Despite Miami's reputation as a city of newcomers, there’s a deep fascination in the origins of the area and the history of some of its most notable buildings. As Christine Rupp of Dade Heritage Trust says: “What I find interesting about Miami is everybody’s from somewhere else, but there’s always a group interested in finding out about their new home.”
This year, you’ll see quite a few centennials being celebrated at landmark locations up and down the Biscayne Corridor. These are relics of the building boom of the 1920s, roots of some of the metro area’s oldest municipalities, and living legacies of the wild sunshine that has shaped Greater Miami.
(Courtesy Christine Rupp)
Christine Rupp, executive director of Dade Heritage Trust.
Call this a self-guided centennial tour. We’ve got a few pointers from Casey Piket, a repository of stories who chronicles our past at miami-history.com. But the places tell their own stories, too, if you’d care to take a look.
A HISTORIC NOTE
Miami, the city of Miami, is more than 100 years old. Julia Tuttle founded what became today’s metropolis in 1896. Even at the time, it wasn’t the oldest town around.
Coconut Grove had been settled by lighthouse builders in 1825 (yes, this is the Cape Florida Light’s bicentennial year). Commodore Ralph Munroe, a shipbuilder attracted to the Grove’s solitude (“No more isolated region was found in the country,” he wrote), had been hosting the Biscayne Bay Yacht Club regattas since 1887. That was long before the first trains brought northerners into the jungle and swamp of South Florida, when a “yacht” meant any privately owned boat that could get you from place to place by water. At that time, the entire population of Miami-Dade County could fit in Munroe’s house – that is, the whole population besides the indigenous Seminoles.
Munroe’s friend Emathla, “a fine old man,” was welcome there, but his people had been living in the area for many, many years already. Centuries before they arrived, too, there were other indigenous inhabitants, possibly related to today’s Taino or Mayan people, who apparently had their own settlement on Brickell Key around the ancient observatory that we now call The Miami Circle.
The 1920s, however, do represent a turning point in the development of the city. For one thing, in 1925 Miami annexed Coconut Grove, making the older town part of what was a city growing into a metropolis. This year’s centennials mark a transition past which Miami would never be the same, not that it ever was the same as anything, ever.
THE CENTENNIAL DOWNTOWN TOUR
(Grant Balfour)
Map of the Centennial Walking Tour route
Let’s start our tour in the heart of downtown Miami, where several iconic buildings from this era still stand. If you like, grab a bite at Julia & Henry’s. The upscale food court’s building was only erected in the 1930s, but it’s named for Miami founder Julia Tuttle and railroad magnate Henry Flagler – the ramen joint is outstanding.
Cross the street at Second Avenue.
(Courtesy Casey Piket/MDPLS)
Opening night at the Olympia Theater was a big to-do in 1926 Miami … not the least because the building was air conditioned .
Olympia Theater (174 East Flagler Street. Opened February 18, 1926)
A cultural cornerstone, the Olympia Theater is beloved now for beautiful touches like twinkling stars, rolling clouds, and 12-foot-long chandeliers. But this cinema, vaudeville house, and its attached 10-story office building were notable in the 1920s as some of the first buildings in Miami to have the latest modern convenience: air conditioning.
(Courtesy Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau)
The Olympia Theatre interior, built in the style of grand movie palaces in the 1920s
"The Olympia Theater opened the same night as the Columbus Hotel opened … or actually, I should say, the same day,” says Piket. “You see, they coordinated their receptions. Those who were lucky enough to get tickets to both had quite a day – they started their early evening at the Olympia and then finished in the wee hours of the morning in the Columbus Hotel.”
The building was nearly destroyed in the 1970s, but was saved when Maurice Gusman bought it and hired Fontainebleau architect Morris Lapidus to renovate the main auditorium, turning it into a centerpiece of downtown. Some conservationists fear the structure might be overdue for a new round of renovations.
Head south and look to your left.
Ingraham Building (25 SE Second Avenue. Opened May 1, 1927)
The Ingraham Building might officially have opened in 1927, but this elegant Renaissance Revival skyscraper falls within our centennial timeframe due to its planning and construction in the mid-1920s. Developer Frederick Rand had a dream that Miami’s SE Second Avenue could one day be the southerly answer to New York’s Fifth Avenue. A major hurricane in 1926, followed by the Great Depression two years later, put Rand’s dreams on hold, but let’s put a pin in that for later.
Turn west on First Street.
Langford Hotel (121 SE First Street. Opened April 14, 1926)
This arcaded building was originally the Miami Bank building, built in 1925. Through most of the 1950s it was owned by Louis B. Mayer, as in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but remained a commercial office building. By 1989, the City National Bank Building was entered into the National Register of Historic Buildings, but in a rare example of creative reuse and renovation, it was recently bought and repurposed as a boutique hotel.
The Royalton Hotel (131 SE First Street. Opened April 14, 1924)
(Courtesy Casey Piket)
Casey Piket (center, with mic) leads a group to historic sites downtown.
Next door to the Langford stands the former Royalton Hotel, which has gone through its own transformation. "It’s been turned into affordable housing for low-income people called Carrfour now, but it opened up as the Royalton Hotel, an upscale hotel, back in 1924," says Piket. “At least they've done something positive with those buildings rather than tear them down.”
Huntington Office Building (168 SE First Street. Opened 1926)
Heading back east on First, the Huntington Office Building is another structure that remains from Rand’s dreams of turning Southeast Second into the Fifth Avenue of Miami. “Frederick Rand actually bought all the property on that corner,” said Piket. “The only thing that's still remaining is the Huntington building, which is now office condos.”
Congress Building (111 NE Second Avenue. Opened 1926)
Head back north on Second a block past Flager. Look up and you’ll see the 21 stories of the Congress Building. One hundred years ago, it was originally built as a five-story high-rise but the booming market of 1925 raised the roof – literally.
“Because of the demand for office space, they ended up expanding it, going up from the original building but also building next to it,” Piket explained. “There was one point in time where they had to level off the two buildings just to make sure the floors met. And so, they lifted the older building up during weekdays when there were people in the building, working in their offices. They didn't evacuate or ask people to leave the building. They actually let people go into work while they were physically lifting it up and building next to it to connect it.”
From here, make your way across Biscayne Boulevard and into the Bayside Marketplace. You deserve some refreshment, so check out Pier Five.
Pier 5 (Bayside Marketplace / Miamarina. Opened 1925)
(Courtesy Miami Springs Preservation Society)
Pier 5, once a charter boat and fishing hub, then
Today, Pier 5 is a cocktail bar and event space inside the waterfront mall that is Bayside. But before Miamarina became Miamarina, it was the original Pier 5 on the waterfront. The location served as a launch point for fishing charters, a sporting hub based around the city’s yacht basin. Piers 1 through 4 were mainly for cargo offloading, but Pier 5 became the celebrated home of “the World’s Finest Fishing Fleet,” as the sign announced.
(Courtesy Breakwater Hospitality Group)
Pier 5 at Bayside Marketplace, now
“Really, Miamarina is a redevelopment of Pier 5,” said Piket. “The marina itself is there, and on top of it in Bayside, there's a bar or a kind of hospitality concept called Pier 5 – but don't read their menu about the history of Pier 5. They've got it all wrong!"
From Bayside, turn north again and make your way to the landmark building known by many as Miami’s Statue of Liberty.
Miami News / Freedom Tower (600 Biscayne Blvd. Opened July 26, 1925)
(Courtesy Casey Piket/MDPLS)
Freedom Tower made for a pretty fancy newsroom when it originally served as the Daily News headquarters.
Freedom Tower became famous as the place where 300,000 Cuban refugees received federal assistance in the 1960s and ‘70s. But before it was the Cuban Refugee Emergency Center, this building was, of all things, a newspaper office. James Cox, a publisher and politician, ran the Miami Daily News out of a structure he’d commissioned New York firm Shultze & Weaver to design modeled after the Giralda bell tower of the Cathedral of Seville.
"Cox was a presidential candidate whose running mate was FDR,” says Piket. “They lost to Warren G. Harding.”
Cox had served as a congressman and governor of Ohio, but it was as a Miami journalist that he had some of his most dramatic power struggles.
“When Al Capone was here, he was getting a lot of bad press from the Miami Daily News, primarily because Carl Fisher on Miami Beach didn't like having, you know, that character on Palm Island,” said Piket. “So, you know, he encouraged Cox to write about Capone's presence. At one point in time, there was a lawyer who came over with a ton of cash and wanted to buy the newspaper for a ridiculous amount of money. He approached James Cox in that building and, you know, made the ridiculous offer and Cox turned it down.”
Instead, Cox started paying even more attention to the Chicago mobster.
“Rumor has it that Cox saw Capone pull up to the American Legion boxing ring nearby and go into the ring and tipped off the police,” said Piket. “Both times, Capone got arrested – on vagrancy charges."
The building opened on July 26, 1925, two days before the city’s birthday. Currently, it’s owned by Miami-Dade College, which has restored the facade and is currently carrying out structural renovations. The interior might be opened to the public by the end of this year, but will more likely welcome visitors in 2026.
There’s more history to uncover across the Biscayne Corridor, from the Miami Women’s Club, built in 1929, to the University of Miami, founded 1925. But these centennial highlights should at least provide a starting point for peeking back at Miami as it was a century ago.