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By Claudia Winkler, Class of 2007

The annual docent trip was perfect for the winter of 2019—the beautiful tropical city of Miami! The visit began with a tour of South Beach, certainly the best place in the U.S. to experience Art Deco architecture. Docents from the Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) were our hosts. We learned so much from them:

Originally, the buildings were painted white, an influence of the Bauhaus; only later were colors added.

The MDPL breaks their Art Deco buildings into three categories: Mediterranean Revival (1920’s – bell towers, archways, awnings, porches, balconies, carved stonework, rough stucco walls, clay tiles roofs, wrought iron fixtures); Art Deco (1930’s – over-all symmetry, ziggurat rooflines, glass block, decorative sculptural panels, eyebrows, round porthole windows, terrazzo floors, curved edges and corners, elements in groups of three, neon lighting used in both exteriors as well as interior spaces); and MiMo (Miami Modern – 1940’s – asymmetry and rakish angles, cheese hole cutouts, kidney and amoeba shapes, futuristic jet and space age forms, mosaic murals, anodized aluminum in gold and copper).

During Prohibition in Miami, if a hotel’s terrazzo floor design included an inlaid rectangle, a bar shape, it was a signal that you could have a drink in a back room.

As the area declined in the 1970’s, Barbara Capitman headed up the historic preservation effort which is now the MDPL. Hats off to her!

Guided by Dr. Paul George, the Tim Samuelson of Miami, a boat tour of the Miami River revealed major improvements since the 1970s, when drug trading took place along the river. The thriving river is now bordered by condominiums, business centers, boat docks, parks, and restaurants. Just north of the river is the One Thousand Museum by Zaha Hadid. This 62-story building is clad in glass and glass fiber reinforced concrete prefab panels that create twisting columns forming the exoskeleton from floors 15-62, each with a unique shape. The starting price is $5.8M.

Arquitectonica, the largest and most important architecture firm in Miami, has designed SkyRise Miami. Sited on the waterfront, it’s a supertall (990′) entertainment and observation tower, expected to be completed in 2023.

The Architecture by Bus tour stopped at a restored motel in Miami called the Vagabond Motel. The restoration by New York preservationist Avra Jain includes a rather risqué photo of exterior ornamentation on the Vagabond!

A walking tour of the Design District included an area originally called Buena Vista, where very high end shops cater to attendees of the annual Art Basel. There are five contemporary art museums in Miami, and the exterior of the Museum Garage honors them. (Museum Garage photo) I loved the painting of a tropical environment on the side of a Design District building. Right next to the Design District is Wynwood, where many public-art murals decorate the exterior walls

Another boat tour on Biscayne Bay took us to Stiltsville. Even after hurricanes and tropical storms, Biscayne Bay still has 7 “houses” on stilts. The cost to lease one of the houses is $1/year, and groups go there to have big parties, ferrying the guests to and from the mainland by boat.

Our last event was a tour of Vizcaya, the palatial home of James Deering, the son of a founder of what is now International Harvester. His goal to create an 18th century Italian villa in Coconut Grove was realized by architect Frances B. Hoffman, Jr. and was completed in 1916. Paul Chalfin, Deering’s artistic director, oversaw the purchases of amazing rugs, furniture, and paintings to furnish Vizcaya. Interestingly, the architect had to adjust his design to accommodate the size of some of the purchases.

Diego Suarez was the landscape architect. The recent John Singer Sargent exhibit at the Art Institute included paintings of Vizcaya from 1917. Sargent was friends with the Deering half-brothers Charles and James. After James died in 1925, Charles inherited Vizcaya. And when Charles died in 1927, his two daughters inherited the villa. They took good care of it after damage from the 1926 hurricane. It was eventually sold to Dade County in 1955 and is currently on the National Register of Historic Places. Storm surges from Hurricane Irma in 2017 caused damage that is still under repaire. Fully repaired or not, Vizcaya is beautiful, reflecting a distant era which we’ll never see again. CLICK HERE for far more information.

So we returned from Miami with a great appreciation of a city with a totally different climate and architecture. And fortunately, it didn’t rain during any of our events!