Downtown Miami

With its profusion of gleaming office buildings towering over smaller Cuban-owned businesses, Downtown Miami, also known as the Central Business District (or CBD), simultaneously  shows the city at its most Anglo and its most Latin. From a distance, the sparkling high-rises make Miami look much like any other modern American metropolis; it’s only when you’re standing below those skyscrapers, surrounded by jostling crowds and noisy traffic, that the feel of a Latin American capital takes over. If the place all feels a bit overwhelming, don’t be discouraged- Downtown is actually one of Miami’s most compact districts, and holds two of the area’s best museums, whiling giving the clearest sense of the everyday influence Cuba has on the city, from office workers lighting at tiny street side cafes for a morning cafecito, or Cuban coffee, to the bilingual signage in almost every store. The vibrant Cuban music spilling from almost every store onto the sidewalk is likely these days to be accompanied by the banging and crashing of construction; Downtown’s the target for much of the new high-rise condo development mushrooming around the city. Though at the time of writing there were under 1000 residents in the CBD, more than 30,000 new homes are set to hit the market in the next five years and look likely to not only transform the skyline but the atmosphere here.
Geographically, the Miami River divides downtown: on the South side, big business and big buildings line Brickell Avenue, known as “Millionaires Row” in the early twentieth century. The surrounding area, bounded by I-95 to the west, Coconut Grove to the south, and Biscayne Bay to the east, is known as Brickell; boasting one of the densest concentration of new high-rise homes, it is becoming the district of choice of Miami’s young professionals.
North of the river, things are less modern but more interesting. Flagler Street functions as the cities central artery, joining Bayfront Park with the Metro-Dade Cultural Center to the west. It’s a commercial bazaar that hums with, jewellers, fabric stores and cheap electronic outlets. There are a few name-brand shops here: this is a place of diners and discounters, stores in low-slung buildings playing loud music and spilling their wares out onto the sidewalk. At the same time, Flagler Street also offers up a successful showcase of the architecture on which modern Miami was built, beginning with the Alfred I. Dupont building.
Further north, past the iconic, if derivative, Freedom Tower, lie Overtown and Liberty City, two of Miami’s historically black neighbourhoods. Both are areas that the strenuous tourist gloss applied by the city in the late 1990’s has yet to reach, and can still be somewhat dicey. Though they’ve yet to benefit from the economic upsurge elsewhere in the city, they exude a fierce sense of history, and it’s worth visiting one or both during the day or on an organized tour. The CBD is definitely a place to visit during the day-and weekends and in the evening, restaurants usually shut down since few of the would-be tenants have yet moved into their new downtown homes. However, public transportation is thorough and an elevated monorail, the free Metromover circles downtown’s main loop, making it a handy way to orient yourself.

Flagler Street and around

The heart of Downtown Miami is Flagler Street, choked with cheap fabric stores, electronic shops, and, for some reason, dozens of discount shoe outlets. The other notable industry here is gemstones: the Seybold Building, which sprawls for a block between Miami and NE 1st avenues, is a hotbed hub of diamond trading- but also be informed and be prepared to haggle (it’s not for amateurs). Although at lunchtime the area’s throbbing with life, by 6 pm its deserted: unlike many other American city centers, Miami is in the early stages of its residential revitalization, and there are few apartment complexes or converted lofts Downtown open yet, though with the ferocious construction currently under way, scores of residents (by some estimates, up to 40,000 people) will move in over the next two years or so and likely enliven the area come night time.
Along the street there are a few architectural highlights, as well as the mother lode of Miami’s cultural elite (at least for now): the Metro-Dade Cultural Center. This ochre coloured, low slung building stands out amid the gleaming metal and glass that dominates the rest of the Downtown; it’s full of grand intentions as a public place, but frankly falls a little flat Architectural legend and pioneer Phillip Johnson designed the complex to ape an old fort, echoing the Mediterranean Revival style found elsewhere in the city: the result is a series of anodyne  ranch buildings around a communal piazza that remains eternally empty thanks the punishing Miami sun. Still, at the moment, the center boasts two of Downtown’s top attractions, the Historical Museum of South Florida and the Miami Art Museum.

The Alfred I. DuPont Building and the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts

Two notable buildings stand along the eastern portion of  Flagler Street near 2nd SE Avenue, the Alfred I. DuPont Building, at no. 169, is one of the best examples of Depression Moderne design in the city, with its simple but impossible black façade. Now home to Florida National Bank, the first floor is open to the public, so feel free to wander through during office hours and catch its spectacular and ornate interior. Note especially the fanciful wrought-iron screens, frescoes of Florida scenes, and bronze bas-relief elevator doors with egrets and herons.
Opposite the DuPont Building, at no. 174, the Olympia Theatre at the Gusman Center for Performing Arts was built in 1926 as a vaudeville house. Much like the Mathesons and their mustard-gas millions, the Gusmans profited through government contracts in World War 1; theirs was to provide condoms for departing American soldiers. The building’s hodgepodge of architectural styles best approximates a Spanish-Moorish theme, with turrets, towers, and intricately detailed columns, and recent renovations have brought out the stunning moldings in its lobby ceiling; it’s also noteworthy as the first air-conditioned building in Miami. However, the only way you’ll be able to see inside the whole building (and not just the lobby) is by catching a performance-if you do, note the kitschy ceiling in the auditorium, twinkling with fake stars and the illusion of slowly moving clouds.

Burdine’s and the Coppertone sign

Further west along Flagler, on the corner with Miami Avenue, stands the first in the Burdine’s department store chain at no.22 (now owned by, and recently rebranded as, Macy’s). The structure’s notable for the Streamline Moderne design, all hard edges rounded off and corners curved to convey gentle movement; the extension across Miami Avenue was put up immediately after World War II. This first outpost of “ Florida’s department store” was founded as a dry goods shop in 1898, a mere two years after the city was incorporated, by William Burdine, who traded refined sugar, cloth, and nails for Native American pelts.
Crossing over Miami Avenue onto West Flagler Street, look for the giant relief of the famous Coppertone Sign-a young girl whose pet dog is tugging down her bikini bottom- that was based on a seaside snapshot (it’s not, as urban legend has it, Jodie Foster). Originally located along Biscayne Boulevard, the iconic sign was moved here when the building to which it was attached was demolished; it’s showcased simply because the office block was owned by a preservation-minded member of the Dade Heritage Trust, which spearheaded the campaign to save the sign.

The Miami-Dade County Courthouse

Continue west along the street you’ll hit the four forbidding Doric columns which mark the entrance to the Dade County Courthouse, at no. 73, W. Flagler Street. Built in 1926 around a still-extant courthouse- where public hangings used to take place-this was Miami’s tallest building for fifty years until it was superseded by the 55-story First Union Financial Center on South Biscayne Boulevard. Its night lights used to show off a distinctive stepped pyramid peak intended to serve as a constant reminder to would-be wrongdoers of where they’d end up. It was no idle boast; originally, this peak was the location of the courthouse’s onsite jail, prisoners were known to throw dampened toilet paper down onto passerby, so the holding cells were moved in 1961.

The Historical Museum of Southern Florida

Looming above the piazza’s western flank, the Historical Museum of Southern Florida is home to detailed, interactive displays covering Florida from the prehistoric up until the present. Some of the exhibits are a little worn around the edges, but there’s plenty to entertain the kids including dress-up boxes with period clothes and pioneer toys, while for adults, there’s a small but instructional map collection that shows the gradual European charting of the area.
Where perhaps the  museum is strongest, though, is its post 1950’s display; a pair of tiny boats used by the Cuban and Haitian refugees to on the late 1970’s sits next to TV’s running archive news footage showing local hostility to the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. Also well chronicled are the fluctuating fortunes of Miami Beach, from its early days as a celebrity vacation spot- with amusing photos of twenties Hollywood greats- through to the renovation of the Art Deco district. In its first-floor research facility, the Historical Museum houses the archives of the now-defunct Miami News, the city’s first daily newspaper, and walk-in visitors are allowed to scan the decades of news photography on site.

The Miami Art Museum

Directly across the Metro-Dade Cultural Center piazza from the historical museum, the Miami Art Museum, at 101 W Flagler St, holds a remarkable collection of post-war art, setting acknowledged modern masterpieces alongside quirky, newer works. The first floor of the building offers a rotating selection, refreshed four times yearly, from the museums own collection. It’s accessibly and intelligently curated: among notable works, look for sketches by Robert Rauschenberg, and art stuntman Christo, not to mention surrealist pioneer Marcel Duchamp’s Boite en Valise, which consists of witty maquettes of his previous masterworks, all in a handy carrying case. Yet it’s the museum conceptual art gallery which is the most stunning, especially the bevy of works by the late Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzales-Torres. His organic pieces, designed to change through viewing-such as a stark ream of embossed paper that visitors are intended to sample sheet by sheet, or a help-yourself pile of candy stacked in a stark white corner the dwindles with every hungry passerby- are truly remarkable. The museum often manages to hook prime travel exhibits, too, which are mounted in its gallery space on the upper floor. It’s set to decamp the state-of-the-art site on the waterfront, as part of the Museum Park Miami project, though o firm date’s been set yet.
Opposite to the museum looms the Main Public Library, which, besides the usual lending sections, has temporary painting and photography exhibits showcasing local literary and artistic talents- the narrow focus of which typically makes them worth checking out- as well as a massive collection of Florida-related magazines and books.

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.

South of Miami River

To reach the southern portion of Downtown, head through the square surrounded by high-rise towers which is known as DuPont Plaza, and walk across the bridge-crowned by a moody, of a crossbow-toting Tequesta warrior and his wife-and you’ll pass from the soul of the city to its wallet.
This area, know as Brickell (rhymes with pickle), is the city’s financial center. Money was the original foundation of this area, and the early developers Mary and William Brickell, who ran a trading post nearby, planned a wide, tree-lined avenue that could be built up with mansions for their friends. In doing so, they created the city’s most desirable neigborhood-it was the address in 1910’s Miami- and Brickell Avenue soon earned the nickname Millionaires Row.
From the late seventies, Miami emerged as a corporate banking center, cashing in on political instability in South and Central America by offering a secure home for Latin-American money, some of which needed laundering. Miami has manoeuvred to become second only to new York in serving as the headquarters for international banks; and the forests of mirrored buildings that cluster along Brickell Avenue sprouts new offshoots every year. Recent years have seen the Brickell area returning to that gleaming heyday, as the intensive construction of the luxury residential condos and high-end condo-hotels like the Four Seasons have drawn wealthy young professionals to live closer to their offices Downtown.

The Miami Circle

Local developer Michael Baumann purchased the triangle of land east of Brickell Avenue wedged against the Miami River- once the sight of a 1950’s apartment complex- for $8 million in the mid 1990’s and planned to throw up a premium priced high-rise. Archaeologists were hired to clear the area for construction as per local ordinances and, unfortuneatly for Baumann, they found something, a coral rock circle, 38 feet in diameter and carve four feet deep into the bedrock, carbon dated to be at least 10,000 years old and known as the Miami circle.
Its age is the only indisputable thing: experts argue over the circle’s original purpose, whether it was a religious, community, or commercial center, or even who might have built it. While they debate, others are considering how best to display this find for the local community; no final decision’s been made, and thus you can’t visit it yet. It will likely take at least five years before people can visit the Miami Circle close up- check with the Dade Heritage Trust for updates. If you’re determined to see it close up, stay in the nearby Sheraton , and ask for a room that overlooks the site- at least until the new hotel is razed by its new owners to make for yet more high-rise waterfront condos. Don’t weep for Baumann, though- he was able to strongarm the city into paying 26.7 million to purchase the land back from him, turning a tidy profit of more than $18 million without laying a single brick

The Atlantis

At 2025 Brickell Ave, the Atlantis apartment complex is the project that turned the Aquitectonica design
team, husband and wife architects Laurinda Spear and Bernardo Fort-Brescia, from wannabes to A-listers; it was built on the site of one of the grandest mansions on Millionaires Row, the Mitchell-Bingham residence, home to Mary Tiffany Bingham, sister of glass guru Louis. Like a cored-apple, the Atlantis complex has a square hole through the middle, filled like a single palm tree, a Jacuzzi, and d fire-engine-red spiral staircase. Built some twenty years ago, its playful design is even more eye-catching now among the earnest bombast of nearby skyscrapers; it clearly owes much to the stylish mischief of mid-century pioneers like Morris Lapidus. You won’t be allowed inside unless you know some one who lives there, which might be just as well: even its designers admit the interior doesn’t live up to the exuberance of the exterior, and claim the building to be “architecture for 55mph”-seen best effect from a passing car.

North of Downtown

North of the Downtown loop, sights thin considerably, and neighbourhoods grow rougher: patches like Bicentennial Park are closer to the crime hobbled Miami of the 1980’s than the glossy city of today. The Port of Miami is still one of the busiest cruise-ship docks in the world, though, and on any given day you can drive down Macarthur Causeway to the beach to see half a dozen mammoth ships queuing  patiently at the dock.
One of the most arresting additions to the local skyline is the American Airlines Arena on the old Port of Miami site. A high profile project for local design celebrities Arquitectonica, the AA arena is an origami building floating by the bay, its stark, rounded walls like stowed wings. It’s the site of many big-name concerts as well as the home of the Miami Heat basketball team. Directly opposite the arena is Freedom Tower, new headquarters of the Cuban-American National Foundation.

Freedom Tower

Often called “Miami’s Ellis Island,” the ornate Freedom Tower at 600 N Biscayne Blvd, served not only as an immigration post but also a community center for over 360,000 Cuban refugees who arrived between 1961 and 1974. It was one of three replicas of Seville’s Giralda belltower built in Miami by the same architects, Schutze and Weaver, who designed New York’s Grand Central Station: the other were Roney Plaze Hotel in Miami Beach (since demolished) and Coral Gable’s Billmore Hotel.
Since its 1925 construction as the headquarters of Miami Times newspaper, the Mediterenean Revival structure has lain more often empty than occupied thanks in part to its impractical and eccentric shape, with a high, narrow turret, and little versatile office space. Its most recent owners were the Cuban-American National Foundation, whose late head, telecom billionaire Jorge Mas Canosa, bought the place in 1997 amid much fanfare with plans to open a massive museum. After his death, the plans foundered amid in-fighting and arguments over what was appropriate to feature- exhibits were scheduled to showcase refugee raft simulations, Cuban art exhibits, as well as a public research center. The building’s been sold again, this time to local real estate conglomerate Terra Developers. The company’s not yet confirmed its intentions, only saying that it will indeed open some form of cultural space in the Freedom Tower, perhaps administered by a partner university, while using the land around it to construct high-rise condos.

Bicentennial Park

Troubled from the day it opened in 1977 (the men running the food stands on opening night were mugged for the day’s takings), Bicentennial Park, at 1075 N Biscayne Blvd, is a problematic eyesore for the city to which little attention has been paid. For over 25 years, its 35 acres-originally an oily storage lot for shipping containers for the nearby Port of Miami-have served as a refuge for the area’s homeless and is not a place to dawdle, especially at dusk. That’s set to change in the next five years, as a monumental new construction project gets under way, known as Museum Park Miami. This cultural hub will combine the Museum of Science, currently in Coconut Grove and the Miami art Museum on a single site, along a satellite location for the Historical Museum of Southern Florida; the park will also boast a 4-acre s
sculpture garden and a zoo.
To date, progress has been slow and the project controversial, mostly owing to the debate of the building being here than created an unbroken, open greenspace. However, in late 2004, voters approved the funding for the construction and location, though there’s been no schedule released.

Overtown

Northwest of Downtown lies Overtown, originally known as Colouredtown, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Miami. Local zoning laws forbade the sale of the land to blacks except in this area after Miami was founded in 1896, and it was soon securely cordoned off from the rest of Downtown by the railroad. Even so, a settlement developed which was larger even than the existing black neighbourhood in Coconut Grove. By the 1930’s, Colouredtown was a vibrant entertainment district: NW 2nd Avenue between 6th and 10th streets was variously known as “Little Broadway,” “The Strip,” and even “The Great Black Way.”
One of the driving forces behind Little Broadway was the black promoter Clyde Gillens, who stared as a drum accompanist for silent movies. From there, the outlandish Killens achieved pre-eminence managing hotels and nightclubs, not to mention being on of the first Black Miamians to register to vote. He succeeded in part thanks to the segregationist policy that ensured that while black entertainers like Dorothy Danbridge were wowing white crowds at sell-out shows at Miami Beach, they’d have to stay at hotels in the Overtown ghetto.
Although post-war years proved tough for the local economy, Overtown’s decline accelerated rapidly in the 1960’s, as the construction of the I-95 Expressway devastated the area. It was nothing more than an act of urban social vandalism with 20,000 people forcibally displaced from all social amenities. The neighborhod never recovered, and it became a poster child for Miami’s crime problem in the 1980’s. Now although its slowly clawing its way back to economic health, the district’s still a dangerous place for visitors even in the daytime, and the best way to see it is on an organized tour.

The Overtown Historic District

If Colouredtown was Miami’s Harlem, then its counterpart to the Apollo Theatre is the Lyric Theatre, at 819 NW 2nd Avenue. Its at the center of a rather desolate two block area now known as the Overtown Historic District, and is owned and promoted by the black archives. The theatre was built in 1913 by black entrepreneur Geder Walker, who dreamed of rivalling Europe’s grand opera houses, though by the late 1940’s it had been converted to a church. Recently restored to its original opulence, it is the only standing reminder of the district’s funky heyday, when the likes of Nat King Cole and Lina Horne were regular visitors. Its still in sporadic use thanks to evidence from the Black Archives; the new glass atrium currently being added to its northern edge is intended to make it appealing for corporate events but sadly detracts from the simplicity of the building’s original design.
Nearby stands the Black Archives’ other attraction here, the 1915 D.A. Dorsey House at 250 NW 9th St; the interior’s not open to the public, as it houses some of the charity’s administrative offices. It’s famous as the home of the city’s first black millionaire-fitingly, given today’s building boom, he made his money in real estate. Dana Albert Dorsey started out as a carpenter and shrewdly rackd up his money by buying land, building houses, and renting them to blacks. Astonishingly, his real-estate portfolio included the land that’s today hyper-exclusive Fisher Island; he intended on building an upscale black resort there in 1918 before changing his mind and selling his holdings a few years later. Built as a wedding gift to his wife, the house had high-tech touches like electricity in every room; sadly, the structure that currently stands is a replica, albeit an authentic one. The other major sight of interest is the Greater Bethel A.M.E Church, at 245 NW 8th St, notable mainly as the oldest black congregation in Miami and for its large Mediterranean Revival structure.

The Miami City Cemetery

Just north of Overtown, at 1800 NE 2nd Avenue lies Miami’s original cemetery, founded in 1897. With its separate black section to the west plus white and walled Jewish sections to the east, the Miami City Cemetery is the final resting place for early pioneers, including Julia Tuttle. The cemetery’s now in a rundown area of town so it can be rather dangerous- many of the graves are littered with used syringes, anything valuable has been stolen and the family vaults of early Miami bigwigs have been torn off by the homeless seeking shelter- so its best seen on an organized tour, though, frankly, the Woodlown Cemetery has richer pickings for grave hunters.

Liberty City

Much further northwest, Liberty City has wider streets and more parkland than Overtown, but can be just as dangerous and again is best visited during the day by car or with a tour.
The district centers on Liberty Square, at NW 12th Avenue between 62nd and 67th streets. This sprawling low-rise development, nicknamed “Pork n’Beans” by locals on account of its pinkish-orange colour, was the first public housing project in the state, opening in Febuary 1937; thanks to its modern amenities, like indoor plumbing, it quickly began drawing blacks form Colouredtown. Today, the identical row houses, separated by threadbare lawns and barely affording residents any privacy, are much less appealing-note then remnants between 63rd and 64th streets of the six-foot-high segregation wall erected to keep the black and white communities separate. Look, too, for tributes to the tributes to the late civil rights leader martin Luther King: there’s a particularly moving mural at NW 62nd street and 7th Avenue, the hub of the local economy and home to a few interesting stores and restaurants.
On the southwestern fringes of Liberty City, the Black Archives History and Research Foundation of South Florida, at 5400 NW 22nd Avenue houses historical documents gathered from the local community. It’s not, however, designed for drop-in visitors; call ahead if you want to use the facilities or go on a tour of Overtown and Liberty City. The only other Local attraction is African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, at 6161 NW 62nd St. which offers Afrocentric classes in performing and fine arts along with a small gallery and theatre. Continued >>>