. But
now everybody seems to love it. "
The same, can be said for the era of local architecture that Giller helped
trailblaze, a 25-year span of building and design now monikered as Miami
Modern, or MiMo. Most SoFlas probably pass MiMo buildings without a glance,
overlooking the funhouse angularities, the hole-punch cutouts found in
railings and porte co-cheres, the accordion pleats and fins.
The oversight isn't unusual: MiMo was only recognized as its own unique
genre three years ago. Unlike Art Deco, which is concentrated mostly in Miami
Beach, MiMo-laden neighborhoods and architecture are strewn about South
Florida. Locals might encounter a lone structure, like the Gulliver-sized
parabola at Sunshine State International Park,or an enclave of buildings, as
in North Beach. Now preservationists are high-stepping to educate themselves
and a clueless public about this cherry slice of Americana in hopes that some
of it can be preserved. ' 'We just sort of let go, " Giller explains about
MiMo's fanciful designs and the clutch of architects who fathered them. ' 'We
were trying to reflect the times. It was a happy period. "
No wonder. With WWII over, the U.S. economy ballooned. Moratoriums on
construction evaporated and millions of cash-flush Americans were discharged
from the service. They started families. They took vacations. They needed
housing, stores, cars. ' 'It was a dynamic period, " recalls Giller. —Our
office was so busy it was incredible. People came from everywhere wanting to
build. "
And build they did. Apartment buildings, banks and tire stores. Community
centers and motels. Office buildings and gasoline stations. In South Florida,
two strains of MiMo emerged. First, the traditional austere veneers of Modern
architecture, found mostly on the mainland (examples include the bee-hive
starkness of the Miami Herald building and the boggle of angles at the Coconut
Grove Bank) .
Second was the Beaches' cheerier aesthetic, one that wedded practicality
with loopy accents such as concrete beanpoles, rooftop boomerangs and
butterfly canopies, like the one that once swung from the lobby to the
driveway of the now-demolished Diplomat Hotel, also designed by Giller. While
Modern architecture emphasized function, MiMo prized the futuristic musings of
a region, if not a country, set to boom.
Besides the Jetsons decor, Giller's office is stuffed with accolades too
numerous to list fully, but we'll fling out a few for posterity: one-time
Chairman of Florida State Board of Architecture, founder of the Miami Beach
Design and Review Board. A cornucopia of plaques. Photographs with prezes
Kennedy and Johnson.
Giller's successes have not resulted in swelled-head-itis: He is a sensible
man with an equally sensible demeanor. His voice is even-toned, his shoes are
polished and he wears his hat when venturing outside his office and into the
South Florida sun. His design philosophies are equally pragmatic, such as his
fondness for saying that architecture mirrors the people of its time. And MiMo
serves his maxim well. Post-war architects culled the angled shapes of jet
wings and automobile fins from an era newly enamored with speed and motion.
MiMo chronicles a time when America wanted its environs to brim with the same
frothy optimism felt by its people. Imagine that.
"Architecture is valued in cycles, " says Randall Robinson, a founding
member of the Urban Arts Committee and a planner for the Miami Beach Community
Development Corporation. Robinson notes how both San Francisco's Victorian
architecture and Miami Beach's Art Deco were once snubbed until savvy urban
professionals deemed the design styles intriguing.
It was in his role as preservationist that Robinson, along with interior
designer Teri D'Amico, coined the MiMo acronym in 1999 after watching the
decimation of two MiMo structures - the Bel Aire Hotel (North Beach) and the
Royal York (Mid-beach) . "After that, Teri and I decided not to let any more
go, " Randall explains. "I said, 'We like this stuff, we think it's cool, and
we need to follow in the steps of Art Deco. ' Sometimes these buildings are
going to go no matter what, but you don't let then go without a lot of
screaming. That's what wakes people up. "
So do the tours Robinson has helped implement since 1999 as part of the
annual Miami Modernism Furniture Show and Sale. "This Is MiMo" and
"Rethinking MiMo" have bus-trundled architecture buffs by the once-fab
hotels of Biscayne Boulevard and Sunny Isles, as well as other Dade County
businesses, houses of worship, homes and hotels featuring the work of MiMo
architects. This year MiMo resurfaces as part of Design + Architecture 2001, a
month-long foray aimed at raising public awareness about the role design plays
in urban communities. As part of D+A 2001, The Seymour building on Miami Beach
now exhibits more than 70 photographs of MiMo architecture, and much of the
dreamy imagery stylizes the swoop and verve of the genre.
But maybe you don't want to wait for the next tour in January. Or you're
too antsy to take in a lecture. Maybe you'll luck out and hitch a ride with
Robinson in his rather moderne-looking VW Golf, with Giller riding shotgun
while pointing out past designs, like his first independent contract: the
Garden Apartments on Mid-beach (corner of Garden Avenue and West 40th Street) .
During the mid-Forties, Giller worked for prolific architect Robert Fitch
Smith for a whopping 75 bucks a week. Someone approached him with the offer to
build the Garden for $750. Giller figured this would carry him through 10
weeks of pay and that surely something else would come up by then. In the
meanwhile, he incorporated a thick strip of jalousies, a subtly arched
staircase, and a second-floor breezeway in the building's design.
"We weren't trying to use every inch for rooms, " says Giller, who
recently inquired into buying the complex. When he speaks, he gestures to each
feature for emphasis. "The jalousies served a great purpose with the
balconies. Before, when you opened a window, it would take up one-half the
catwalk. But now you could open the windows, get ventilation, and still have
enough space to walk by. "
As the impromptu tour inches northward along Collins, Giller notes slender
ornamental fluting crowning doorways and the thin ledges, or cantilevers, over
the windows of other MiMo buildings he's designed. While driving, Robinson
prompts him to explain the function behind the form. ' 'The ornamentation was
designed to give the place some character, to depict the point of emphasis,
like an entrance. The cantilevers offered protection. Before they came along,
you didn't want to leave the windows open to cool off the apartment because it
might rain. "
Robinson's Golf rolls past the Fontainbleau and the Eden Roc - both MiMo
structures - until it tucks into a strip mall across the street from the
Carillon Hotel. Designed by Giller and built in 1957, the 600-room, 17-story
hotel once housed a nightclub, a shopping concourse and a steady flux of
well-heeled tourists. Today it smacks of Miss Havisham in Dickens' Great
Expectations: a once-great beauty crumbling after years of neglect. Ratty
curtains flutter from broken windows; entranceways are boarded up. After two
foreclosures and bouts against demolition, the Carillon's fate is still
uncertain.
In spite of the hotel's sad shape, both Robinson and Giller bend their
heads back and marvel at its design: the enormous accordion slab facing
Collins, the gentle rise of ramp ribboning across the entrance, the glass
curtain of walls facing the Atlantic and the Intercoastal. "Look at it, "
says an impassioned Robinson about the transparent walls. "This used new
technology to bring the outdoors in. This is the high-water mark of this kind
of 20th Century architecture in South Florida. " He thinks for a moment, then
adds "in all of Florida. "
On the drive to Sunny Isles, Giller recalls a past when Haulover Beach
permitted hot-dog and marshmallow bonfires, and mini-gambling houses cropped
up west of the Intercoastal. His family first came. to Miami in 1919, and 31
years later he built the Ocean Palm - America's first two-story motel - during
a time when roadside housing was perceived as a place to rest while chugging
toward a final destination. Not so ,with the Ocean Palm, which bragged a warm
ocean as its backyard, kitchenettes, fans and the Giller-invented catwalks
aimed at luring a prospering middle class. The motel thrived, and the owner
quickly paid off its mortgage. Soon developers across the country modeled
their own motels after the Palm's novel design.
Giller went on to design the Driftwood, the Suez and the Thunderbird, the
country'sfirst four-story luxury motel, complete with pool, a double-height
lobby and, at the time, an unheard of precedent: a television room. Both
Robinson and Giller can't resist popping out of the car for a quick look at
the motel's sweep of stairs and the driveway canopy's oddly-angled underbelly.
During the last decade, similar hotels have been razed. The Algiers in
Miami Beach. The Singapore in Bal Harbor. The Castaways in Sunny Isles. Of
late, there's been talk of the Thunderbird joining the growing queue of MiMo
structures that have made way for condo towers the size of rockets. But Giller
speaks no ill of these soaring monoliths. Like the architecture he pioneered,
he too embraces the future. "First it was Art Deco. Then MiMo. Next it'll be
these high-rises. We'll give that another name. I don't know yet what the
nomenclature is going to be. But it's a new stage of architecture down here. "
* DETAILS: Miami Modern Architecture - A Photography Exhibition runs
through Dec. 16 at The Seymour, 945 Pennsylvania Ave. , Miami Beach. The
exhibition is free and open to the public, hours are 1-5 p.m. Wednesday
through Sunday, or by appointment. Call 305-538-0090 for information.
A MiMo Mini-Guide
There are countless MiMo structures around South Florida, ranging from small
single-family homes to office buildings. Here are a few notable examples of
distinguished MiMo structures:
1. North Shore Community Center, 7251-75 Collins Ave. , Miami Beach (1961,
Norman M. Giller & Associates) : A scraggle of sea-grapes now camouflage the
space-age discs floating above entranceways.
2. Temple Menorah, 620 75th St. , Miami Beach (1951, Gilbert Fein) : A pleated
facade angles against a circle-screen tower.
3. international Inn, 2301 Normandy Dr. , Miami Beach (1956, Melvin Grossman) :
Beanpoles and floor-to-ceiling glass.
4. Fire Station No. 1, 1051 Jefferson Ave. , Miami Beach (1967, Morris Lapidus
& Associates) : Y-shaped cantilevers top three flush garages.
5. Sherry Frontenac, 6565 Collins Ave. , Miami Beach (1947,. Henry Hohauser) :
Twin buildings fronted by angled roof towers. Quite atomic.
6. St. Paul's Methodist Church, 900 NE 132nd St. , North Miami (1958, Robert
Fitch Smith) : Clean lines and a spaceship steeple set for takeoff.
7. Vagabond Motel, 7301 Biscayne Blvd. , Miami (1953, Robert Swartburg) :
Wing-shaped stucco backdrops a flutter of stars and neon.
8. Pan Am Training Facility, Miami International Airport (1963,
Steward-Skinner Associates) : Concrete shaped like buckles, skylights.
9. Coconut Grove Bank, 2401 S. Bayshore Dr. (1959, Weed-Johnson) : A geometry
of sun-shades, glass, mosaic and tile.
10. Apartment building, 10110 W. Bay Harbor Drive, Bay Harbor Islands (1959,
Don Reiff Associates) : Circle cut-outs, mosaic and a zig-zag roof fill the
I• facade of these apartments.
11. Saxon Manor, 6800 Indian Creek Dr., Miami Beach (1951, J.A. Fusco) :
Palm-thin columns prop a curved roof. A canopy with hole cut-outs. Sorta like
the front of a Burger Palace. 12. U.S. Post Office, 525 71st St. , Miami Beach
(1961, H.E. Brown) : Clean lines, slender poles, and lace-like screens.
CAPTION: A hole-punch screen at Union Planters Bank at 1133 Normandy Dr. ,
Miami Beach. Photo by Robin Hill.
ROBIN HILL House at 275-301 S. Shore Dr., Miami. Designed by Gilbert Fein,
1953.
ROBIN HILL The Sunshine State International Park parabola, 1300 NW 167th St.
Designed by William Webb, 1964.
DAVID BERGMAN Preservationist Randall Robinson is fighting to save the
Carillon Hotel's accordion wall.
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TAG: 0111020347
4 of 5, 7 Terms
mh SELF-MADE MILLIONAIRE, 04/19/1995
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 1995, The Miami Herald