Wynwood: from garment district to open-air gallery, the back story

Wynwood’s warehouses once made clothes for department stores across America. This is the story of how the factories emptied, how a developer bet on art, and how the Wynwood Walls turned a district of blank walls into one of Miami’s great sights.

The garment district

In the decades after the Second World War, the low warehouses north of downtown Miami hummed with sewing machines. Wynwood grew into the third-largest garment district in the United States, and it was also home to many Caribbean immigrant families. Its flat-roofed factories and loading docks turned out clothes for department stores across the country.

In the early 1990s the work moved offshore. One factory after another closed, and by the turn of the century many buildings stood empty, their windowless walls left to graffiti.

A bet on art

In the early 2000s developers, property owners, artists and entrepreneurs began to see something else in those blank walls. The Second Saturday Art Walk drew people into new galleries, and the arrival of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2002 brought collectors from around the world.

Tony Goldman, who had already helped revive New York’s SoHo and Miami Beach’s Ocean Drive, began buying buildings in Wynwood in the mid-2000s. His idea was that art would be the catalyst: rather than wait for visitors to discover the district, he would give them a reason to come.

The Wynwood Walls

In 2009 Goldman and the curator Jeffrey Deitch turned the outside walls of a cluster of his warehouses into an open-air museum of street art, inviting leading graffiti and street artists to paint at huge scale. It opened during Art Basel and drew international attention.

Since Goldman’s death in 2012 his daughter, Jessica Goldman Srebnick, has carried the project on, and the murals are repainted year after year, so no two visits look quite the same.

Beyond the Walls

The Wynwood Business Improvement District now counts more than 200 street murals across some 50 city blocks, alongside galleries, independent shops, breweries and more than 100 places to eat. Many of the best murals are painted straight onto working buildings, from taco bars to car parks.

Around the corner from the Walls, the Museum of Graffiti at 276 NW 26th Street tells the story of the art form, with an indoor exhibition space, a fine art gallery and eleven exterior murals.

Walking it today

The Wynwood Walls, at 2516 NW 2nd Avenue, open daily from 10.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., with last entry 30 minutes before closing. On Art Walk evenings, the second Saturday of each month, the Walls open their gates to Art Walk visitors from 5 to 10 p.m., and participating galleries open their doors for the evening.

There is no Metrorail station in Wynwood: Metrobus route 2 runs up NW 2nd Avenue from downtown, and the Wynwood Garage is at 311 NW 26th Street.

Our advice: come in the morning, when the light is soft and the streets are quiet, then wander the blocks around the Walls before lunch. On Art Walk Saturdays, arrive early or head straight for the garage.