Morris Lapidus: Architect with a sense of fun ... ahead of his time?

Fontainebleau today
 Creative Commons
Wikipedia 

By Jane Feehan


Once mocked by critics, architect Morris Lapidus (1902-2001) designed 250 hotels and 1,200 other buildings throughout the world. Among his most noted buildings were the Fontainebleau Hotel (1954), Eden Roc Hotel (1955) and the Americana (1956) - all in Miami Beach.*

Lapidus was a retail architect whose first Miami Beach hotel commission was to complete the Sans Souci Hotel in 1949 (another architect began the work). He was known for his use of whiplash curved facades, bright colors, and heavy adornments. His was a blend of French provincial and Italian Renaissance styles, leading some of his peers to call his work “boarding house baroque,” even “pornography.”

When he saw the Fontainebleau, architect Frank Lloyd Wright exclaimed it looked like an “anthill.” That didn’t bother the Russian-born Lapidus who said, “I’m flattered. An anthill is one of the greatest abodes nature ever perfected.” Critics said he was pandering to the public. “My critic is the masses,” Lapidus answered. “I design for them. Let’s stop educating the human race. Let’s just make them happy.”

Miami Beach 1954 41st Sreet
Florida State Archives

And he did make the masses happy. Among its many “gaudy” features, the Fontainebleau (once called “America’s grossest national product”) was known for its staircase to nowhere. It actually led to a cloak room from which people could descend dramatically in all their jewels and other finery to an admiring audience. His Americana Hotel kept alligators in terrariums to remind tourists they were in Florida. “What I try to do is to create buildings which give people a sense of exhilaration and enjoyment,” Lapidus explained in a 1959 interview.

Architects today take a kinder view of Lapidus. Some call him the first post-modernist architect. He may have been ahead of his time, especially with pedestrian-friendly Lincoln Road Mall opened in November, 1960. Spanning several blocks, the outdoor mall was closed to traffic and accented with pools, fountains, shelters, gardens and tropical foliage.

Whatever critics think of him, Lapidus, who lived on Miami's Venetian Causeway until his death in 2001, will be remembered by his creed: “Even a doghouse or a birdhouse should have an adornment.”

*Fontainebleau Hotel - Listed year 2008 in National Register of Historic Places (as of April 2024 the hotel is owned by Fontainbleau Resorts and controlled by the Soffer family).
Open today

Sans Souci - now the RIU Florida Beach: 

Eden Roc  - now a Marriott Renaissance Hotel 

Americana imploded 2007

Sources:

Miami News, Sept. 3, 1959

Miami News, Nov. 26, 1960

New York Times, Jan. 20, 2001

LA Times, Jan. 20, 2001

Tags: Miami Beach history, Miami Beach architect, architect of Fountainebleau, architect of Eden Roc, architect of Americana, Lincoln Road architect, Miami Beach in the 1950s, Frank Lloyd Wright, Miami Beach hotels of the 1950s, film industry researcher, Morris Lapidus

Henry Flagler and Miami's Royal Palm Hotel ...1897

Salt water pool at Royal Palm
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Henry M. Flagler planned for Palm Beach to be the terminus of his Florida East Coast Railway line in 1896. The plan changed when a severe freeze hit the state dipping temperatures to fourteen degrees in Jacksonville and 30 in West Palm Beach; there was snow in Fort Meyers. He sent his front man, James Ingraham, to Miami where he met with resident and land owner of considerable holdings, Julia Tuttle. When he reported back to his boss that there was no freeze and plenty of land there, Flagler was convinced to extend his railway.

The official date given for the arrival of the train was April 15, 1896, though the city celebrates its birthday in July. As with other significant stops along the way from Jacksonville, the Miami destination was to have a grand hotel. The rail extension sparked immediate construction and spawned new business in the area.  The five-story Royal Palm Hotel opened its doors in 1897.  It brought the backward settlement its first hotel, first electricity, first pool and introduced the first golf course to Florida (for more on Florida  golf see index or search).

The Royal Palm, which took up 600 feet along the Miami River and sat atop an Indian burial ground, was the center of social life in Miami. The move to Miami marked the beginning of Flagler’s most aggressive expansion phase, which eventually included building the rail over the ocean to Key West.  Soon after building the hotel, he began steamship service to Cuba and the Bahamas from Miami and dredged a portion of Biscayne Bay for a port.

Stories abound about Flagler’s activities in Miami. He donated land to the U.S. Weather Bureau for a weather station to advertise Miami’s good weather across the nation. One lesser known, darker tale, however, concerns a smallpox outbreak among some of the hotel’s African-American employees. Flagler’s staff moved them to a secret hospital where they recovered. Afterward, the employees were spirited out of the state.

The Great Hurricane of 1926* severely damaged the Royal Palm Hotel. It reopened briefly in 1928 and but closed within months, never to open again. The hotel was razed in 1930. Bricks unearthed from the hotel site near the Dupont Building downtown (once home of the Miami Herald) were placed on sale for $100 each in 2004 with proceeds marked for archaeological research on Indian artifacts. Bricks were also placed on sale shortly after the hotel was demolished but the going price at that time was $14 for 1,000. Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

* For more on the 1926 hurricane, see index.

For more on the Miami Circle, see:
http://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2013/12/miami-in-1904-nothing-that-savored-of.html


Sources:

Bramson, Seth H. Miami, the Magic City. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2007.

Grunwald, Michael. The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise. New York: Simon & Shuster, 2006.

Miami News,  May, 14, 1971

Miami Herald, Apr. 21, 2004


Tags: Miami history. first hotel in Miami, Henry M. Flagler, first golf course in Florida, FEC Railway history, film industry researcher, historical researcher

Miami in 1904: Nothing that savored of prosperity or future greatness except ...

Miami Bayfront Park 1958 (before the find in the 2000s)
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

In June 1897, the Daily Metropolis extolled the virtues of Miami (see prior post at http://bit.ly/1bU4bUp), a tiny settlement incorporated in 1896. The five-star Royal Palm Hotel was listed as one of the town’s assets and, indeed, it was.

Seven years later the same newspaper reported that Miami and its high-profile hotel, which was known to assign an attendant to each guest, made front page news of the Daily National Hotel Reporter. Its editor (unnamed) had made an East Coast trip during the winter season of 1904 to report on its “magnificent hotels;” Henry Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel was one of them.  

The editor wrote:

 The town of Miami is a revelation. Before the advent of the East Coast Railway, eight years ago, Miami was little more than a wilderness … few inhabitants, no industries and nothing that savored of prosperity or future greatness.

Miami is today one of the prettiest towns in Florida. It has three banks, numerous fine shops, factories, two daily newspapers and a tourist hotel. That hotel, the Royal Palm … is a hotel that appeals to every one who enjoys artistic excellence, home comforts and luxurious appointments. The hotel is under the management of Henry W. Merrill, first manager of the Poinciana in Palm Beach, who was previously connected with the Ormond-on-the-Halifax.

Today the Royal Palm may be too small for the demands that are likely to be made upon it in the future. Visitors are constantly arriving from Nassau, Havana, Key West and Cedar Key and on rail from St. Augustine.

The editor also wrote that he was in Miami when the East Coast Railway [sic] ran its first freight trains on a regular schedule over 22 miles which extended “below Miami. He predicted “that within a few years the output of vegetables—particularly tomatoes— will be of such volume and quality as to astonish the world.”

The Royal Palm Hotel was severely damaged by the 1926 hurricane and was torn down in 1930. Eventually it was paved over with a parking lot near what became the Dupont Plaza Hotel in downtown Miami.

In 2003, in preparation for a $640 million hotel/condo development, a pre-project inspection  excavation gave up ceramic fragments and metal pieces that lay more than two feet beneath the earth. It was the remains of the Royal Palm Hotel (see index for Miami in the 1900s). Further digging yielded even more history: artifacts from a Tequesta settlement 10,000 years old. Development was halted and the Miami Circle, as it is known because of a circle of stones apparently left by the Indians, was declared a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009. The city established the site as Miami Circle Park, a green space, in 2011. It is part of Bayfront Park at 301 Biscayne Blvd.

Repairing seawall surrounding  the 38 ft
Miami Circle cultural landmark
Florida State Archives

Today Miami has nearly 414,000 residents and is considered a gateway to South American markets. It is also a city where slightly more than half its population was born in another country.  

Henry Flagler, as history has proved, had a knack for picking prime real estate …
Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

--------

Sources:

Daily Miami Metropolis, April 6, 1904

Sun-Sentinel, April 21, 2004
Wikipedia

Florida Memories

For more on how the Circle was saved see:

https://www.floridarambler.com/florida-bike-hike-trails/miami-circle-see-history-great-views-by-foot-or-bike/

Tags: Miami history, Henry Flagler, hotel history in Miami, Royal Palm Hotel, Miami in the early 1900s,Royal Palm, Miami Circle, Tequesta Indians