Surfside 6: TV show, houseboat, an inventor and a Fort Lauderdale link

Surfside 6 at Dania Beach
State Archives of Florida

 

 

By Jane Feehan

The 1960 TV show Surfside 6 started off with a bang. It seemed like a solid concept: three private eyes, two female characters and a glamorous setting aboard a houseboat in Miami Beach. It was docked at Indian Creek across from the high-profile and beautiful Fontainebleau Hotel.

In the hour-long weekly series, the trio used a plane and a jet-powered boat in their escapades. Detectives were played by Troy Donohue, a feature film heart throb at the time (Sandy Winfield II), Lee Patterson (Dave Thome) and Van Williams (Ken Madison). The cast also included Diane McBain (Daphne Dutton) and Margarita Sierra (Cha Cha O’Brien) as their crime-solving sidekicks.

Despite the glamour and prior assessment as an overnight success, the Warner Brothers production, sponsored by General Motors, ended April 1962. Critics cited poor writing among the reasons the showed bombed. The show, however, did spawn another success story, that of the builder of the Surfside 6 houseboat.

That story, the tale of Larry Vita—is far more interesting than the TV show. Vita was a Long Island builder who decided to take a vacation aboard the $80,000 houseboat he built in the late 1950s. Powered by three Mercedes engines, the houseboat he named Driftwood carried Vita down the Intracoastal to the dock across from the Fontainebleau late in 1959 or early in 1960. 

The 60 x 28 ft. boat was eye catching. It was also comfortable. It sported a 1,000-sq-ft sundeck, held three bedrooms, two baths, a full kitchen, rugs and a special sewage disposal. It also featured air-conditioning, heating, a brick fireplace, rotating TV antenna, telephone, and hi-fi throughout each room.  

Warner Brothers exec William T. Orr, vacationing at the hotel, spotted Vita’s impressive boat and asked about using it for the new show. A deal was made and a replica was constructed for in-studio shots. The show aired in October 1960.

Viewer queries about the houseboat were hard to ignore. Vita, 42, decided there could be a market for houseboats. He was right.

He partnered with Fort Lauderdale resident Ralph Weidler, 49 (Levittown, Long Island builder), to launch Surfside 6 Floating Homes, Inc. with $500,000. They built a factory at 2000 SW 20^th Street in Fort Lauderdale. Weeks after the show aired, they had 30 orders. 

Advertisements enticed customers with a “new way of life” on a floating home that came with or without an engine, low-maintenance fiberglass hulls, and complete furnishings. Most were not sold with engines because a tugboat could haul one “for about $10 an hour” to the many dock sites available. 

Financing was offered by Broward National Bank with 25 percent down and payments over five years. Houseboats sold from $9,500 up to $50k plus. Surfside 6 Floating Homes, Inc. was the biggest, most famous houseboat company in the world, Vita claimed. Boxing champ Floyd Patterson bought one.

The TV show Surfside 6 ended but Floating Homes, Inc. had a much longer life. The company sold 400-500 for the next few years in the U.S. and the Caribbean. The original Surfside 6 remained at the Miami Beach location and Vita continued to live on his famous floating home. It appeared in the movie Goldfinger before Hurricane Cleo paid it a visit in 1964, causing extensive damage.   

The damaged Surfside 6 was hauled to Marina Bay in southwest Fort Lauderdale. It was bought and sold several times, serving as a restaurant in Dania Beach and perhaps, for a time, in Key West. In 1997, Vita said he thought it was in Jacksonville, FL; he had lost track decades ago.

The Larry Vita story continued after he left Floating Homes, Inc. in 1973 when concerns about waterway environment, obstruction of views and lack of dockage space affected sales.

Vita had other plans. He built 20 floating stations for the U.S. Coast Guard and 200 floating rooms for Marina Bay Resort. He was the first to use shipping containers for jail construction (about 1989).  

Vita also provided contract construction for the U.S government in Kuwait and other geo-political hot zones in the early 90s. It was this that reportedly negatively affected his finances and may have ended his run. 

In 2004 he was 88, living alone with his dog on the New River in a boat. He was still at it, thinking about ways to innovate. Vita was prescient. He submitted a design for an energy-producing wind turbine to Florida Power and Light in the '90s or early 2000s. Amazing. Larry Vita died in 2008, survived by two children Larry and Lorrie and other family. Quite a life.

Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

Sources: 

Miami Herald, July 3, 1960

Miami News, Aug. 10, 1960

Miami News, Sept. 11, 1960

Miami News, Oct. 27, 1960

Miami Herald, Dec. 18, 1960

Miami News, Sept. 1, 1964

Miami News, March 2, 1966

South Florida Sun-Sentinel Aug. 24, 1989

Chicago Tribune, Sept. 21, 1997

Miami Herald, Aug. 1, 2004

 

Tags: Miami Beach history, Surfside 6, Houseboats, Larry Vita, Floating Homes, Inc., 1960s TV shows, Fort Lauderdale history

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

A profitable alliance: Boxing and Frankie Carbo

By Jane Feehan

Miami Beach boxing promoter Chris Dundee denied doing business with mobster Frankie Carbo, but admitted he first met the “Czar of Boxing” in 1937 at Stillman’s gym in New York City.  There was probably more to that relationship than he let on.

Carbo, part of the New York-based Lucchese crime family, had ties with boxing managers and fighters as far back as 1936. He was always ready with the “long green,” paying the gym tabs, car notes and other expenses of fighters. He also lined the pockets of managers. They were in too deep by the time they realized favors led to obligations. 

It wasn’t easy doing business without getting involved with the mob. Carbo had the connections to make things happen. Money flowed to those who associated with the unofficial “commissioner” of boxing. Fighters and managers saw money that they may not have seen otherwise. In 1959, a New York Amsterdam News reporter suggested many boxers would have remained in obscurity had it not been for Carbo.

Fight doctor Ferdie Pacheco wrote that Chris Dundee “had to join the boxing union of Frankie Carbo.” The "membership" helped Dundee, brother of manager Angelo Dundee, to develop world champions at his 5^th Street Gym. Without happy fighters and worthy matchups there was no business.

Some in the fight world would  turn over as much as 50 percent of the take to Carbo. Boxing champ Sugar Ray Robinson resisted. Though he was considered to be in Carbo’s circle of influence, he didn’t like taking orders. Famed fighter Jake La Motta admitted Carbo ordered him in 1947 to take a dive in a bout with Billy Fox. To his many boxing credits, Muhammad Ali was the first heavyweight champion to be totally free of mob ties.

Carbo, who used the alias “Mr. Gray” in arranging fights, chose the contenders; he was probably behind what was then thought to be a mismatched bout between Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and Sonny Liston in February 1964 at the Miami Beach Auditorium. Throughout the years, however, Dundee maintained he hadn’t done business with Carbo. In 1960 he was quoted as saying boxing wasn’t “big enough any more to attract a real racketeer.” There was more money, he said, in horse racing, football and baseball.

Before that historic, if not pretty, 1964 fight, rumors flew about Chris Dundee using Carbo’s influence to obtain certain closed circuit television rights for another championship fight. But Dundee steadfastly denied connections ... and then there was the time Frankie Carbo, in the company of Chris Dundee, picked up the check of Miami News editor Howard Kleinberg and his wife at the Saxony Hotel restaurant. He asked Dundee who the friend was who waved when he attempted to pay the check. Dundee told a startled (and not entirely happy) Kleinberg it was Carbo. Wink wink.

It was reported that Carbo illegally arranged a long roster of fights at Madison Square Garden and other venues, including Miami Beach, for more than two decades. In the 1940s he kept an apartment in New York City to conduct business with boxing managers. A few years later, the FBI knew he had a place at the 2000 block of Taft Street in Hollywood, FL. Carbo was seldom there, it was reported, but it was also used for business.

More on Carbo’s pedigree: He was born in New York’s Lower East Side in 1904 as Paolo Giovanni Carbo. By age 11, he was declared a juvenile delinquent. He went on to run a Bronx taxicab protection racket in the 1920s and was arrested and convicted in 1928 for murdering a driver who would not pay up. Carbo served 20 months in prison for a reduced charge of manslaughter. The conviction precluded his obtaining a license for boxing operations. An associate of mobsters Owney Madden and the “Lord High Executioner” Albert Anastasia, Carbo was suspected of being a trigger man for Murder, Inc., with possible involvement in several mob hits including that of Bugsy Siegel (yet unsolved) in 1947 . He was also thought active in bootlegging and bookmaking during his career.

In 1958, Carbo was indicted along with Frank “Blinky” Palermo with seven counts of undercover management and two counts of unlicensed matchmaking in fights. Charges included conspiring with Herman (Hymie the Mink) Waller, New York furrier and fight manager, to commit a crime of undercover management of boxer Don Jordan. While awaiting trial on Rikers Island in New York, he was brought before the Kefauver Committee in Washington, D.C. investigating organized crime. Carbo responded to each of the 25 questions he was asked by invoking the Fifth Amendment giving up no information.

The Czar of Boxing was convicted in July of 1961 with Attorney General Robert Kennedy as U.S. prosecutor and was sentenced to 25 years at McNeil Island Penitentiary in the state of Washington. Like many mobsters during jail time, he remained a powerful influence in his criminal domain. Kennedy long suspected him of continued involvement in the fight world and particularly with Sonny Liston. Carbo was released for health reasons 12 years into his sentence. He died in 1976, aged 72 at a Miami Beach hospital.

Dundee probably didn’t need Carbo’s help during the ensuing Muhammad Ali years, but he maintained  that the czar was a gentleman, if not a friend. The Dundees are gone now and so too the electrifying days of heavyweight stars, matchups at the Miami Beach Auditorium and the roof raisers at the Garden. And mob influence?   Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

For more on the 5th Street Gym, see the labels for boxing or use search box.

Sources:

Pacheco, Ferdie. Tales from the 5^th Street Gym. University Press (2010).

Raab, Selwyn. Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires. Thomas Dunne Books (2006).

Chicago Daily Defender, Jul. 24, 1958

New York Amsterdam News, Jul. 25, 1958

Chicago Daily Defender, Nov. 2, 1959

New York Amsterdam News, Nov. 7, 1959

Chicago Daily Defender Mar. 21, 1962

Miami News, Nov. 29, 1954

New York Times, Nov. 11, 1976

Tags: Boxing history, Chris Dundee, Mob history, Miami Beach history

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.

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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

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