USA Guide
Florida
Miami Beach
A long slender arm of land between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, Miami Beach, three miles off the mainland, has been a headline-grabbing resort town for almost a hundred years, from its first heyday in the Art Deco-dominated 1920s, through a slick-as-Vegas era in the 1950s, to the hip hedonism of today. Until the 1910s – when its Quaker owner, John Collins, formed an unlikely partnership with a flashy entrepreneur, Carl Fisher – it was nothing more than an ailing fruit farm. With Fisher's money, Biscayne Bay was dredged, and the muck raised from its murky bed was used as landfill to transform this wildly vegetated barrier island into a carefully sculptured landscape of palm trees, hotels, and tennis courts. After a hurricane in 1926 devastated Miami (and especially the beach), damaged buildings were replaced by grander structures in the new Art Deco style, and Miami Beach as we know it appeared. Since then, its history has been checkered: by the 1980s, crack dens and retirement homes were equally commonplace in South Beach, but the 1990s saw a renaissance spearheaded by a few savvy hoteliers and Miami's gay community.
Opening time: Daily
Price: Free