It started with a big idea and a bold woman. In 1976, Barbara Baer Capitman and her son John set out to honor America’s bicentennial — and ended up saving Miami Beach.

Capitman, alongside designer Leonard Horowitz, identified a concentration of 1930s buildings in South Beach that the world had largely written off. In 1979, their efforts paid off: the Miami Beach Architectural Historic District became the nation’s first urban 20th-century Historic District listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

But recognition wasn’t protection. The Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) fought demolition order by order, ordinance by ordinance — losing battles like the New Yorker Hotel, winning others like the expansion of the full Art Deco District in 1992. Along the way, Art Deco Weekend was born, Andy Warhol came calling, and Miami Vice introduced the District to the world.

Capitman passed away in 1990, but the institution she built never slowed down. From height limits to “demolition by neglect” ordinances to international coalitions, MDPL has spent five decades doing exactly what it was founded to do:

Preserve. Protect. Promote.