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X The Plymouth Hotel on Miami Beach
... toicerl facade example of Art Deco
An Erd's Echo,
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That's•
Art Deco
• "It was an age of miracles,it wts "To my mind this is an enormous
' an age of art- it was an age of e - asset to Miami Beach.They've got a
c s.s.•• . sleeping giant there." No Johnny-
- I t. come-lately to art circles, Wein-
- F.Scott Fitzgerald,19 .hardt:he's director of Vizcaya,tot-
I ''met director of art museums in In-
We didn't know what to call t11*'•- dianapolis, Minneapolis''and New
• structural design during the De- York and was a leader in the suc-
pression. or even recognize that It cessful effort to revive Beacon Hill.
was a unique st$le.But it was;a Over the objections of a third of
now we're f .•'•: •- .. t,and i Its property owners. Beacon Hill
t • got a name Art Deco. 'was declared an historic preserve of
Not the - m, 0 priceless early 19th Century Ameri-
cana. Tourism proliferated. In the
4. :...'.:' '. ,, , - 20-odd years since,property values
1. , CHARLES have boomed by 2.000 per cent.
' �
Now there's a wave of nostalgia
,' ": • for things 1930ish, from old Fred
Astaire films to Depression Glass.
WHITED . Houston preserved its old city hall
3 y. from the wreckers. New York its
l' ; Radio City Music Hall. Old train
stations are becoming museums,old
I perhaps to passionate purists terri- hotels art galleries.
bly chic who conjure up visions of And here's Miami Beach. In just
' e concrete buildings with flat roofs, seven years, from 1935 to the start
jutting spires. soaring wings, of World War II.the resort boomed.
rounded corners, porthole win- Two hundred hotels were built.The
• dows. marbled lobbies. scalloped Cinema Theater rose, with its
trim and,uh,swirling pillars. 'splendid lobby and a bar decorated
S And huge wall murals,of course: in seashells.
! murals depicting speeding stream. ART DECO buffs feel their pulses
lined trains, cars with running quicken, walking past the round-
boards, giant cogwheels and work. cornered symmetry of the New
men swinging picks and shovels for Yorker Hotel or the towered facade
the WPA. of the Plymouth.On weekends they
• THERE IS such a mural spread prowl musty lobbies with flash-
across a whole wall of the cavern• lights,peering behind plywood par-
ous central federal courtroom in the titions in search of murals.
.' main Post Office downtown. Recently the South Florida maga-
There are Art Deco buildings all zine Day&Night devoted nearly an
around. See the Sears store down- entire issue to Art Deco. In it the
• town,or the gas station at SW 17th Design Preservation League's presi-
••
Street and Coral Way. And there dent, Barbara Baer Capitman,
•
are houses galore. wrote:
But for a really extensive look at "For people who are interested in
what they were building in that de- modern art,this area is like a return
cade and a half prior to World War to their textbooks."
$ II.go to Miami Beach.The most sig- A serious effort has been
jnificant concentration of Art Deco launched for historic preservation
style in South Florida, and perhaps of the area.Weinhardt believes this
• the whole world. is in the area would attract both federal and pri-
called Old Miami Beach.from Sixth sate funding, and he sees tremen-
Street to 21st, including Lincoln dous potential for tourism. "There
r Road. would be." he told me. "a hell of a
Lately a small but ardent group lot of national attention to this
of Art Deco buffs. active in the thing."
Miami Design Preservation League, Local officials have been,thusfar,
has been spreading the word that lukewarm. "They're friendly, sym-
Miami Beach has a mother lode of pathetic and pat us on the back."
' period architecture equal to that of the Vizcaya director tells me, "but
the New Orleans French Quarter or I'm not sure that they grasp the po-
i.- Boston's Beacon Hill. tential."
t LISTEN TO Carl Weinhardt, Jr.. Beauty,after all,is still in the eye
talk about it: of the beholder.