The Art Deco Historic District was put on the National Register for historic places
and it was significant because it was the first neighborhood of 20th century buildings
to be put on the National Register.
My name is Howard Brayer.
I'm a volunteer tour guide with the Miami Design Preservation League.
We'll be doing an Art Deco walking tour of the historic district of Miami Beach.
Two events in the latter events of the 1920's changed the course of history for Miami Beach
as a resort.
First, in 1926, a major hurricane had a direct hit on the city.
Hundreds of people were killed.
Much property was destroyed or severely damaged.
Then, in 1929, the stock market crashed and many of the wealthy people who were coming
here also lost much of their money.
So the nature of Miami Beach as a resort changed in the 1930's.
If you look up and down Ocean Drive, most of the buildings that see were erected as
hotels in the 1930's, primarily for middle class clientele.
Art Deco was a style of architecture begun in Europe early in the 20th century.
There was a big exhibit in Paris in 1925 that featured Art Deco architecture and design.
People from all over the world went to the that exhibit and brought Art Deco home with
them.
Miami Beach has about 800 Art Deco buildings, one of the highest concentrations of any city
in the world.
The Breakwater Hotel across the street was erected in 1940 and I'll point out a few of
its features that are common to Art Deco buildings here.
Number one: the front facade is symmetric, meaning if you fold it in half, it's the same
on both sides.
Often, Art Deco buildings here give a sense of movement.
The Breakwater looks almost like a ship, the Breakwater sign being its mast.
The railings on the roof line look like the railings on a cruise ship.
So it almost looks as if it's about to leave its foundation and go out into the ocean behind
us.
The next building we'll look at is the original Congress Hotel immediately across the street.
If you look at the roof line, you see it goes up in steps on both sides.
That's called a ziggurat that was first developed in Mesopotamian architecture, later adopted
by the Egyptians.
And Egyptian architecture and design was popular in many places around the world in 1920s and
'30s because of the discovery of King Tut's tomb there in 1922.
Next, you'll notice the ledges over the windows.
The nickname for those here are eyebrows.
They served a very important function.
They provide shade for the interior, keeping it cooler, especially important for when these
buildings were not air conditioned.
And finally here, if you look at the Congress Hotel sign, the font that the letters are
in was a very popular font in the 1930's.
So our next stop will be in the lobby of the original part of the Victor.
The architectural features that we see in the lobby are original.
So the first feature we'll look at is the floor.
The material is called terrazzo.
It was first developed in Italy.
It's stone chips mixed in with a composite and as it dries, it could be molded into different
shapes and dyed various colors.
Most of the terrazzo floors in Miami Beach Art Deco buildings are the original floor.
And finally, these are considered classic Art Deco chandeliers.
The Essex House Hotel is another Art Deco building.
This was erected in 1939.
You can see the terrazzo floor like we saw in the Victor.
You see these three arrows on the floor.
Up until 1950, illegal gambling was popular in many Miami Beach hotels.
At its height in the late 1940's, up to 200 Miami Beach hotels featured illegal gambling.
So sometimes the hotel would put an indication in the floor of where the gambling was taking
place so people wouldn't have to ask at the front desk.
Miami Beach is noted for its colorful buildings.
When these buildings were first erected, they were painted in primarily neutral colors.
Offwhite was the most common color.
For the most part, the colorful buildings didn't come into play until the early 1980's.
Today, the current trend is to go back to more neutral colors, especially white, which
is in line with the overall design trend in the United States today.