Read Time: 2mins At the time, preservationists fought to make this quaint neighborhood a historic district. Then referred to as the Bass District, the area is between Washington and Collins Avenue from 16th to 23rd Street. It features some of the best examples of Art Deco and Mediterranean architecture.
Read Time: 3mins The revitalization of Miami Beach in the early 1980s included major infrastructure projects that helped transform it back to its glory days.A Miami Herald article by Dory Owens, dated Jan […]
Read Time: 3mins In 1987, the state of Florida loaned $250,000 for the restoration of the Edison, with assistance from the Miami Beach Development Corp.
Read Time: 4mins Art Deco hotels offered fashionable places to escape the Winter and Great Depression during the 1930s and 40s. But by the 1970s and 1980s, Miami Beach was in decline. By 1981, the city was looking to revitalize.
Read Time: 2mins Found among the archives PostMortem, a South Beach newspaper that ran from 1988-1990 and focused on arts and culture. A full-page ad announces a reception for the artist Keith Haring on Monday, May 2nd, 1988, at the Wham Bam at 437 Washington Avenue in South Beach.
Read Time: 2mins Barbara Baer Capitman, founder of the Miami Design Preservation League and monumental leader in the movement to save Art Deco, fought tirelessly for the preservation of Art Deco in the 1970s and 1980s. But it wasn’t until about 10 years into the effort that preservationists began to be taken seriously at the local level.
Read Time: 3mins In 1988, the Miami Design Preservation League held its 11th Annual Art Deco Weekend. The festival’s theme was Streamline Dreamtime. Ocean Drive and the Art Deco District were slowly progressing from a hopeful dream to an innovative reality.
Read Time: 3mins Hosted annually from 1978 through the 1990s, the Moon Over Miami Ball was a black-tie soiree held to fundraise for the Miami Design Preservation League. The event featured a lively evening with a 1930s nightclub atmosphere, held at several hotels in the historic Art Deco district, and featuring a variety of celebrities each year highlighting a unique theme. Over the years, the Balls brought in some of the greatest talent in the industry, including Cab Calloway, Eartha Kitt, the Xavier Cugat Orchestra, the Incomparable Hildegarde, Lionel Hampton and the Swing Classics.
Read Time: 2mins Before Miami Beach fully embraced its turnaround in the 1980s and 1990s, developers and preservationists alike had to come together to form a progressive and innovative plan for the future of the city. Part of this involved finding the best approach to planning and approvals within the district – a challenge given its status as the first 20th-century urban district in the United States listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Read Time: 3mins The year was 1986 — Miami Beach was a tropical paradise that had fallen on hard times, and it was in the early stages of a citizen-led revitalization effort to spearhead economic development and improvements in the neighborhood.
Read Time: 5mins Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road Mall is one of the most popular shopping destinations in the world – a pedestrian promenade dotted with historic buildings from the 1920s-1960s. It stretches for about a mile between Washington Avenue and Alton Road. The outdoor shopping mall is a top stop for fashion, shopping, dining, markets, art galleries, and people-watching.
Read Time: 4mins According to a 1986 Miami Herald article, in the 1980s developer Gerry Sanchez purchased numerous hotels along Ocean Drive. Mr. Sanchez was superstitious – and since he was 45 years old, the price he’d sell a property for would have to include the numbers 4 and 5: “For everything I sell, I have to make 45 cents or $4.50 or $45 or $4,500 or $45,000 or $450,000. I’m superstitious because that’s my age.” $450,000 is the profit he made while selling the Clevelander to the Kay Family for $1.65 million, after owning the property for four months.