Americana Hotel Bal Harbour promises tropical fun on Miami Beach 1950s

Americana Hotel and pool circa 1956,
Florida State Archives

 By Jane Feehan

Laurence and Bob Tisch, operators of hotels in Atlantic City and in New York announced construction of their new Bal Harbour hotel, the Americana, in 1955. Property included 600 feet of ocean front and 10 acres of “playground” for the entire project. Designer Morris Lapidus was tapped as architect.

The Americana, once queen of Bal Harbour hotels, operated at 9701 Collins Avenue. It was the third major hotel designed by Morris Lapidus (1902-2001). He had worked on the San Souci Hotel on the beach in 1949, but only to complete work already begun by another architect. The first and second achievements of his architectural trifecta were the Fontainebleau at 4441 Collins, opened in 1954, and the Eden Roc next door at 4525 Collins in 1955. The Americana, as well as the other two hotels, received praise, criticism and plenty of publicity.

The Americana design represented a departure from the European-influenced style of the previous two hotels. The Bal Harbour resort featured mostly South American elements, a “modern tropical,” idea said  Laurence Tisch. Taylor Construction began work on the Americana in September 1955.

To accent his design concept, Lapidus included tiles imported from Mexico, Panama, Japan, and Italy. He was criticized by other architects for use of less luxurious—“cheap”— materials for guest rooms. Some complained about hearing noise such as ringing phones from adjacent rooms. Lapidus claimed guests came to Miami hotels for fun rather than privacy. The Tisch brothers defended their architect. 

The $17 million Americana Hotel, with 850 employees, 475 rooms, the 500-seat Carnival Supper club and Bal Masque Room night club opened for guests in November 1956. Rooms, which sold for $35-$75 (expensive at that time) featured black-white and color television sets as well as closed circuit TV.

Bal Masque entrance 1957 
Florida State Archives

Television and radio broadcasting company NBC arrived for its 30th anniversary bash in December that year with a lineup of shows normally aired from New York studios: The Today Show with host Dave Garroway, the Perry Como Show and the Steve Allen Show with Allen's wife Jayne Meadows. Newspapers reported entertainer Abbe Lane and husband Xavier Cugat performed at the Bal Masque Room for the NBC party.

No doubt the NBC bash raised the profile of the new Americana. The hotel sailed smoothly through the years with different owners, including the Sheraton, which was the last owner to take the helm. The hotel was demolished in 2007 to make way for the St. Regis condo hotel where a recent listing for a two-bedroom condo advertised a price of nearly $4 million.

Hotel lobby greenhouse,
circa 1956
Florida State Archives

More on Morris Lapidus

Born in Russia, Lapidus studied drama at New York University. His specialty was scene design. He also attended Columbia University where he studied general architecture. Lapidus settled on retail design before working in Miami, where his career soared. He designed Lincoln Road Mall as well. 

Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Recommendation
For an excellent compilation of the history of Miami Beach hotels and a useful chronology, see Woggles and Cheese Holes by Howard Kleinberg, published in 2005 by The Greater Miami & The Beaches Hotel Association, Miami Beach, FL 33139.

Other sources:

The Miami News, July 17, 1955

The Miami Herald, Aug. 28, 1955

The Miami News, July 1, 1956

The Miami Herald, Nov. 11, 1956

The Miami News, Nov. 25, 1956

The Miami News, Nov. 24, 1956

The Miami Herald, Nov. 30, 1956

The Miami News, Dec. 14, 1956

The Miami Herald, Dec. 16, 1956

Tags: Americana Hotel, Sheraton Bal Harbour, Miami Beach hotels, Miami Beach in the 1950s, Morris Lapidus, Bal Harbour, Bal Harbor hotels

Barons of early Miami Beach: oil, tires, baked beans and beachside manses (or before the Fontainebleau Hotel)

 

Snowden Place 1923
Florida State Archives/
Florida Memory - Hoit

By Jane Feehan

It’s hard to imagine Miami Beach in the days before it was established as a town in 1915. Yet the mangrove-dense barrier island east of the city of Miami was beginning to capture the attention of those with big imaginations and plenty of money.

One of the island’s pioneers, James H. Snowden, understood beach-side opportunities. Perhaps his associate, the better-known beach developer Carl Fisher, influenced him. Or maybe not. Snowden, born in Oil City, Pennsylvania was a sharp businessman. He made his fortune in the oil industry in Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana. His obituary claimed he had been a Standard Oil executive.

The Collins Bridge* (now the Venetian Causeway) connected the mainland to the barrier island in 1913. It spurred  development. Snowden began clearing property about a mile and a half north of the wooden span for his new winter home, Snowden Place, in 1916.  

Snowden Place circa 1920
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Snowden Place sat between Indian Creek and the ocean. It was known as one of the “handsomest” houses in early Miami Beach. Snowden spent about $250,000 to landscape and build his palatial home with its 1,400 feet of oceanfront. His staff moved “carloads” of palm trees from parts of the property to replant along a quarter-mile drive to the residence. 

Palm trees were planted in an intermittent arrangement with “extra-large” 10-foot high oleander plants. It was, no doubt, an impressive sight to his neighbors, which included R.P. Van Camp of pork and beans fame and fortune. He built a house on the smaller property adjacent to Snowden Place with a 700-foot span of oceanfront (near today’s 41^st Street).  

Though Snowden was a Miami Beach resident and a registered voter there, he spent months away from Florida.  He rented the mansion during winter months to auto tire millionaire and Akron, Ohio resident, Harry S. Firestone several times. One news account reported Firestone and wife, with a retinue of 80 staff (many housed elsewhere) and as many as 10 children spent the winters of 1921 and 1923 at the estate. The tire magnate usually brought a fleet of cars but rented a boat for cruising and fishing. At Firestone’s invitation, his long-time friend and one-time president, Warren G. Harding, also spent time at the estate before his death in 1923.

Firestone Estate circa 1920
Florida State Archives/
Florida Memory/Romer

In 1923, Firestone bought Snowden Place for a reported $250,000–the same for what the estate was built—if the reporting is accurate. Many today refer to the transactional history of that part of Miami Beach as pertaining to the Firestone Estate not Snowden Place. Snowden died in 1930 in New York at age 57. By that time, he had divested most of his holdings in Miami Beach. Firestone died in 1938.

Firestone heirs, who had re-zoned what remained of the property for commercial use, sold the estate to Ben Novak, operator of the Sans Souci Hotel, in 1952 for $2.3 million. Novak then built the world-famous Fontainebleau Hotel (designed by Morris Lapidus) on the site.

Fontainebleau Hotel under
construction 1954 
Florida State Archives/
Florida Memory

And it so it went – from mangrove to a sophisticated world-class urban setting of shoulder-to-shoulder hotels.

 

 Copyright © 2022. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

* For more on Collins use search box.

 

Sources:

Miami News, June 14, 1916

Miami News, Feb. 13, 1919

Miami News, Dec. 15, 1922

Miami News, Aug. 3, 1923

Miami Herald, Oct. 26, 1930

Miami News, July 21, 1952

Tags: Miami Beach in the 1900s, Miami Beach in the 1920s, Miami Beach in the 1950s, Firestone Estate, Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami Beach history, history of Miami Beach

Miami Beach hotel wars: Fontainebleau, Eden Roc and the spite wall

Fontainebleau 1956
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

By Jane Feehan

The Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach is easily spotted with its iconic signage. It seems to  beckon visitors along the 4000 block of Collins Avenue to appreciate its glamour before considering the Fontainebleau, the area’s flagship hotel next door. Competition between the two is tightly woven into Miami Beach history, and their ups and downs reflect economic recessions and recoveries of years past.

Partners Ben Novack and Harry Mufson built the Sans Souci Hotel in 1949 on Miami Beach with architect Morris Lapidus completing its design. They then collaborated on the Fontainebleau Hotel, constructed on beach front property once owned by the Firestone family.  The partners commissioned Lapidus to design the building and opened the Fontainebleau hotel in 1954 to great fanfare. The hotel was spectacular, drawing national attention and some scorn.

Shortly after, Mufson bought property just north of the Fontainebleau from the Warner estate, which belonged to one of Hollywood's Warner Brothers. He wanted to build his own hotel, the Eden Roc. Novack was not pleased, ending his partnership with Mufson.

Mufson, founder of the Jefferson department store chain, again engaged Lapidus to work his design magic. For ideas, the architect traveled to the elegant Eden Roc in France, a known Kennedy family vacation destination. He returned with Italian Renaissance objets d’ art and blended them with elements of his unique style.

The glamorous $13 million Eden Roc opened its doors in 1956, attracting Hollywood movie stars, including Elizabeth Taylor. Among its regular winter visitors was a young Steve Wynn, future Las Vegas impresario, and his parents. (Wynn today says Mufson is one of his all-time heroes.)

Closely watching his competition next door, Ben Novack decided to take revenge. In 1961 he built a 14-story tower with more than 350 rooms on the north side of the hotel. All rooms faced south; there were no windows on the north side and the wall remained unpainted in stark view of Eden Roc guests. Not only was it an eyesore, Novack’s “spite wall” blocked the afternoon sun from the Eden Roc’s pool deck.  Mufson obtained permits to extend the deck away from the building toward the beach to claim its share of the sun.

Mufson sold the Eden Roc in 1965. The hotel operated through a severe recession during the 1970s under several owners, as did the Fontainebleau, and shut down for about a year in 1975-76. Bob Guccione and his Penthouse Corporation placed a bid on the Eden Roc in 1978 hoping to convert it into a casino but a gambling referendum failed so he withdrew the offer.

The hotel was sold in bankruptcy proceedings for $4.6 million in 1980.  A month later the new owners sold it to Saudi Sheik Wadji Tahlawi for $12.5 million. In 1981, Stephen Muss then Fontainebleau owner (he bought it for $28 million in December, 1977 and later chose Hilton to run it), hoped to acquire the Eden Roc to make it an unattached annex of his  property. The deal fell through.

In 2008, Eden Roc owners constructed the 21-story Ocean Tower, finally defeating Novack’s wall of spite. Today, with 631 rooms, the Eden Roc is owned by Key International, a real estate development and investment company -- and both hotels again claim their place among Miami Beach’s best. 

Sources:

Miami News, Jul. 8, 1981

Eden Roc www.edenrocmiami.com/

Bramson, Seth. Miami Beach. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing (2005)

South Beach Magazine, Jan. 9, 2008

Tags:  Eden Roc Hotel history, Fontainebleau  Hotel history, Miami Beach history, Miami hotel history Ben Novack, Harry Mufson, Morris Lapidus, Miami  Beach during the 1950s, film industry researcher, architects

Lincoln Road Mall - where time caught up with architect Morris Lapidus

Original Lapidus geometric feature as seen today

By Jane Feehan

During the 1920s, early Miami Beach developer—and promoter—Carl Fisher (1874-1939) envisioned east-west thoroughfare Lincoln Road as a shopping area to rival New York City’s Fifth Avenue. Only a few decades later, Lincoln Road had devolved into an area overrun by automobile traffic and dimmed by urban blight.

Seeds of another idea, a pedestrian mall, first surfaced in the mid-1940s. By the 1950s, controversial Miami architect Morris Lapidus (1902-2001) and firm Harle and Liebman were commissioned to design a pedestrian mall to replace the ageing Lincoln Road shopping area. “I designed Lincoln Road Mall for people, a car never bought anything,” said Lapidus, also the architect for the Ponce de Leon Shopping Center in St. Augustine, FL.

Original Lapidus design 

The proposed $600,000, mile-long mall featured fountains, shaded walkways, lush landscaping, piped-in music and electric trams. The city and merchants approved the design, but funding would come from mall merchants. Stakeholders went to the polls Nov. 3, 1959 to vote in a special bond election. Merchants would repay a $600,000 bond or face a lien on their business. A few objected to the new plans citing limited accessibility with a ban on autos but there wasn’t much of a dramatic showdown on election day. Unofficial vote tallies the next morning revealed the proposal’s popularity: 2,993 for; 899 against.

In anticipation of increased business, merchants such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Andrew Geller Shoe Salon began extensive improvements, renovating interior and exterior displays and signage; prospects for the new mall also prompted lease extensions and attracted new merchants.

An official groundbreaking event for Lincoln Road Mall was held August 1, 1960. On hand for festivities was elephant Rosie, Jr., who stood patiently by with a shovel in her mouth. (The first Rosie was the elephant used by Carl Fisher to help clear Miami Beach mangroves and appeared at several Fisher hotel openings.)  Among others at the festivities were Pat Fisher, Miss Lincoln Road Mall, Mona Fillmore, Miss Lincoln Road Mall Hospitality, and Marcie Lieberman, vice mayor of Miami Beach. Work on the project,however, began July 11, 1960. The city of Miami Beach provided most of the construction; the arrangement eliminated the need for a general contractor.

Lincoln Road before and after
Florida State Archives

Lincoln Road Mall opened a few months later, Nov. 28, 1960, with adjacent parking for 3,500 cars. Visitors described it as “glamorous and beautiful.” Others touted it as one of the most picturesque streets in the world. Interestingly, the new shopping area was not the first pedestrian mall in America. That honor went to one in Kalamazoo, MI and was followed by one in Toledo, OH. Both sites were unsuccessful—and temporary.

Like several areas of Miami Beach, the Lincoln Road Mall went through years of decline after the 1960s. In 1997, a $16-million restoration project brought it back to life. Landscape architect Martha Schwartz helped revive the landmark with replanting of sabal palms and other flora. In 2010 one block was added to the original eight-block thoroughfare by designer Raymond Jungles.

A resurgence of South Beach has also affected the popularity of Lincoln Road Mall—as has environmental interest in pedestrian-friendly shopping areas and central business districts. Today, the mall, extending from the west side of Washington Avenue to the east side of Alton Road, is home to a long list of stores, restaurants and other businesses (see www.lincolnroadmall.info for a directory). 

Time has finally caught up with Lincoln Road Mall and its forward-thinking architect, Morris Lapidus.

Sources:

Miami News, June 6, 1959

Miami News, Sept. 16, 1959

Miami News, Nov. 1, 1959

Miami News, Nov. 2, 1959

Miami News, Nov. 4, 1959

Miami News, June 19, 1960

Miami News, July 25, 1960

Miami News, Aug. 1, 1960

Miami News, Nov. 27, 1960

Miami News, Nov. 28, 1960

Miami News, Nov. 29, 1960

Miami News, Dec. 24, 1961

Sun-Sentinel, April 18, 1999

www.lincolnroad.org

The Cultural Landscape Foundation at: https://tclf.org

https://lincolnroadmall.com/on-the-go-3-popular-ways-to-get-around-in-south-beach

Tags: Miami Beach History, Morris Lapidus, tourist attractions in Miami Beach, South Beach, Mi Mo architecture, Miami Beach in the 1950s, Miami Beach in the 1960s, Miami Beach in the 1990s, Carl Fisher, Miami Beach tourism, Jane Feehan

When exotic dancers reigned in Miami Beach

A blonde Zorita the Snake Dancer at the
Peppermint Lounge c. 1961
Photo & information about it courtesy of Dick Cami

By Jane Feehan

Where tourists flocked, entertainers soon followed. That’s how it was in Miami Beach after World War II. During the 1950s the beach side city became America’s glitzy vacation land—and the place to be for the big names of  radio, the silver screen, television, theater and music: Garry More, Jerry Lewis, Jimmy Durante, Tony Martin, Dick Shawn, Bobby Van, Morey Amsterdam, Duke Ellington, Debbie Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, Arthur Godfrey, Frank Sinatra.

Among the parade of entertainers were the burlesque queens of the day who included Miami Beach in their tours throughout the country. Blaze Starr, Lili St. Cyr, Evelyn West (with her “treasure chest”), and Tempest Storm joined a list of scantily clad performers who headlined the beach adults-only night clubs. These exotic dancers studied their craft; it was a time when taking off one’s clothes was considered an art.  

Two big-name strippers of the day eventually claimed the Miami area as home: Dorian Dennis, and Zorita the Snake Dancer. Their paths were to cross late in their careers.

Dorian Dennis (known by her family as Rene), was born in Brooklyn to parents who were pharmacists. Dorian set out to follow a similar vocational path; she earned a bachelor’s of science degree in chemistry in a pre-med program at New York University. She wanted to become a doctor but finances forced her into other work. Her first job after college was at the US Army’s Fort Monmouth where she analyzed wire. It didn’t pay much.

Impressed by her beauty, a former show girl suggested she get work in the more lucrative entertainment field. It proved to be good advice. Dorian worked a brief stint as a hat check girl at the Latin Quarter in New York and then at Toots Shor’s. She landed a job as a show girl at Havana Madrid. An agent spotted her and told her if she could learn to walk (she claimed she once walked like an elephant) she could follow in the steps of famed stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee. She learned how to walk, dance—and disrobe.

At first Dorian Dennis played rough, noisy clubs, but her career was launched. Soon she was making $1,200 a week (five times as much as a chemist) in shows around the country. She ranked in the top 15 exotic dancers in the nation. Her looks and 40-inch bust earned her regular work in Las Vegas where some joked that she was so well-stacked that card players wouldn’t trust her with a deck.

Dennis became a top draw at Miami Beach revues where she frequently appeared at Place Pigalle, Gaiety Club, Club 23, Copa City Lounge (while Duke Ellington played in the main room), and others. She moved to Miami in 1959 after a union dispute in New York. The move probably changed her plans to learn drama for her theater and movie aspirations.

Zorita knew early in life what she wanted to be.  Born Kathryn Boyd in 1915, she performed her first strip show in Pittsburgh in 1937. She soon included two snakes in her performances. The enterprising 20-year-old, who was occasionally arrested for indecency, took her show to Toledo and Tampa (and probably other cities) before she first visited Miami in 1939.

Zorita was no stranger to publicity. In 1939, she stopped Miami traffic at Flagler Street downtown when she took her Chinese bull snake on a stroll with a leash. More than 1,000 spectators gathered, including the press. The police took both stripper and snake into custody. They charged Zorita with disorderly conduct.

More than a decade later, the snake dancer was regularly performing in Miami at several spots, including the 5 O’clock Club. By the 1960s, she was living permanently in North Bay Village, not far from Miami Beach. The exotic dancer, grabbing an occasional headline in local entertainment news, retired from performing to open her own place, Zorita’s Show Bar on Collins Avenue.

An aging and single Dorian Dennis took a job at Zorita’s in the 1960s. Her last performance was in 1969. In 1970, in her early 40s, Dennis died of cancer at Fort Lauderale’s Broward General Hospital. At the time, she was living on North 13^th Street in Hollywood.

What happened to some of  the other dancers?

• Ever the entrepreneur, Zorita decided to sell pornographic bed sheets in 1975.  She reportedly died in Florida in 2001.
• Lili St. Cyr (Willis Marie Van Schaack) died in 1999 at 80 in Los Angeles.
• Blaze Starr, born in 1932 (Fannie Belle Fleming), was once the controversial lover of Louisiana Gov. Earl Long.  Starr died June, 2015 in West Virginia. Her final years were spent as a gemologist in Maryland.
• Tempest Storm (Annie Blanch Banks), born in 1928 retired at 67. She performed in Miami at a place on Biscayne Boulevard as late as the 1970s. In 2006, she appeared at the Miss Exotic World Pageant. Tempest Storm lived in Las Vegas until her death April, 2021. I had the pleasure of sitting next to her and her former husband, Herb Jeffries, in 1972 at a banquet in San Francisco.

Eleven exotic dancers, including most of those mentioned here, performed in director Irving Klaw’s 1956 documentary Buxom Beautease.  Perhaps he knew the curtain would soon close on the burlesque queen era, an era tightly woven into the history of Miami Beach. 

Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

 --------

Sources:

Pittsburgh Press, Apr. 4, 1937

Miami News, Feb. 22, 1939

Times Daily, Nov. 16, 1958

Miami News, Dec. 8, 1959

Miami News, Dec. 21, 1959

Miami News, Apr 23, 1960

Miami News, July 24, 1964

Miami News, Dec. 8, 1970

Miami News, Sept. 4, 1975

Tags: Miami Beach strippers, Miami Beach entertainers, Dorian Dennis, Zorita the Snake Dancer, film researcher, burlesque in Miami Beach, Miami Beach history

Miami Beach sweeps TV land in 1955 with "Today," "Tonight" and ...

Eden Roc today; Fontainebleau adjacent (south)

By Jane Feehan

Tourism was already a growth industry in Miami Beach before World War II. It continued to expand when some of the first post-war hotels constructed in the United States went up in Miami Beach. Building accelerated throughout the 1950s, making the beach side city the most glamorous vacation destination in the nation; it also became a favorite spot for Europe’s elite. The Fontainebleau, Bal Harbour, and Ankara hotels opened in 1954. Tourists flocked to the Eden Roc, Bal Moral and Lucerne when they were completed in 1955.

Hank Meyer, public relations director for the city during the 1950s, hoped to establish Miami Beach as the winter entertainment capitol of the U.S. His dream was well on its way to fruition when he announced 30 hours of broadcast network programs were to air from beach hotels to living rooms across the country. The week of Jan. 9, 1955 was to be the busiest television week in Florida history. 

Dave Garroway of Today and Steve Allen of Tonight (both shows produced by Mort Werner) plus 62 NBC staffers made the Sea Isle Hotel (opened in 1940) home for one week while they televised from its pool, cabana area, and beach. Steve Allen used some of the local night spots as background. The Colgate Comedy Hour, also an NBC property, beamed from the spectacular Fontainebleau; the network's Friday night boxing show took over the Miami Beach Auditorium. ABC also used the Fontainebleau for a program featuring Walter Winchell.

Arthur Godfrey (b. 1903 - d. 1980) paved the way for television aired from Miami Beach in the early 1950s when some of his winter shows were produced there.  In 1954, he and two others purchased the Kenilworth Hotel, the site for many of his winter programs. The Jackie Gleason Show, which ran from 1966 to 1970 from the Miami Beach Auditorium (later renamed the Jackie Gleason Theater), marked the end of the big-show television era of Miami Beach. The era ended but not before giving millions the idea of Florida as a place to live as well as visit. Copyright © 2013 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.
_______
Sources:

Kleinberg, Howard. Woggles and Cheese Holes. Miami Beach: The Greater Miami & Beaches Hotel Association (2005).

Kleinberg, Howard. Miami Beach, a History. Miami: Centennial Press (1996).
Miami News, Jan. 9, 1955

Tags: Miami Beach history, Miami television history, Miami broadcast history, Jane Feehan historial researcher for films

Adazzle: Miami area restaurants and hotels of the 1940s, 50s and 60s

Miami Beach 1955
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory/Barron

By Jane Feehan

Newspaper ads of past decades reveal a host of restaurants and hotel dining and entertainment venues  that placed Miami and Miami Beach on the map during the 1940s, 50s and 60s.  An ordinance was in effect during the 1940s that prohibited hotel entertainment in order to pump up night club business. That changed when Sam Cohen, president of the company that owned the Sherry Frontenac Hotel (opened in 1948), booked an entertainer at its Pompadour Room. Cohen was fined $100 but the law was changed in 1950. Hotels then became the draw for big name entertainment and many nightclubs faded away.

Here’s a list by decade of some of the most popular spots (Joe's Stone Crab spans most of Miami Beach's history, remains open):

1940s

Copa Cobanna – Dade Boulevard, Miami Beach

Latin Quarter (Lou Walters) – Palm Island

Lou Walters’ Terrace

Paddock – 7^th and Washington, Miami Beach

Beachcomber Hotel – Dade Boulevard, east of Venetian Causeway

Robin Hood Restaurant

Old Forge Patio Restaurant-Miami Beach

Hickory House - Miami Beach

Versailles – Collins and 34th, Miami Beach

Dubrow’s Lincoln Cafeteria - Miami Beach

Ciro’s – Dade Boulevard, Miami Beach

Colonial Inn – Hallandale (See more on this, search labels)

Joe’s Stone Crab - still there on South Beach

Wolfie’s (1943) – Collins and 21st Miami Beach

Embers – Miami Beach (40s. 50s, 60s)

Parham’s – 73^rd and Collins

Pickin’ Chicken – 22^nd and Co

Blackamor Room – 20^th and Collins

  

1950s

Hotel President Madison – Plantation Room

Joe’s Broadway Delicatessen – Washington Avenue, Miami Beach

Fountainebleau and Eden Roc

Seven Seas Restaurant

Wolfie’s – Lincoln Road, Miami Beach

Pumpernik’s

Chandler’s - Miami Beach

Park Avenue – Miami Beach

Rocky Graziano's

Gray’s Inn – Dade Boulevard, Miami Beach

Americana Hotel – Carioca Lounge, Gaucho Steak House, Bal Masque Room

Carillon Hotel – Café Le Can Can
Eden Roc Hotel – Harry’s American Bar, Mona Lisa Room

Fontainebleau Hotel – La Ronde Room
Raimondos
Red Coach Grill

Riccio's - mob hangout
Wolfie's at Lincoln Road

1960s

Diplomat – Tack Room

South Pacific (near Hollywood Dog Track), also there in the 60s

Cap’t Nicks – 160^th and Biscayne, Miami
Embers

Gallagher’s – 126^th and Biscayne, Miami

Kenilworth Hotel – Emerald Room, Miami Beach

Tony’s Fish Market – 79^th Street Causeway

Chinarama – 163^rd Street

Seville Hotel - Downstairs Room, 29^th and Collins
Nick & Arthur's

Luau Polynesian Restaurant – 79^th Street
Raimondo's - Miami Beach

Rascal House - 173rd Street

Roney Plaza – Café Jardin Suisse – 23^rd and Collins

Remo’s - 173^rd Street

Famous – 671 Washington Avenue

Fu Manchu – 71^st Street

Bahama Steak House – NW 36, near Jai Lai
Playboy Club - Miami (see lables for more history on this)

Mike Gordon’s Seafood – 79^th Street Causeway

Castaways Motel – Wreck Bar

Capra's - 69th Street

Franklin’s – 71^st Street

Any favs not mentioned?  Post a comment!

TAGS: Famous hotels and restaurants in Miami Beach, Miami Beach restaurants in the 1960s, Miami history, Jane Feehan