Architecture, Miami Beach

Carl Fisher, Miami Beach's founding father, hacked Lincoln Road out of the mangrove forest around 1912, naming it for his favorite president and establishing his real estate office there. The street soon became the town's social center, filling up over the decades with vendors of luxury like Saks Fifth Avenue and the local Cadillac agency.

Slightly over a half century later Morris Lapidus, a Russian-born architect who pioneered the Miami Modern (MiMo) style, redefined luxury shopping by turning Lincoln Road into Lincoln Road Mall, one of the first pedestrian malls in the U.S. In the 1950s. Lapidus set the standard for Miami hotel architecture when he designed the Eden Roc and the Fontainbleau on Collins Avenue.

Saks and Cadillac are long gone, replaced by upscale clothing chains, art galleries, restaurants with open-air dining under umbrellas, boutiques, chocolate shops, theaters and bookstores. Look for architectural details when not caught up in the great people-watching.

In 2011, Lincoln Road Mall was added to U.S. National Registry of Historic Places and the Florida International University School of Architecture opened a satellite campus in a 1940 Art Deco building at 420 Lincoln Road.

Between Alton Road on the west and Washington Avenue on the east and 16th and 17th Streets.

A parking garage is a parking garage is a parking garage--except on Miami Beach where international celebrity architects are vying to see who can come out on top.

1111 Lincoln Road, at Alton Road at the western end of the mall has made the most headlines so far, reinterpreting what's called Tropical Modernism. Designed by the Swiss firm of Herzog & de Meuron, it opened in 2010. That it can house about 300 cars is nowhere as interesting as that the open-air structure is rented out for wedding receptions and other events. It attracts photographers like flies, one so enraptured by photo possibilities that he's been accused of stalking.

Anyone can park there or drive up for some fabulous views during the week for $4 an hour, but beware the weekend when rates can soar to high as $50 an hour during an event such as Art Basel Miami.

It doesn't cost anything to check out the shops in its base, such as Taschen, the high-end art/architecture/design publisher; Y-3 Sportswear by the edgy Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto; and Nespresso, not your grandmother's Starbuck's (which is farther down the mall).

But Herzon & de Meuron is no longer the only kid on the Celebrity Parking Lot Block. Frank Gehry designed a garage for the New World Symphony Building and Zaha Hadid, the London-based architect, is designing a $12.5 million car park for the City of Miami Beach in Collins Park near 21st Street northeast of Lincoln Road Mall.

"I've always been fascinated by garages," she told the Wall Street Journal.

One of the city's best known examples of Art Deco architecture is the 440-seat Colony Theater, which opened on January 25, 1935, as part of the Paramount movie theater chain. Morris Lapidus had the original entrance moved around the corner when he turned the street into a mall.

Listed on the U.S. Registry of Historical Places, it has been a performing arts center since 1976. Today it's a popular venue for concerts, dance performances, lyric opera, music festivals and arthouse movie screenings.

The City of Miami Beach recently completed a three-year project to restore the facade, entrance and lobby to its original Art Deco glory.
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1040 Lincoln Road
Miami Beach, FL 33166
(305) 674-1040

Want to dig deeper into Miami Beach architecture? The place to go is Books & Books, an outpost of the independent, locally owned bookshop in Coral Gables, also with a shop at Concourse D at the Miami International Airport.

You'll spot the umbrellas of The Cafés@Books&Books on the north side of the mall. The café, which opens at 10 a.m., offers soups, sandwiches, tapas and eclectic starters. The bookshop, with its rich offering of architectural and design books, is at the rear of a courtyard inside the Sterling Building. Built in 1941, it was designed by Victor Nellenbogen, the Hungarian-American architect whose other notable buildings include the Savoy Plaza Hotel on Ocean Drive.

The Books & Books shops are a local institution. Miamian Mitchell Kaplan, co-founder of the Miami Book Fair, opened his first shop in the early 80s and quickly established it as the to-go-to place not only for books but literary events. Check to see what author may be scheduled at Lincoln Road.
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927 Lincoln Road
Miami Beach, FL 33139
(305) 695-8898

Big architectural news of late on Miami Beach is Frank Gehry's New World Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall, which opened in early 2011 Unlike his vision for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, he has put his signature twisted forms on the inside -- Bilbao turned outside in. What you'll see from the 2.5-acre (1 hectare) park in front of the building is a big white cube. A dramatic 80-foot (24-meter) wall of glass lets you glimpse inside.

As concert halls go, this $160-million space is small--only 757 seats. Not to worry about missing the concert though. Gehry designed a 7,000-square-foot (650 sq. meter) projection wall on the exterior. You can sit outside under the palms while watching a wallcast by one of the world's premier training orchestras.

The Gehry design, by the way, includes the parking garage in steel mesh, which glows at night in LED colors.
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500 17th Street
Miami Beach, FL 33139
(305) 673-3331

Doing what his wife Jane told him, Carl Fisher -- developer of Miami Beach -- gave three lots on his new Lincoln Road to build the first church in Miami Beach -- Miami Beach Congregational Church, renamed Miami Beach Community Church within a year of its founding.

The sanctuary was dedicated on March 21, 1920, a Palm Sunday. By December Mrs. Fisher had invited the singer ReInald Werrenrath, a concert and radio singing star of the 1920s, to sing even though the piano was of questionable quality. She soon was pushing her husband to buy a pipe organ, a Midmer-Losh that served the church until 1956. The latest organ, dedicated in 1994, is often played by nationally known organists, as part of the church's cultural series.

Spanish Revival style, the church is constructed of concrete with decorative cast-stone pilasters intended to resemble coral rag, used so much in early construction in the area.
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Sunday Services: 10:30 a.m.
1620 Drexel Avenue
Miami Beach, FL 33139,
(305) 538-4511

Amble three blocks down Drexel Avenue from Lincoln Road through a quiet residential neighborhood or go one block east to Washington Avenue for a more commercial vibe as you head south. Either way, you arrive at Espanola Way or Historic Spanish Village, whose Mediterranean Revival style looks straight out of a Hollywood backlot.

Just north of 14th Street, in the two blocks between Washington and Pennyslvannia Avenue, Espanola Way is where the wealthy danced and Al Capone gambled in the 1920s. By 1930s, it pulsed to the rhumba beat of Desi Arnez. Then the neighborhood fell into decline until the 1980s when it was rediscovered and reinvented by Miami Vice producers.

End your walking tour over lunch or an early dinner at one of the street's many restaurants after exploring art galleries and boutiques. Stop in at the Clay Hotel, built in 1925, where Don Johnson, Elton John and Sylvester Stallone have soaked up the atmosphere.
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Clay Hotel
1438 Washington Ave.
Miami Beach, Florida 33139
(305) 534-2988