Art Deco Architecture in Miami Beach

Abstract

The Art Deco Historic District in Miami Beach, Florida houses the nation's greatest concentration of “Resort” Style Moderne or “Art Deco” architecture. The buildings, mostly small hotels, are as stylistically consistent and compatible as they are concentrated. Their extraordinary homogeneity and cohesiveness in style, scale, proportions, materials and specific design features reflect a combination of social, economic and historic forces during their brief period of construction, dating from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s. They may be considered an artistic reponse to, and have become a distinctive material symbol of, the unusual sense of place and spirit of Miami Beach during the Depression. The characteristic design features of this upbeat, almost whimsical style and the factors responsible for its emergence in Miami Beach in the Depression era are examined in this study.