Miami Tourist Guide

The Gesu Church

Just north of the Alfred I. DuPont building stands the Gesu Church, at 118 N 2nd St, and its home to Miami’s oldest Catholic parish. The original wooden building, called the Church of the Holy Name, was completed in 1898 on the land that Henry Flagler had donated to the city for use as a church and school. The large Mediterranean Revival replacement was built in 1925 and sticks out amid the cramped storefronts of downtown, painted as it is in colours of peach sherbet and lemon meringue. However, the church’s foamy, baroque appliqué exterior is more noteworthy than its stout inner sanctum-designed without pillars or posts so that the Jesuits would have unobstructed sightlines for their fiery sermons; the interior framed with modern stained glass from Munich.

The US Federal Courthouse

Two Blocks northwest from the Gesu Church, the unremarkable 1931 neoclassical structure at 300 NE 1st St. was originally the city’s post office, but was commandeered a year later to serve as the US Federal Courthouse. Most voluntary visitors stop by for a glimpse of Denman Fink’s 25-foot mural, Law guides Florida Progress- depicting Florida’s evolution from swampy backwoods to modern state- in the small courtroom on the second floor. The WPA work is more impressive for its size rather than skill, but look for Fink’s portrait of his young nephew, George Merrick, the founder of Coral Gables, delivering produce. The mural’s usually accessible to visitors, provided there’s no closed-door court case in session- call in advance to check and make sure to bring photo ID. Merrick`s isn’t the only notable public artwork in the building- in  1985, fresco artist Dave Novros was commissioned to decorate the building’s medieval style inner-courtyard, to which his bold colourful daubs make a lively addition.
The New Courthouse next door replaced this older structure as the city’s main legal facility in the late 1960`s, when Miami’s soaring crime rate outstripped its capabilities. It’s a gruesome creation of concrete and glass, and was poorly designed-it’s difficult, for instance, for lawyers to present evidence clearly for the audience in the courtroom. The major advantage to the New Courthouse-other than size-is that jurors pass in and out unobserved-`Getting them out without getting them dead, `` as one judge commented. Now, even this courthouse is to be superseded by a new $120 million dollar structure a few blocks away at 400 N Miami Avenue, that’s set to open in summer 2005; it’s to be named after the late black judge Wilkie D. Ferguson and designed by Arquitectonia. It`s odd location, diagonally in the middle of the block was a security measure influenced by the Oklahoma bombing- don`t miss the gardens masterd by Maya Lin, who shot to fame as the designer of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.

Bayfront Park

At the east end of Flagler Street lies Bayfront Park, at 301 N Biscayne Blvd. It’s a pleasant enough urban greenspace, dotted with sculpture and large leafy trees, though the lack of significant shade around its wide benches makes them a less than comfortable spot to dawdle for most of the year. There’s no specific local connection to Isamu Noguchi’s white geometric Challenger Memorial at the park’s southwest corner- it’s simply here because the park’s current design was completed in 1986, around the same time as the when the space shuttle exploded mid-flight, and the designer included the monument as a late addition. Before that, Bayfront Park-laid out on reclaimed land dredged from the bottom of the bay in the 1920’s- was best known as the site of the attempted assassination of president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt by a disaffected Italian bricklayer Guiseppe Zangarra (Roosevelt survived, but then-mayor of Chicago Anton Cermak, who was standing close by, died of his wounds; Zangarra went to the electric chair just a month later)
At the opposite end of the park stands the highly charged Torch of Friendship, which commemorated a burning local issue and another, more controversial president. Built in 1960, then rededicated to JFK four years later, it centers on a lighted torch, surrounded by the crests of every Latin American Country save one. Cuba’s emblem is purposefully omitted, leaving a pointed blank space between Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, intending to add her symbol only when Cuba is free of communism. That said, the site’s now rather forlorn and the city takes little interest in it; its also missing many of the original crests, which means that Cuba’s omission no longer stands out.
At its northern tip, the park leads into the Bayside Marketplace, which features the usual upscale chains and restaurants in an open-air complex by the water, and is usually packed with tourists. There’s also a small unofficial tourist information booth at its entrance that’s good for maps.