Editors Note: The Barbara Baer Capitman archives “Historic Threads” project is partly sponsored by the Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, and the State of Florida.
Andrew Capitman, son of Miami Design Preservation League leader Barbara Baer Capitman, was a leading Art Deco rehabilitation pioneer in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1979, he purchased the Cardozo Hotel with a group of enthusiastic investors who believed in the resurgence of the city through the preservation of its past. Mr. Capitman instinctively knew that a 1930s revival would dramatically improve tourism.
While searching through the Barbara Baer Capitman archives, an article from The Atlantic Journal, written by Andrew Capitman himself, we found an article from 1979 where Capitman discusses his plan to restore and operate the Cardozo Hotel for a successful future of increased revenues and profits.
Andrew Capitman knew that restoring the Cardozo Hotel was an essential move. He wanted to recreate an environment where people could truly appreciate the hidden gem that Miami Beach was:
It is very easy to lose the sense of being in one of the world’s great resort cities when your life becomes a constant round of wondering where the plumbing system will start to leak next. The Cardozo’s previous owner told me he hadn’t been for a swim in front of the hotel in five years. Every day I take a break and enjoy the commodity we sell here: the sun, sand, and water. To recover a sense of pleasure in our surroundings is much of what the Art Deco District can mean to Miami Beach, a community which often seems to exhibit a tremendous lack of self-esteem.
Mr. Capitman explains how in the 1930s the Cardozo Hotel was at its prime:
Forty years ago the Cardozo Hotel was elegant, casual, spotlessly clean and shining. A small combo would play dance music on the Tropical Dance Patio and vacationers in stylish resort wear from the fashionable shops on Lincoln Road would lounge on the front porch luxuriating in the sunset before an evening of jazz and big band music at the hotels and night clubs. The Cardozo Hotel was the kind of place where people fall in love.
Bringing back the aesthetics and liveliness of the 1930s was the game plan of the 1980s:
The fundamental business concept behind the Cardozo Hotel, and the Art Deco District, is a great demand for vacations which allow people to recapture the magical simplicity and romance which are nostalgically associated with Miami Beach in the 1930’s. People can stay at a cold, modern Hyatt or Hilton, complete with thirty story internal atrium, in virtually every major city in the United States. Only in the Art Deco District can they be transported back to the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Great Gatsby, The Big Bands, Busby Berkeley lavish film sets. The Art Deco Buildings, quintessentially 30s in style and scale, provide the stage setting which make this journey back in time genuinely possible.
Andrew Capitman believed that Miami Beach’s only problem was ironically its very solution:
Our major problem in Miami Beach was not at level of lack of tourism facilities. In fact, our tourism infrastructure is practically unrivaled. Miami Beach’s central problem is that as a resort, it fails to communicate quality, sensitivity or romance. Yet, it is exactly these characteristics upon which the Art Deco District is based. The Art Deco District appeals to creative people, sophisticated people, who previously would never have dreamed of vacationing on Miami Beach. By attracting these people, the Art Deco District contributes to an overall improvement in Miami Beach’s image. Along with other major developments now taking shape, the Art Deco District is part of a great revival from which Miami Beach residents and all our visitors will benefit.
