Then & Now

From the time the Tequesta Indians danced nearly naked around their ceremonial Miami Circle, to now, when hipsters dance nearly naked in the darkened halls of downtown clubs, South Florida’s history has been defined by eclectic people with a constant thirst for discovering the best that our sunny corner of the world has to offer.

Throughout that history, what was once a subtropical oasis evolved into a mélange of glam, grit and ambition worthy of the raciest novels, films and headlines.

Although a 13-year-old Spaniard named Hernando d’Escalante Fontaneda became the first non-native resident of what is now Miami when he was shipwrecked in 1545 — 62 years before Jamestown was settled — the region, as we now know it, really began to take shape in the late 1800s, when the lovely Julia Tuttle convinced tycoon Henry Flagler to extend his Florida East Coast Railroad down to Biscayne Bay. The tracks arrived in 1896, the year our Magic City was incorporated.

Some years later, Carl Fisher (of Fisher Island fame) came to town with the millions he made from selling Union Carbide (yes, the same company whose chemicals killed thousands in Bhopal, India, in 1984). John Collins (as in Collins Avenue) borrowed 50 grand from him to build the wooden Collins Bridge between Miami and the beach in 1913, which was later rebuilt and named the Venetian Causeway.

That same year, a guy named Joe Weiss moved here from New York to treat a bad case of asthma with the region’s fresh air, and opened a fish shack that eventually became Joe’s Stone Crab. It seems Weiss was on to something because, this year, Miami’s coastal breezes helped earn the city Forbes magazine’s America’s Cleanest City award.

Weiss was also on to something when he decided to build his crab shack in Miami Beach’s now-upscale South of Fifth neighborhood. South Florida’s first big building boom began about seven years later, in the 1920s, and burst by 1926, leaving abandoned projects littered across the landscape.

Obviously, we came roaring back from that downturn, and developers began erecting Art Deco buildings — including the Century, The Raleigh and the Delano — in the 1930s and ’40s. By then, Lincoln Road had already become a shopping mecca with such high-end stores as Bonwit Teller, Saks Fifth Avenue and a Cadillac dealership on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue, where Guess Jeans recently opened (the Cadillac symbol can still be found on the façade above the front door).

Meanwhile, Roddey Burdine had built downtown Miami’s first five-story “skyscraper” in 1912 to house his family’s namesake “dry-goods” store, Burdines (which became Macy’s in 2005). The Orange Bowl was initially named Roddey Burdine Stadium in his honor when it was built in 1937. Of course, all that history has now been leveled into a dust bowl to make room for a new Marlins stadium, as part of a controversial $3 billion mega-deal approved by both the city and county this year.

During the 1950s, millions of sun-seekers rushed to swanky new hotels, such as the Fontainebleau and the Eden Roc designed by Morris Lapidus. The Miami Marlins played in Miami Stadium (later Bobby Maduro Stadium) in Allapattah, and the Irish-American enclave of Hialeah greeted its newest neighbors from the south as wealthy Cubans began trickling onto our shores. 

That trickle became a flood in the 1960s as a young Belen Jesuit grad, Fidel Castro, solidified his grip on the island nation and threatened Miami and the eastern seaboard with nuclear destruction. But everything wasn’t doom and gloom — the Fab Four spent eight days frolicking on the beach in 1964, the same year Jackie Gleason set up a studio at the Miami Beach Auditorium, bringing national acts to town. Civil Rights took bold steps in the late 1960s as integration slowly took hold throughout the region.

During the 1970s, gas prices soared, native Miamians fled northward to Broward and beyond, and snowbirds flocked south. By the 1980s, our sunny playground became a battlefield of gun fights and dereliction when cocaine cowboys, Marielitos and reams of laundered cash flooded the streets. The movie Scarface captured the mood, but Miami Vice kicked off a renaissance and carried our sunny community for shady people into the national spotlight. Soon, models and artists transformed God’s Waiting Room into an international runway for the rich, hip and fabulous.

Now, in spite of its excessive political scandals involving all kinds of colorful politicians — Alex Daoud, Xavier Suarez, Joe Carollo, Art Teele and Johnny Winton come to mind — or perhaps because of them, our sunny community has become a world-class cultural mecca.

So, here’s a guide to the best of South Florida in 2008.

CREDITS

Contributing Writers: Rene Basulto, Erik Bojnansky, Rachael Lee Coleman, Kris Conesa, Mary Damiano, Angie Hargot, Helen Hill, John Hood, Erica Landau, Monika Leal, Jordan Melnick, Lee Molloy, Paula Niño, David Quinones, Ken Rivadeneira, Michael W. Sasser, Mary Jo Almeida-Shore, Victor Thompson, Ben Torter, Alfredo Triff

Editor: Rachael Lee Coleman

Copy Editors: Mary Louise English and Ken Rivadeneira

Web Editor: Angie Hargot

Cover Photography: Janette Valentine/ www.terriblygirly.com

Production Queen: Simone Fong

Cover Design: Michael Menchero

Spread Design: Kim Davidson

Production Assistance: Ashley Swanson, Lily Rodriguez