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.
On June 26, 1979, Andrew W. Capitman, General Partner of the Cardozo Hotel Partners and son of Barbara Baer Capitman, announced that the historic Cardozo Hotel in Miami Beach would become the headquarters for the National Art Deco Movement. The hotel, designed in 1939 by renowned architect Henry Hohauser, was purchased by a group of prominent Miami investors committed to revitalizing Old Miami Beach.
Capitman emphasized that the renovation of the Cardozo would serve as a pilot project to attract further investment and support for the district’s restoration. The hotel, acquired for $800,000, had primarily been a residential hotel but was now being reimagined as a destination for architects, designers, and preservationists.
Excerpts and quotes from the article are highlighted below in blue.
The press conference remarked the acquisition of the Cardozo Hotel by a group of prominent Miami investors committed to the revitalization of Old Miami Beach, a mile square district placed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 14th, 1979 as the nation’s first 20th century architectural district.
“The Cardozo is a seventy room Art Deco-style hotel designed in 1939 by Henry Hohauser, leading Miami Beach Art Deco architect,” said Capitman. “Our plan is to bring back the music, dining, dancing good service and high fashion of this elegant little seaside hotel. We hope to provide accommodations for the architects, designers, urban planners and serious historic preservationists who have chosen to vacation by seeing the district.”
Andres Fabregas, AIA and ASID, president of the Miami Design Preservation League and a principal of the architectural and planning firm, Bouterse, Perez & Fabregas, will direct the engineering and interior design work on the Cardozo Hotel renovation. The renovation planned for the Cardozo will be completed in several phases at a total cost of $400,000. The first phase will include exterior work, the hotel’s lobby and dining room, and approximately one third of the hotel’s guest rooms and will be completed by December 1979.
The Cardozo is named after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin F. Cardozo, one of the famous Supreme Court justices of the Roosevelt court during the 1930’s. In 1959, the hotel was the scene of a Frank Sinatra film, Hole in the Head, a United Artists release, in which Sinatra starred as manager of a Miami Beach hotel. The hotel also served as headquarters for Art Deco Week in October 1978.
