Los nombres de lo comunitario

Figure 2.45: Notice of public hearing of Miami Beach Zoning Commission, May 22, 1930. The commission circulated a proposed ordinance that would prescribe zoning and use regulations.

The 1930s were characterized by urbanization, which also evolved alongside the implementation of planning policies. The advent of municipal zoning in 1933 was integral to the development of more coherent planning and architectural guidelines.⁷⁷ Miami Beach’s zoning prescribed high and low density districts, and regulated setbacks and density.⁷⁸ The new zoning ordinance helped standardize new construction in harmony with existing

structures, although the city’s architects had largely observed these standards since the 1920s without any regulation.

2.9. DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFTS

76 The Housing Division of the Public Works Adminstration, “ Unit Types of Plans for Low-Rent Housing Projects,” Architectural Record (March 1935).

77 Lejeune and Shulman, 31; In a 1938 essay, Architectural Forum compared the construction of the mid-1930s boom with the earlier 1920s boom: “when building began again about four years later, new building laws provided a sounder basis for construction but the resort character remained and today the fad is modern… In the growing understanding of nature of modern planning, however, there is a basis for an architecture in Florida that is both local in character and contemporary.”

78 This was probably responding to other examples, such as New York City’s landmark 1916 zoning laws.

Divisions of class, originating from the differing visions of Miami Beach between the initial developments of Collins and the Lummus brothers, and later ethnic divisions became a permanent feature of Miami Beach. These partitions were reflected in the urban form and later preservation efforts of stakeholders focused on specific areas as a result of cultural histories. Below Lincoln Road was the rational grid which evolved to accommodate a dense district of housing, ushering in a lower- to middle-class citizenry. To the north, meandering streets with open, green spaces and individual lots delineated a typical suburb atmosphere of wealth and privilege for a high-class populace. This differentiation linked directly to private decisions by Fisher to limit the availability of building lots in order to maintain price levels.⁷⁹ Ethnic requirements in the northern section of Miami Beach were also restricted to Caucasian gentiles. Miami Beach had the beginnings of municipal zoning regulations in place, but these policies further enforced a segregated city as reflected in the differing architectural typologies between north and south.

Figure 2.46: Map of Miami Beach indicating the Figure 2.47: Restrictive policy of “Gentiles Only” painted on Home of the mayor and Al Capone, South Beach outside of Espanola Way apartment

(as “The Bronx”), Lincoln Road and Millionaire’s Row

79 Lejeune and Shulman, 21.

2.9.1. Rising middle class

The increasing wealth of the 20th century brought new means of access and transportation across America. The rising middle class, mainly northern urbanites, quickly adopted Miami Beach as the ideal tropical vacation, further enlarging the number and diversity of tourists. The new class of tourists was the focus of Miami Beach’s development activity through the 1930s. As early as the 1920s, the construction of numerous small hotels, apartment buildings and rooming houses was consolidated in South Beach as a working class resort.⁸⁰

Synchronized with its densification, Miami Beach became the chosen location for a community of middle-class dwellers. Like much of the United States in the first half of the 20th century, Fisher's Collin's companies had practiced open anti-Semitism in their hotel and land sales businesses. ⁸¹ Sixty-five percent of other Miami Beach hotels and apartments followed their lead. Owners of apartment buildings painted "Gentiles Only" in black letters on the side of their buildings and hotels posted similar signs in the lobby. The restriction was mentioned openly in advertising. John LaGorce, associate editor of National Geographic Magazine, wrote in a promotional pamphlet that Miami Beach was a vacation wonderland for "a regular American of the approved type." Exceptions were made only for "the right kind" of Jews, such as department store magnate Bernard Gimbel and John Hertz, the founder of Yellow Cab.

2.9.2. Influx of Jewish population

The Lummus brothers were more egalitarian than Collins and Fisher. Their Ocean Beach development opened its hotels and apartments to anyone, and lots were sold to those who were "white, law-abiding and could afford the down payment." ⁸² Miami Beach’s hotel

80 Records of building construction and occupancy during the 1930s indicate that the construction of the city during those years was also a “Jewish phenomenon.”; Lejeune and Shulman, 33.

81 Stofik, 17; Kleinberg, 70.

82 Stofik, 17; Blacks could stay in the city overnight only if they were live-in domestic servants or the few farm workers who lived on the remaining part of the John Collins farm.

owners, builders and guests were also predominately Jewish.⁸³ The communal culture of a getaway from the city, previously established in pleasure centers along the Atlantic City boardwalks, now shifted to the hundreds of new hostels and entertainment facilities reproduced along South Florida’s barrier island beaches. Kosher restaurants, groceries, bakeries, and delis opened to cater to the expanding market and synagogues were formed.

An invisible border south of Lincoln Road created two Miami Beaches. For Jews going on vacation, South Beach was the only destination.

Gentile-only policies officially were outlawed in 1949. As Jewish workers in the northeast reached retirement age, they continued the warmer climates of South Beach to spend their golden years.⁸⁴ More affluent Jewish tourists, however, began to move up the beach to the elaborate new hotels and motels. The city had put the garage for the garbage trucks south of Fifth, along with the city dump. South Beach became the "wrong" end of the island, and it was an intentional position away from the elite northern end of the island.⁸⁵ It was significant that Jews continued to prosper and contributed through various roles in the development of the city as owners, developers, architects, and patrons. ⁸⁶ In that sense, Miami Beach ultimately became an expression of assimilation, and its architecture and architects were the tools of its evolution into the destination we know today.

2.9.3. Boom and bust mentality

Shulman described, “The American gridiron, the Garden City movement, the picturesque tradition of the American Parks movement were all significant in it’s early planning. Later, vernacular, Mediterranean and modern architectural traditions were superimposed on the plan of the city.”⁸⁷ In spite of its heritage of planning traditions, Miami

83 The Jewish life of Miami Beach had roots in the segregation of resort tourism that was a feature of the early twentieth century and that excluded urban Jews, especially the working class, from fashionable resorts. Miami Beach was the southern anchor for these populations.

84 The warmth and familiarity of South Beach were represented in the kosher markets and synagogues. Joe and Jennie Weiss's restaurant (Joe's Stone Crab) was familiar, and Yiddish was prevalent on the streets.

85 Stofik, 17.

86 Howard Mehling, The Most of Everything: The Story of Miami Beach (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1960), 129.

87 Lejeune and Shulman, 38.

Beach’s urban development was spontaneous, generally left to the imaginative forces of speculative developers. Processes of building and rebuilding, which coincided with boom and bust periods of growth, still remain in the architectural ethos of many who reside and govern Miami Beach today. Though an appreciation of Miami Beach’s unique past deserves praise for its foresightedness, these historical associations will be further discussed in the next chapters of the value imposed on these cultural resources and the resulting policies to protect them.

As early as 1935, Miami Beach was once again the fastest growing city in the country with a per capita building rate twenty times higher than the next highest city, Washington D.C.⁸⁸ “A hotel for every group of 75 permanent residents is the usual offering of Miami Beach,” declared the Miami News.⁸⁹ Between 1935 and 1942, the year when the city was virtually converted into a military training center, this phenomenal growth produced hundreds of new and modern resort structures.