Touring Miami Beach's Art Deco District

From the June 2010 Hideaway Report Online:

One bright blue morning in Miami Beach, we set off on a walking tour of the Art Deco District, the neighborhood between Sixth and 23rd streets that contains more than 800 pastel-hued properties of historic distinction. Our guide was a droll British woman from the Miami Design Preservation League who spent the next 90 minutes expertly shepherding us into a dozen utterly entrancing hotel lobbies and courtyards. Pointing to the sweeping balcony of the peach ocean-liner Essex House on Collins and 10th, she asked, “Couldn’t you just picture enjoying a cocktail up there in the late ’30s?” We could.

Most of these architectural treasures were constructed between 1923 and 1943 as simple vacation rentals for working families. It was an era of scarcity, but Americans were fascinated with the gleaming visions of the future displayed in the famous 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Hence the sweeping curves, chrome railings, porthole windows and glass bricks of Miami’s own “Streamline Moderne” style (for an excellent introduction to this golden age of industrial design, we also recommend Miami Beach’s The Wolfsonian museum).

While their fanciful exteriors might suggest otherwise, these art deco peacocks are models of efficient design: Their low heights eliminate the need for elevators, the soft pastel colors reflect the heat, and the wide corner windows with their famous “eyebrows” keep rooms cool and breezy. Their decorative terra- cotta floors were certainly resource-intensive to build, but they required less maintenance than rugs, and labor was cheap and plentiful at the time. If you don’t have time for the official tour, the lobbies of the Essex House (Collins and 10th), The Winterhaven (Ocean Drive and 14th) and The National (Collins and 17th) are all wonderfully preserved period pieces.

Our guide, Paula, was a delight. She showed us magnificent pastoral murals that had spent decades behind false walls, and secret designs in lobby floors that pointed the way to hidden gambling rooms. She waxed lyrical over ziggurat rooflines and etched glass. In short, she was as charming and colorful as her adopted hometown.

For any devotee of Miami Beach, this is 90 minutes and $20 well spent. Many of these buildings wouldn’t be here without the efforts of Barbara Baer Capitman and the Miami Design Preservation League, 1001 Ocean Drive (10th and Ocean Drive), which fought to declare the area a historic district in 1979. The MDPL hosts a variety of guided and self-guided walking tours.

Click here for more details about The Wolfsonian.