Art Deco Tips & Guide

By Alfred Tanya


Miami Beach is considerably additional than a tropical paradise as well as a preferred tourist destination, it can be wealthy with history, culture, and several of the most amazing and special architecture in the world.

Art Deco may be the most prevalent and recognizable style of architecture in Miami Beach. Art Deco is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris inside the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the Globe War II era.

The Miami Beach Art Deco District contains the largest concentration of Deco resort architecture in the world, with some thirty blocks of vibrantly colored hotels and apartment houses dating from the 1920s to the 1940s. These buildings represent an era when Miami was heavily promoted and created as a "tropical playground."

Art Deco is considered 1 of the first twentieth century architectural styles in America to break with traditional revival forms to embrace influences from many distinct styles which includes Neoclassical, Constructivism, Cubism, Modernism and Futurism. Constructing forms inside the style were usually angular and clean, with stepped back facades, symmetrical or asymmetrical massing and strong vertical accenting. The preferred decorative language included geometric patterns, abstracted natural forms, contemporary industrial symbols and ancient cultural motifs employing Mayan, Egyptian and Indigenous American themes.

In Ocean Beach (now referred to as South Beach) architects employed a one of a kind form of nearby imagery to create what we now call "Tropical Deco". The style employed nautical themes too as tropical floral and fauna motifs. Ocean liners, palm trees, and flamingos graced the exteriors and interiors of the new neighborhood architecture. The favored materials for executing this distinctive "art" decor included bas-relief stucco, keystone, etched glass, a variety of metals, cast concrete, patterned terrazzo, and others.

Considerably of the Art Deco designs may be attributed to architect Morris Lapidus. His first huge commission was the Miami Beach Sans Souci Hotel, followed closely by the Nautilus, the Di Lido, the Biltmore Terrace, and also the Algiers, all along Collins Avenue, and amounting to the single-handed redesign of an entire district. The hotels had been an immediate popular achievement. Then in 1952 he landed the job of the largest luxury hotel in Miami Beach, the Fontainebleau Hotel, 1 of by far the most historically and architecturally significant hotels on Miami Beach and believed to be one of the most important creating of Lapidus's career.

Just before the Fontainebleau's 27 colors of paint had dried, Lapidus had his second huge commission, the Eden Rock, a luxury hotel to be situated appropriate next door. About 1960, Lapidus was commissioned to redesign Lincoln Road. Lapidus's style for Lincoln Road, total with gardens, fountains, shelters and an amphitheater, reflected the Miami Contemporary Architecture, or "MiMo", style that Lapidus pioneered within the 1950s. The Road was closed to traffic and became 1 of the nation's very first pedestrian malls.

Art Deco continues to be a well-known style amongst buyers coming to the South Beach market. I have sold much more art deco properties than I can count and I take pleasure in discovering the distinctive attributes to each and every Art Deco property...no two getting exactly the same. I recently closed a sale at Harriet Court on 1508 Pennsylvania Avenue for $385,000. Harriet Court, like a lot of

Art Deco properties, has been absolutely renovated and elegantly blends the past with the present, encompassing all of today's modern style attributes and amenities.




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