South Beach

South Beach, with its sexy, high-octane mix of leggy models, hot sun and neon lights, has seen its fortunes surge and recede over the years. While many of the notable Art Deco buildings that give the area its charm were constructed in the 1930s, the beach had a second heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, […]

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Lincoln Road

Lincoln Road, stretching from Collins Avenue to Bay Road, was paved during the 1920s and within a decade the shopping district became known as the Fifth Avenue of the South.During its heyday, such exclusive stores as Saks Fifth Avenue, Bonwit Teller, the Cadillac Salon and Elizabeth Arden all prospered on Lincoln Road between Washington Avenue […]

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Miami Beach Convention Center

Built in 1957 to draw more business to Miami Beach, the convention center has served as the backdrop for some major moments in South Florida history, from  political conventions and Miss Universe beauty pageants to a Billy Graham religious crusade and the 1964 fight between Cassius Clay (before he became Muhammad Ali) and Sonny Liston […]

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Bicentennial Park

Located south of the MacArthur Causeway between Biscayne Boulevard and Biscayne Bay, the 35-acre facility was scheduled to open in 1976, but it missed our nation’s birthday party. With only a third of the $4.2-million project completed, the landscape contractor disappeared, work stopped, and the opening slipped to the spring of 1977. Renowned landscape architect […]

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Beauty Pageants

In 1960 Harold Glasser brought the Miss USA pageant to Miami Beach from Long Beach, Calif., where it was born. Miss Universe, a spin-off of the original pageant, came along. In 1971 the Miss USA and Miss Universe shows left Miami Beach after 11 straight years. While pageants have come and gone since then, for […]

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

In Miami, where Martin Luther King Jr. preached and organized during the 1960s, residents remember his legacy every year on the third Monday in January with memorial services and celebrations of his life. Parks, streets and schools are named for the activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his work combating racial […]

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Greynolds Park

Greynolds Park was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), officially opening on March 29, 1936. Under the direction of landscape architect, William Lyman Phillip, the task force – a group of World War I veterans and unemployed teens – transformed an ugly landscape pockmarked with rock pits and refuse into an attractive public park. They built […]

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Winston Churchill visits Miami

After Winston Churchill led a battle-scarred Great Britain through the ravages of World War II, he sought sun and tranquility — and found them in Miami. On doctor’s orders to escape England’s winter, he vacationed here on New Year’s Day 1946, about eight months after the war in Europe ended. While here, he painted scenes […]

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Christmas in Miami

Christmas lights and tinsel look better sparkling in the sub-tropical sunlight. Through the years, Miami has celebrated the holiday season with reindeer on snowless rooftops, lights twined around palm trees and sleds parked firmly on green grass. The city’s downtown was traditionally decorated as a shirt-sleeve version of a winter wonderland and the competition for […]

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