1663-26 Art Deco/Preservation THU FEB 18 1993 ED: FINAL
SECTION: NEIGHBORS NW PAGE: 7 LENGTH: 28 . 74" LONG
ILLUST: photo: The CARLTON HOTEL, Leonard HOROWITZ .
SOURCE: DAVID KIDWELL Herald Staff Writer
DATELINE:
MEMO:
HUE AND CRY
Less than four years after his death, Leonard Horowitz ' s legacy to Miami
Beach -- a pastel-colored playground famous the world over -- sits
precariously close to a purple paint can.
These days, it seems, Horowitz ' s pastels are out along the trendy
thoroughfares of South Beach. Primaries -- with a frequent splash of cranberry
mauve, sunsplash orange and verdigris green -- are in.
From the bright yellows and oranges of the Leslie Hotel ( 1244 Ocean
Dr. ) , to the lavender, purple and orange of the Cardozo ( 1300 Ocean Dr. ) , to
the shades of aqua blue at The Marlin ( 1200 Collins Ave. ) , the commercial face
of Miami Beach' s Art Deco District is changing colors again.
A drive along Ocean Drive is testimony enough that developers have been
struck with the idea that bold is beautiful.
"Definitely, people are starting to get a little more aggressive with
colors, " said Craig Robins, co-owner of Dacra Developers and a leader in South
Beach' s make over.
"I think it ' s OK, as long as it doesn' t get out of hand, " he said. "I
don't see any reason to keep everything pastel. There' s one thing about paint
-- it ' s totally harmless. It can change tomorrow. "
Proponents of South Beach' s new look argue it is a courageous yet
harmless artistic statement brought about by the same creative-minded
investors who have brought South Beach out of the tourism doldrums.
Opponents say it ' s merely a competition to see who can make his or her
building the brightest and a symptom of a much greater problem: lack of
distinct regulations on how historic buildings can be changed.
"Application of bad color sense is in some cases as detrimental to the
neighborhood as T-shirt shops, " said Tony Goldman, chairman of the Ocean
Drive Association.
Horowitz, an industrial engineer who in the 1980s began the
transformation of South Beach into a pastel paradise, died in 1989 at age 43 .
By that time, more than 150 buildings, once drab shades of white and
sand, had become showplaces for Horowitz ' s vision, colored in subdued shades
of lime sherbet and tropical sunsets.
"I 'm very much a proponent of the Lenny Horowitz school of paint, "
Goldman said. "Lenny was our Matisse. He knew color like no one knew color. He
had this magical touch to the fourth and fifth color of a building.
"On paper, it had no relationship to the other colors, but in
application it always seemed to come together aesthetically, " said Goldman,
owner of the blue and white Park Central Hotel at 640 Ocean Dr.
"People are trying it today and it doesn' t seem to be working too well, "
he said. "Good taste is a critical issue, and I 'm very interested in
organizing the taste police. "
To some degree, the "taste police" already exist.
In the late 1980s, Beach commissioners legislated Horowitz ' s pastel
vision and adopted a color chart from which developers could choose paints.
"They are all pastels, " said planning director Dean Grandin. "But the
ordinance is very broad. "
He said that only the base, or background, coat of a building must be
pastel and that the ordinance does not limit the use of paint on trim.
"There might be some differences on what constitutes a pastel, or what
on a building is trim, " Grandin said.
"We haven ' t really focused on color violations because paint can always
be changed with a stroke of the brush, " he said. "But if some of these
developers are using extreme paints inappropriately, then they could have a
problem. "
He said code inspectors could cite them and force them to change the
colors or face fines.
That ' s an option advocated by the Beach ' s leading historic preservation
group, the Miami Design Preservation League.
MDPL sent a letter to commissioners last week urging them to enforce the
color ordinance more strictly. To date, no developers have been cited.
"We should not be encouraging a free for all in the district, with
colors or anything else for that matter, " said Mike Kinerk, an MDPL board
member.
But Robins and other developers argue that the same criticisms befell
Horowitz ' s color schemes at first.
"Every single time I 've done a new color scheme on a building, it seems
like people are jumping up and down screaming about how awful it is, " Robins
said. "Then it pops up on the cover of a travel magazine, and everybody loves
it. "
Preservationists concede that Horowitz ' s color schemes were not
altogether historically accurate.
"There is some truth to that, " Kinerk said. "But the league feels that
at least Leonard' s colors were drawn from some element within the building.
"People will tell you that all these buildings were once painted white,
but that ' s not altogether true. They were white, but almost all of-them
originally had pastel trim. "
Janet Aptaker, who wrote the letter to commissioners on behalf of MDPL,
said the new colors on Ocean Drive represent an "excessive display of
overkill . "
"It ' s really scary to me, " she said. "I look down Ocean Drive and my
heart breaks. It ' s becoming garish and carnival looking. Leonard Horowitz, I
think, would be horrified. "
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