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.
Jo Thomas’s piece in the New York Times emphasizes the efforts of preservationists, such as the Miami Design Preservation League, to save the 800 buildings of the Art Deco District, which represents a unique architectural history from the 1930s. She compares this struggle to broader conflicts in older cities between property rights and historical preservation. In contrast, William Safire’s article critiques the preservationists, arguing that their actions infringe on property rights and misapply principles of ownership.
Excerpts and quotes from the article are highlighted below in blue.
The buildings, decked with spires and spirals, wrapped with rounded corners and adorned with terrazzo sunbursts and glass flamingos, hint at youth and endless summer, but then they have always traded on illusions.
In the 1930’s when most of the Art Deco hotels and apartment buildings in what is now the Miami Beach Architectural District were built, they offered fashionable places to escape the winter and overlook the Depression. Here was a building looking like a steamship, there one like a vacuum cleaner. The guests were enchanted. Many of them decided to
stay.
The struggle between the owner’s right to destroy and rebuild in the name of profit and property rights, and the community’s right to save in the name of history and what some see as beauty.
