Miami Beach Architectural District

The Miami Beach Architectural District (also known as Old Miami Beach Historic District, and the more popular term, Miami Art Deco District) is a U.S. historic district (designated as such on May 14, 1979) located in the South Beach neighborhood of Miami Beach, Florida. The area is well known as the district where Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace lived, in a mansion on Ocean Drive. It is bounded[2] by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Sixth Street to the south, Alton Road to the west, and the Collins Canal and Dade Boulevard to the north. It contains 960 historic buildings.

Miami Beach Architectural District
LocationMiami Beach, Florida
Coordinates25°47′9″N 80°8′3″W
Area5,750 acres (2,330 ha)
NRHP reference No.79000667[1]
Added to NRHPMay 14, 1979

Historical significance

This historic district holds the largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world, an umbrella term covering a range of styles such as “Streamline”, “Tropical”, and “Med-deco” and built mostly between the Great Depression and the early 1940s. Notably, the architectural movement reached Miami after the city’s real estate market took a downturn in 1925, and the "Great Miami Hurricane" of 1926 that left 25,000 people homeless throughout the greater Miami region.

The designs are often described as evoking technological modernity, resilience, and optimism.[3] The Miami Beach Art Deco Museum describes the Miami building boom as coming mostly during the second phase of the architectural movement known as Streamline Moderne, a style that was “buttressed by the belief that times would get better, and was infused with the optimistic futurism extolled at American’s World Fairs of the 1930s.”[4]

In 1989, it was listed in A Guide to Florida's Historic Architecture, published by the University of Florida Press.[5]

Notable architects
  • Park Central (Henry Hohauser, 1937)
  • Imperial (1939)
  • Majestic (Albert Anis, 1940)
  • Avalon (Albert Anis, 1941)
  • Beacon (Henry O. Nelson, 1936)
  • Colony (Henry Hohauser, 1935)
  • Waldorf Towers (Albert Anis, 1937)
  • Breakwater (Anton Skislewicz, 1939)
  • Edison (Henry Hohauser, 1935)
  • Clevelander (Albert Anis, 1939)
  • Adrian (1934)
  • Leslie (Albert Anis, 1937)
  • Carlyle (1941)
  • Cardozo (Henry Hohauser, 1939)
  • Cavalier (1936)
  • Netherlands Hotel (1935)
  • McAlpin Hotel (L. Murray Dixon, 1940)
  • Marlin Hotel
  • Essex House (Henry Hohauser, 1938)

References
  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. Miami Beach Architectural District, FL - Google Maps
  3. Kellard, Joseph (Summer 2020). "Miami's Art Deco Answer to the Great Depression". The Objective Standard. Glen Allen Press. 15 (2): 44–48.
  4. "What is Art Deco". mdpl.org. Miami Design Preservation League. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
  5. A Guide to Florida's Historic Architecture, 1989, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, p. 145, ISBN 0-8130-0941-3
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