EARLY HISTORY, 1817-1970
2.5. URBAN PLANNING THROUGH PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT
Shortly after the bridge completion, dredging began to extract the soft limestone bottom of the bay on the west side of Miami Beach to create solid land. The reclamation process created land out of seemingly nothing, but would lead to future problems of
overdevelopment and porous basements now experienced by owners and residents through sunny-day flooding and the residual effects of climate change. As soon as a primary access point was established through the Collins Bridge, a network of streets were quickly planned and named. One of the first “unofficial” planning acts occurred in 1912, through the Lummus Brother’s Ocean Beach Realty Company. They platted their southern portion of Miami Beach into a gridiron of streets into blocks generally four hundred feet by three hundred feet, bisected by alleys and parceled into fifty-foot-wide lots. Wide avenues extended north and south while the narrower streets ran east to the beach. Most of the initial building pursuits were targeted at earlier pleasure facilities and a boardwalk was built.25
Figure 2.16: Telegram from Wanamaker to Fisher, 192426 Figure 2.17: Dredging project map, by Closk & Co., 1924
25 Lejeune and Shulman, 10.
26 Notes “…achievement of another forward step in the splendid work you are doing to turn the waste spaces of the earth into places of beauty.”
2.5.1. Contrasting divisions of development
Different visions of Miami Beach quickly began to materialize under the two main landowners: Carl Fisher and the Lummus Brothers. Fisher’s idea of an ostentatious resort town for the wealthy diverged from the humbler ambitions of the Lummus Brothers’ idea of a family beachside hideaway.27 As early as 1914, Miami Beach became the suburban setting for both modest homes and palatial mansions set within highly curated Mediterranean landscapes.
The early development of the city was built in vernacular wood traditions, while grander residences could afford to be faced in masonry and stucco. The scale and character of these fifty-foot wide lots established an arrangement, similar to other American suburbs of the time.28 Northward along the waterfront, Fisher’s development required larger plots for more affluent homeowners, which became reflected into the less rigid grid north of the Lummus properties. Here prominent, primarily Midwestern industrialists, men gathered to create their tropical villas in the sun.
Maps depict the different visions and urban forms created between north and south regions of Miami Beach Figure 2.18: Southern half dense grid, c.1915 Figure 2.19: Northern half, suburban plots, c.1920
27 Stofik, 11; Fisher’s hotels would be opulent, suitably luxurious for the elite and the prosperous who played croquet and were accustomed to having their afternoon tea served from sterling silver. His building lots would be generous in size to accommodate the most ostentatious winter residence
28 Lejeune and Shulman, 31; Functional zoning, particularly within the southern Lummus owed properties, maintained a residential character with uniform setbacks and the regularity of height reinforced the suburban scale
Soon after, different urban patterns imposed on the new landscape reflected the independent organization of three distinct real estate development firms. In South Beach, the Ocean Beach Realty Company assembled the traditional elements of a seaside resort city: an oceanfront “boardwalk” as the setting for an architectural promenade with “bathing casinos”
built along the ocean and an entertainment pier including a mix of homes, hotels and boarding houses. To the north, in the area that became known as Collins Park, the Miami Beach Improvement Company planned an oceanfront community of hotels and houses beyond the limits of a functioning farming district maintained by developer John Collins. The primary development concerns were tourist-driven resorts and amenities or residential in nature. Carl Fisher founded the Alton Beach Realty Company in 1913, and planned Lincoln Road as the commercial center connecting Biscayne Boulevard all the way east to the oceanfront.
Transformation of Lincoln Road from wilderness to pedestrian, commercial mall
Figure 2.20: Dense growth, c.1900s Figure 2.21: Pedestrian mall, c.1960 Figure 2.22: High property values, 2016
Contrary to the urban gridiron of South Beach, the north and west sides of Miami Beach adhered to larger plots, similar to picturesque garden suburbs. Residences were organized along the new bayfront edge as well as along canals, lakes, artificial islands, recreational amenities and parkways.29 The combination of garden suburb, grand hotel, golf course and elegant shopping district established a model of development that would be repeated throughout Florida.
29 Lejeune and Shulman, 12; Probably influenced by the contemporary Parks Movement and Frederick Law Olmsted’s picturesque plans for urban parks and garden cities, this area of private villas was anchored by a series of grand hotels that were linked to the city’s amenities, and by the shopping district of Lincoln Road.
2.5.2. Invention of tropical ideal
Miami Beach projected a convincing image of an idealistic environment. The natural setting of South Florida was transformed to reflect what a generation of Americans thought the tropics should look like, rather than a naturally evolved landscape of swamplands and mangroves. Nature was manipulated to conform to this image of the new city. This
reinvention was part of a development plan that began, Denise Scott Brown noted, “by elaborating the values of nature and then adding the architecture.”30 The creation and remaking of Miami Beach, was evidence of a “faith in technology” among early twentieth century developers, and has parallels through the continual attitude of Miami Beach politicians and owners to find technological solutions to sea level rise.31 It also reflected the tremendous power these city builders would establish in future policy decisions. Assessed valuations of these creations by Miami Beach today reflected the exponential growth within a short five-year period of development.
Figure 2.23: Assessed valuation in 1917 was $647,500 compared to $6,000,000 estimated by 1921, Miami Beach Today, 1921
30 Denise Scott Brown, City of Miami Beach (Florida) Washington Avenue Revitalization Plan, City of Miami Beach (Miami Beach, Florida: City of Miami Beach, 1979).
31 Lejeune and Shulman
2.5.3. City incorporation in 1915
By 1915, Collins, Fisher, and the Lummuses merged their ambitions and incorporated their land as the Town of Miami Beach.32 The continual push northwards of the city limits were also established through the influence of private developers. Through 1915, the boundary was established around 46th Street, but by September 1917, the Dade Country Commission granted right of way for another prominent landowners and realtors, the Tatum Brothers, to extend the oceanfront road up to 163rd Street so they could access their
landholdings.33 This not only allowed an extension northwards to unincorporated land ready to be developed and subsequently purchased, but also promoted the concept of municipal policies being directed by influential stakeholders. As early as 1918, the city was accessible by car, the terminus of “more than 600 miles of perfect roads radiating in every direction from Miami Beach.”34
Figure 2.24: Property of The Miami Ocean View Co., 1918 Figure 2.25: Dixie Highway to Miami
32 Kleinberg, 37-40, 58; The state required three hundred registered voters for an area to become a city and Miami Beach had only thirty-three. Two years later, the City was officially incorporated.
33 Klepser, 56; Miami and subsequently Miami Beach’s connection to Dixie Highway, the most important connection of Florida to the Midwest was assembled by Fisher and America’s first transcontinental highway.
34 Brochure, “The Call of Miami Beach, Florida,” c. 1923; This is currently McArthur Causeway, which carries State Road 836 and State Road A1A over the Biscayne Bay.
2.5.4. Causeway and artificial island development
In 1920, a second causeway was completed across the bay at Fifth Street, built on fill dredged from Government Cut.35 At the same time, the deteriorating Collins Bridge was replaced by a more permanent concrete structure, today known as the Venetian Causeway.
Five additional islands were constructed around the new causeway.36 In the process of deepening the bay to create a racecourse for speedboats and additional means of water access for Fisher’s clients, islands were inadvertently created from the dredgings. It didn’t take long to realize that new real estate could be created by pumping the fill into retaining walls, while creating an appealing landscape between land and water to further the tropical ideal.
Figure 2.26: 1940s postcard of Venetian Causeway Figure 2.27: Dredging Biscayne Bay to create new land
2.5.5. Ambitions of a great city
As Abraham D. Lavender stated, 1920 marked a landmark year in its hope to become a great city, “…with it’s first large, luxurious hotel, it was the year that the causeway opened, the trolley began operating, the city got its first automatic telephone system, first post office and Miami Beach address instead of being a rural route to Miami, first public school, first PTA, and first religious house of worship.”37 The importance of dredging and filling to create new real estate opportunities added an additional 2,760 acres of land to the 1,600
35 Klepser, 23.
36 Rivo Alto, DiLido and San Marino were in Miami Beach; San Marco and Biscayne were within the Miami city limits.
37 Abraham D. Lavender, Miami Beach in 1920: The Making of a Winter Resort (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2002), 9.
existing acres of sandbar, totaling 63 percent of the formerly mangrove landmass.38 Once infrastructural linkages were fortified, a street grid soon replaced the increasingly obsolete electric trolley system.39
In 1916, only one hotel existed, Fisher’s Lincoln Hotel, with sixteen rooms, but by 1925, there were over 234 hotels and apartment houses, 8,000 permanent residents, 300 shops and offices, 8 bathing casinos, 3 schools, 4 polo fields, 3 theaters and 2 churches.40 Dredging was the primary source for new real estate. First Flagler (now Monument) and Star Islands and then Palm and Hibiscus Islands were formed through these technological
advancements. In 1923, Fisher dug out Sunset Lake, turning what were 4 small peninsulas into the Sunset Islands. Farther north, Fisher carved out Surprise Lake and its 3 waterways, and in 1924, he dredged Allison and La Gorce Islands and built the first bridge across Indian Creek.41 Several miles to the north, in April 1925, a cut was completed at Baker’s Haulover that linked bay to ocean and forever changed the tidal flow.
Figure 2.28: Ad for “Carl G. Fisher Hotels,” 1927 Figure 2.29: Typical scene of boomtime real estate office, c.1920s
International imagery branded Miami Beach as an ideal resort city. Largely
formulated by Fisher, press propelled its subsequent development with publicity campaigns proclaiming, “Miami Beach is calling you”. Tourists and developers responded positively with
38 Ibid., 13.
39 The city’s first electric trolley system opened on December 8, 1920, also connecting Miami Beach to Miami and providing local service with 13 stops iwthin Miami Beach.
40 Lejeuene and Shulman, Preface by Diane Camber, 5.
41 At the north end of the city, Biscayne Point was created in the bay in 1925, and developer Henri Levy began dredging and filling in the south half of the former Meade Island to create Normandy Isle. In 1929, on Levy’s initiative, a third causeway crossed the bay there. Another point, Biscayne Beach, reached into the bay at Eighty-forth Street in 1947. The bay front at Forty-first Street were filled in as the Mount Sinai Medical Center grew, and Julia Tuttle Causeway, the city’s fourth, was built in 1959; Klepser, 24.
an unprecedented boom in land sales, construction, and tourism. The newly invented landscape of tropical plantings and dredged islands became a stage setting for the imposition of Mediterranean inspired resorts and residences.42