Opening in 1936, with a building designed by Miami architect, August Geiger, Coral Way Elementary was the first bilingual school in the country. Responding to the first influx of refugees following Fidel Castro’s 1959 rise to power in Cuba, school officials in the early 1960s began planning entirely bilingual schools. With funding from the Ford […]
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Built from 1926 to 1928, the 28-story pinnacled courthouse is 360 feet high, once ranking as the tallest building in the South. Its Flagler Street site made it Miami’s most imposing public edifice and a crossroads where the breezy, open lobby was Dade’s legal centerpoint. The steel-frame structure was actually built right over the first […]
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Key Biscayne, once home to tree snails, Tequesta Indians, pirates, seafarers and coconut plantations, has come a long way in a short time since a causeway linked island to mainland on Nov. 9, 1947. Some of the first settlers on the island started arriving in 1842 and began clearing the land and building wooden homes. […]
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Founded in 1932, Miami Shores has approximately 11,000 residents and 3,000 homes, many of which are historic. Its story began in the years after the devastation of the Civil War. In the postwar era, William Gleason served as Florida’s lieutenant governor, and in the early 1870s, he settled in the area that would become Miami […]
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Long before the days of giant suburban malls, smack in the middle of downtown Miami, there was Burdines. The roots of the grand department store are modest. The first store opened by William Burdine, a retired Confederate army officer,and his partner, Henry Payne, was a dry goods store in Bartow, Fla. By 1912, Burdines moved […]
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The Palm Island Club opened in 1922 at 159 Fountain Street on Palm Island in Miami Beach. Prohibition? Not here. Booze flowed. But 159 Fountain Street’s most famous identity came in 1939 when New York producer Lou Walters (father of Barbara Walters) reopened the venue as The Latin Quarter. A ritzy nightclub, the venue drew […]
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Seminole and Calusa Indians were the first occupants of Key West. Sixteenth-century Spanish settlers found the beaches littered with the detritus of Indian battles and thus named the place Cayo Hueso (Island of Bones). In the 1830s, Key West was the wealthiest city per capita in the country. First, islanders made money by salvaging cargoes […]
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The saga of Veteran’s Village began in February 1946 when a Miami American Legion Post tried to address the housing shortage for military families by re-opening World War II buildings on Miami Army air field, today Miami International Airport. For $20 a month, families got wooden huts, 16 feet by 16 feet, with no running […]
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Parrot Jungle, symbol of all that was exotic and tropical in Miami, opened in 1936 in what is now Pinecrest. Austrian-born Franz Scherr rented 20 acres of cypress and oak hammock and opened the tourist attraction, charging 25 cents admission to see the brightly colored birds and eventually the lush gardens. Generations of children grew […]
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In the early 1950’s the seaplane base for Pan American World Airways at the south end of 27th Avenue became the Dinner Key Auditorium. The exhibition hall and auditorium is best known for the infamous 1969 concert where rocker Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, was arrested on charges he exposed himself onstage.
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