Miami Beach Art Deco Historic District

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The district runs from the Atlantic Ocean west to Alton Road, and from Sixth Street north to the Collins Canal and Dade Boulevard. Within those lines stands the largest concentration of Art Deco architecture in the world. Three styles overlap through it. Mediterranean Revival came first, in the early to middle 1920s. Art Deco proper runs from about 1925 to the early 1940s. Streamline Moderne, the later phase, picks up the curves, portholes and racing stripes of the world's fairs of the 1930s. Most of it went up after the Florida land boom collapsed in 1925 and the hurricane of 1926 flattened much of what was here, which is why the buildings carry the optimism they do. This was the first twentieth century district admitted to the National Register, and the campaign that achieved it was led by Barbara Baer Capitman and the Miami Design Preservation League. The League still runs the Art Deco Welcome Center on Ocean Drive and guided walking tours from it, which are the sensible way to see the district, because much of what matters is in details above eye level that a person walking past will miss. The mansion on Ocean Drive where the designer Gianni Versace lived and was killed in 1997 stands within the district and is now a hotel