The Hampton Hotel located at the corner of Lincoln Road and Michigan Avenue, was built in April 1926, and designed by Martin L. Hampton. He also designed the old Miami Beach City Hall building and the Claridge Hotel, now called Casa Faena at 3500 Collins Avenue, among many other structures.
The Hampton Hotel is a three story building in the Mediterranean Revival style with some Art Deco influences. The building features exterior walls made of original oolitic limestone with porthole ornamental openings; a clay barrel tile roof; horizontal banding; a terrazzo floor entrance; and an octagonal tower on the northwest corner.
The building was multipurpose as it originally housed a fifty-four room hotel with office space and eight ground floor retail stores. The 1926 permit for construction lists the address as 930-946 Lincoln Road as well as 1627-1635 Michigan Avenue. Directories from 1928-1932 show the Hampton Arcade which seemed to be a collection of shops & offices at 928 Lincoln Rd. At the time, Lincoln Road was described as “The Fifth Avenue of The South”, near shopping, the theater district, golf, bathing, and churches.
Back in 1925, a group calling itself the Miami Beach Library and Art Institute Association, requested architect Russell Pancoast to prepare blueprints for a library, art museum and natural history museum, all to be built in Miami Beach. Enthusiasm and fund raising for this project was high and pledges reached $100,000. Unfortunately, much of the money went uncollected when The Great Hurricane hit in 1926 and a few years later the stock market crashed.
Until an appropriate library could be built, the Miami Beach Woman’s Club operated its own library in the Hampton Arcade on Lincoln Road. When first organized, the library contained 947 volumes. The number of books grew to 6,600 in a short time. The Miami Beach Woman’s Club had their office on the 2nd floor there, but the Miami Beach Public Library was listed as a separate storefront around the corner at 1633 Michigan Avenue, with Bertha Aldrich as Librarian.
Today at the corner of Lincoln Road and Michigan Avenue where the Hampton Hotel once stood, you will find Finnegan’s Road, an Irish pub.
