#526 Deco Delights by Barbara Capitman 1980’s
The world of Art Deco on
South Beach, a shiny new por-
trait written by preservationist
Barbara Capitman and illus-
trated in beautiful tropical
deco colors by architectural
photographer Steven Brooke.
An excerpt from the .first edi-
tion of this wonderful new
book, now available from
MDPL and fine book stores.
DECO DfllGNTS
BY BARBARA CAPITMAN
@ 1988 by Barbara Capitman and Steven Brooke, used by permission of the authors and the publisher E. P. Dutton.
The Magic Imagery of Miami Beach
I~ very election year on Miami Beach - every second year, that is - candidates swear
"I love Miami Beach!" In truth, however, they appear to have been ashamed of it for some time. As a
matter of fact, in summer 1987 a publicist suggested that Miami Beach should be called "Oceanside"
to cash in on the new popularity of Bayside, the Rouse shopping development across the water.
Our own experiences have shown, however, how powerful a hold the Miami Beach of the recent
past has had on the American imagination. In 1980 my son Andrew commissioned Woody
Vondracek to do a poster for the Cardozo. Woody drew a rough sketch and we asked a newly married
couple to pose fot it. She borrowed her mother's old dress, he found a fedora. Woody placed them
on the keystone balustrade of the Cardozo porch, and the great image he titled "Come Back to
the Sea" was born. The poster subsequently appeared in the The New Yorker (one of the first tiny
hotel institutional ads now such a commonplace) and in several city magazines: New York, Chicago,
Washington.
A massive attempt was made by the little hotel group on Miami Beach to become highly visible at:
tourism conferences and at Art Deco Society Weekends, like the one Chicago held on a Great Lakef.
Deco day liner. In tourist offices everywhere the poster brightened display windows. I remember the
impact seeing it displayed in Illinois in suburban Highland Park's exclusive shopping street one cold
Chicago winter.
The poster promised not only fond memories of an elegant past but also the sun and beauty of a
tropical beach. There began to be a steady flow of visitors - not only from outposts like Alaska and
Japan and Buenos Aires - but also from all over the U.S. People came to us who were reliving
honeymoons, and childhood trips, and stints on the Beach during the war. Miami Beach, like
Saratoga, Atlantic City, Timberline, Asheville, and the other places we reviewed in our 1984
conference, "America's Great Historic Resorts," had a franchise no one could take away. It was
beloved by the world as a happy, pleasant place, and all sorts of people from all sorts of places were
rooting for us.
The city of Miami is a changed place from only a decade ago when we would cross McArthur
Causeway and see only the Freedom Tower and the county courthouse on the horizon. How
significant it is that the Freedom Tower is now all but obscured in today's skyline, and it is still in need
of rehabilitation. Millions of dollars have gone into the new world of Miami. Preservation is certainly
more difficult than razing and building new buildings. But memory and image are strong, and the
reality of the hard, impersonal big downtown has not penetrated to the rest of the world. Despite
"Miami Vice," riots, a changed constituency, and thriving multinational business, "Miami" to many
people still means the image Woody Vondracek conjured up in 1980: a girl and a guy under a palm
tree at the water's edge.
6
--
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~V~CIM ~~I\~~() T()Ul?~
Miami Design Preservation League Tours are the best way for you to get to know the
Art Deco District. If this is your first visit, take a Tram Tour to get a broad overview of
the entire district. On the T ram Tour you will be able to cover more of the district, but
be prepared for some walking, too, as part of the tour. The 2 pm Tram Tours will
feature a speoallook at buildings in the "Museum District." For an up-dose look at
Streamline and Art Deco buildings, sign up for one of the Walking Tours which cover
many of the buildings along Ocean Drive, Collins Avenue and Washington Avenue.
Tours are conducted by members of MDPL., induding authors, preservationists and
local historians. Tickets for either tour are just $5 and are on sale at the special MDPL
booth on Ocean Drive at 9th Street where all the tours depart from. Seating on the
Tram tours is limited, so buy your tickets ear~!
SATURDAY
Walking Tours
Tram Tours
SUNDAY
Walking Tours
T ram Tours
10:30 am 1 :30 pm 3:30 pm
12 Noon 2:00 pm 4:00 pm
12:30 pm 2:30 pm 3:30 pm
12 Noon 2:00 pm 4:00 pm
MIMtI I3IACIl Al:?T ()~C() ~UI()~
Written and Photographed by Keith Root
192 pages, 242 photographs, 51 in full color. Pocket-sized edition.
Miami Design Preservation League's official guidebook to the National Register
Historic District contains the history of Miami Beach and six guided tours. The 1988
edition is now available at the MDPL booth during Art Deco Weekend for just $6.
Additional copies may be ordered throughout the year by senidng a check for $850
(which indudes postage and handling charges) to MDPL., P.O. Bin L, Miami Beach, FL
33119. You may also request a mail order cotalog by writing or colling the Welcome
Center at (305) 672-2014.
~ --------------------------------,
$
(J
; M~I3~l?~IlIV AVVUC4TI()~
~ MIAMI DESIGN PRESERVATION LEAGUE
P.O. BIN L, MIAMI, BEACH, FLORIDA 33119
(305) 672-2014
Name
Address
City
State
0 515 Student or
0 Senior Citizen
0 520 Individual
0 535 Family
0 S50 Contributing
Zip
Occupation
Firm or Organization
Special Area of Interest
Telephone: Home
Business
o S 1 00 Corporate
o S500 Corporate Sponsor
o S 1 000 Benefactor
--------------------------------~
5
The Uncertain Future: Preservation vs. Development
In 1980, two top-ranking officials from HUD came down from Washington to visit us. They
crowded into my tiny office in the MDPL headquarters, which originally had been L. Murray Dixon's
offices. They represented not only the big money that the Carter administration was putting into
rebuilding cities but also an understanding of what was going on in real estate nationally and the
scope of what could eventually happen. The meeting was the result of intense lobbying in
Washington and long phone calls. The gentlemen from HUD were our lifeline to public spending
that could turn our dreams into reality. What they said that morning to our staff and to our attorneys
was to echo in my ears for a long time after. "You will never make it," they concluded. "Development
is marching southward all along the coast from Jacksonville. The best and highest use of the land is
seen as high rises - condominiums. There is no waterfront left to build on; yours is the last pocket.
What you have achieved is miraculous in the face of this relentless trend. But it is doomed. You don't
have the money or the political clout to survive. Everyone in Washington would like to help you, but
the government is reluctant to go into situations where there is so much controversy."
Basically, the drama of the Art Deco District remains the struggle between development growth
and preservation development. To the immediate south of the District is the area we have deserted,
which is between Fifth Street and the island's tip where Government Cut meets the ocean. With the
exception ofJoe's Stone Crab restaurant, which has prospered during the ten years of District rebirth,
the area has been slowly emptied of its population. Buildings have been demolished, picked off one
by one. For five years a moratorium prohibited restoration, and the poor and criminal population that
took over the area made is unsafe. Other previous Beach landmarks - the greyhound racetrack, the
pier, the Coast Guard house - all have disappeared. The city took over, named the area South
Pointe, and spent millions of dollars on sewers and roads. In 1987 we saw the opening of the first
condominium tower, softened with a coat of Deco pink.
After a period of ejecting the elderly, condemning buildings, planning, surveying, and promoting
the area as the city's most exciting location, fate dealt South Pointe an ironic blow in the summer of
1987. Two small hotels, the 1937 Savoy Plaza and the Arlington, were purchased by a European
investment company headed by Ron Wood, the lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones. A large resort
club has been developed there, and its facade is a vision in new glass block and pastel neon. The old
buildings proved to have more appeal for recycling than vague plans for new buildings. Suddenly, this
has become the hot new investment area. In spite of the elaborate plans to treat it as "raw land" and
erect new buildings, it is the 1920s and 1930s buildings that are being sold. A n.ew environmental
group is defending the remaining waterfront-park space.
Meanwhile, almost every issue of the local papers carries stories heralding "Success for Art Deco."
Large hotel chains, mostly known for their economy rates, have purchased real estate in the District
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II.
.
.
.
.
Barbara Capitman, as photographed by
Dianne Levenshon.
The Marlin, at 1200 Collins Avenue, a
beautiful symmetrical streamlined de-
sign done in 1939 by L. Murry Dixon, as
photographed by Steven Brooke. The
hotel is now vacant and faces a vacant lot
across Collins Avenue where the Senator
Hotel once stood.
so as to upgrade their image. Days Inn will build a new nO-room complex and tower in "Deco and
Post-Modern style," but are demolishing the 1939 Bancroft and the Jefferson to do so. Quality Inn,
as we have already noted, purchased the Governor on 21st Street and installed a parking lot and a
cafe. Holiday Inns owns the large hotel on Washington and 22nd Street and are actively at work
refurbishing and promoting their District property. Much of this is seen as a response to oppor-
tunities to be provided by the multimillion-dollar expansion of the Convention Center.
Even the beach itself is not safe from overdevelopment. A new restaurant to be built on the sand, a
branch of Penrod's of Fort Lauderdale, has been given a long lease by the city.
The plan, the harmony, developed by that small group of gifted young architects in the thirties is
disappearing before our eyes. In our early days of forecasting the future of the District, we discussed
the necessity for development, for rebuilding with hidden infill not seen from the street, and perhaps
rashly, the need to erect new buildings that represented the thinking of contemporary architects
rather than simply copying the thirties style.
But the District preservationists now are despairing that these ideas about development may end
in the loss of the older buildings. We have come to a new realization of the worth of the District as a
true museum of twenties and thirties architecture, to be as carefully preserved as the historic districts
of Annapolis or Charleston.
Massive public and private expenditure is now needed to preserve and intensify the authentic Art
Deco experience. Our hotels must glitter once more; the spirit of the jazz and streamlined decades
must be reborn. Interiors should again be sleek and glamorous with deep-cut carpeting, tubular
chrome, exciting illumination, and authentic paintings and sculpture from the period. We need the
tropical planting, the bright beach umbrellas, the languor and intimacy the neighborhood one e had.
If this seems economically impossible, if we cannot rise to the challenge, the concll'sion is
inevitable. These may well be the last days to experience the genius created by Hohauset, Dixon,
and their peers.
T. D. Allman in his wonderful book Miami; City of the Future pokes what might be described at
affectionate fun at the dreamers of Miami - those who have gambled everything on their dreams,
brought the city their money and their energy, and then departed or died with nothing tangible to
show. Allman counts me among the dreamers, comparing me to Julia Tuttle, the famous pioneer of
Miami Beach, and he scoffs at my sons and at me because we thought the District could work in many
contradictory ways at the same time - as a place for the young and affluent and as a haven for the old
and poor.
Some say - and I have been guilty of it - that what we need is a billionaire who will take the whole
District over, impose controls, and make it ~ork. In our minds, of course, is John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s
Williamsburg restoration, where cars and parking are at the gates and not in the Colonial settlement;
where costumed actors and working craftsmen simulate America before the Revolution; where neat,
regulated inns, shops, and restaurants are on the periphery of the restored area, and celebrations take
8
place inside on the quaint streets and greens both day and night, winter and summer.
This Disneyland approach to the District is tempting; the slums would disappear along with their
inhabitants; jazz and Big Band music would be in the air; the cars lined up along the curbs would be
Cords and early Buicks. Hotel interiors would approach museum quality: furniture would have
veneers of rare woods or would be reproductions of machine-age styles by Kern Weber and Donald
Deskey. The colors of the buildings' facades would conform to one another, harmonizing gently.
Miami Beach, newly re-created as it was when all who knew it still describe it as a "paradise," would
mean tropical flowers and trees, birds and fountains, organ grinders with monkeys, plentiful juice
bars, awning-shaded verandahs, and pennants flying again from all the chrome masts. It might also
be possible to replace today's black asphalt with the white concrete roads that set off the bright
buildings so much better, and perhaps also coat them lightly with sand as happened naturally in the
early days.
This is, of course, pre-"Miami Vice" thinking: the District is not and probably never could be a
trim, unreal monument to the past, however pleasant that might be. It will never have a scrubbed,
"squeaky-clean" atmosphere with controlled crowds and events. The Beach, like it or not, has
become the flashy, adventurous, and permissive reality of the world-famous TV series.
~ It has also become a place for impromptu entertainment, for hanging out, for conversation and
affairs, for being as sand-covered and damp as you can get at the beach and as cool and elegant as you
can be when you arrive in a stretch limousine to enter Club Nu. It has developed into a place for
individuality in business ventures as well as in costume. Here is where you finally get to own - and
lose - that small hotel, or to open the boutique where you indulge your passion for hats or far-out art.
Encl)uraging hotel chains to provide adequate housing for large conventions and plenty of rooms
- .
with an '')cean view (at the expense of someone else's view) may work for the property owners, but it
will surely ;<ill the casual individualism of the present District. The new ventures now proposed will
also destroy what is nostalgic and fragile in the District.
The way to make the Art Deco District work and live is to respect what's here - the small,
beautiful, and resourceful buildings - and to understand what they were, and to bring them back to
glamorous life, using all the technology and all the financing one would need to destroy them and
then build some giant nightmare of a building in their place.
The second wave of developers, the youngsters who are today serving dinners and parking cars,
selling real estate, and preserving Florida's reputation for beautiful, healthy people, don't know or
care very much about the history of the beautiful buildings in this book. But if they put up a good
fight to keep what they've got here in unique Miami Beach, they too will come to respect the original
architectural team that made the District possible and the modern movement in the arts of which
our architects were such a significant part. Meanwhile, our visitors - the wonClerful, responsive,
educated visitors who know and deeply appreciate what they are seeing - will join us in safeguarding
and enjoying the Art Deco architecture in our beautiful Miami Beach. !lIi
9
DfCO DfUCi~TS
The Collins Park Hotel has a series of
small eyebrows broken by intersecting
vertical columns. It is located at 2000
Park Avenue, one block south of the Bass
Museum and one block east of the newly-
exponded Convention Center. The Hotel
was designed by Henry Hohauser in
1939. Photographed by Steven Brooke.
PRESERVE
SOUTH FLORIDA'S
BEAUTY AND STYLE
SUPPORT
ART DECO WEEKEND.
. '940
~~It's time to
call Southeast:'
~\\""'- h . k
~~1lt'~ Sout east Ban
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~/II\~
111\ f' 1988 S"uth,,,,, Bank N A M'm",f FDIC
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