Art Deco and MiMo: how Miami Beach saved its architecture, the back story

About Art Deco and MiMo: how Miami Beach saved its architecture, the back story

By the ULTIMATE Miami Editorial Team

South Beach has a remarkable collection of 1930s Art Deco buildings, and it nearly lost them. This is the story of the district, the preservationists of the Miami Design Preservation League, and the post-war Miami Modern (MiMo) style that followed.

The Deco look

Walk Ocean Drive or Collins Avenue and you are surrounded by small hotels in pastel colours, with rounded corners, “eyebrow” ledges shading the windows, porthole details and neon signs that come alive at night. The Webster on Collins Avenue, for example, is a 1939 hotel by the architect Henry Hohauser, now a fashion store.

Saving the district

The Miami Design Preservation League exists to protect them; Barbara Baer Capitman, whose papers are now in MDPL’s archive, became the face of the campaign, and a historical marker in her honour stands outside the Art Deco Welcome Center at 1001 Ocean Drive. The League has spent some 50 years helping to shape policy to protect Miami Beach’s historic buildings.

The best way to understand South Beach is to look up: at the eyebrows over the windows, the racing stripes and the neon.

Miami Modern

After the war, a bolder, more glamorous style arrived on Collins Avenue. Morris Lapidus designed the DiLido Hotel, which opened in 1953 and is now The Ritz-Carlton, South Beach, where the Lapidus Bar and DiLido Beach Bar keep his name alive. This exuberant post-war style is often called MiMo, short for Miami Modern, and it is quite different from the 1930s Deco further south.

Walking it today

Every MDPL tour begins at the Art Deco Welcome Center on Ocean Drive. The flagship Art Deco Walking Tour runs daily, and there is an app-based audio tour if you prefer to go at your own pace. The Center and its small museum are open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Our advice: take the guided walk in the morning before the heat, then come back to Ocean Drive after dark to see the neon. Look out for the Villa Casa Casuarina at 1116 Ocean Drive, and 728 Ocean Drive, a famous Scarface location.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Art Deco and MiMo: how Miami Beach saved its architecture, the back story before you go.