Selected Events for
Development of Tourist Sites
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| Year |
Month |
Day |
Event |
Related
Resource |
| 1825 |
December |
17 |
The Cape Florida Lighthouse was completed. The site was the southern tip of Key Biscayne. |
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| 1890 |
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The settlement of Lemon City began to take shape. It was two miles north of the Miami River on the shore of Biscayne Bay. The area - set roughly where today's Biscayne Boulevard and Sixty-first streets intersect - was then called Billy Mettair's Bight. The area had homes, hotels, saloons, and several other businesses. |
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| 1894 |
February |
11 |
Henry Flagler's Royal Poinciana Hotel opened in Palm Beach. |
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April |
02 |
Henry Flagler's railroad reached Palm Beach. |
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| 1896 |
May |
15 |
Miami's first newspaper, The Miami Metropolis, made its debut, stating that, "This is the first paper ever published on the beautiful Bay Biscayne, the most southern newspaper on the mainland of the United States." It went on to describe the young settlement as "the coming metropolis of South Florida." |
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| 1897 |
January |
16 |
The Hotel Royal Palm opened for business fifteen days behind schedule. Henry Flagler built the hotel at a cost of $750,000 to draw passengers onto his new railroad line extending to Miami. The hotel stood until 1931. |
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| 1906 |
January |
20 |
The Halcyon Hall Hotel opened in Miami on the later site of the Dupont building. |
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| 1907 |
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John Roop built an observation tower on Musa Isle. It allowed people a view out over the Everglades, which then started at what is today N.W. 22nd Avenue. |
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| 1912 |
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Carl Fisher arrived in Miami Beach late in the year. He wanted to develop a new city in and of itself, separate from Miami. |
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| 1913 |
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Joe Weiss, a Jewish waiter from New York, arrived in Miami and opened a lunch stand at Smith's Casino on in Miami Beach. In 1920, he and his wife, Jennie, opened their own restaurant called Joe's on the tip of Miami Beach that specialized in seafood and, eventually, Stone crab. |
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| 1914 |
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The W.J. Brown Hotel opened on Miami Beach. It was the first hotel to open on the island. |
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Collins Avenue, the first paved road on Miami Beach, opened. It was the first road on the island suitable for automobiles. |
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| 1915 |
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J.N. and J.E. Lummus sold some of their oceanfront property to Miami Beach for $40,000. To be named Lummus Park, the land was dedicated as both a public park and beach. |
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Carl Fisher cleared Lincoln Road. |
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January |
01 |
The Miami Chamber of Commerce was founded. |
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March |
26 |
John Collins, the Lummus brothers, and Carl Fisher consolidated their efforts and successfully incorporated the Town of Miami Beach. At the time, the Beach had three hundred residents, but a mere thirty-three registered voters. They elected J.N. Lummus as the first mayor of Miami Beach. |
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| 1916 |
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Fisher opened the Lincoln Hotel. It stood at the corner of Washington Avenue and Lincoln Road. |
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| 1917 |
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The status of Miami Beach was changed from town to city. |
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| 1920 |
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Carl Fisher's Roman Pools and Casino open at 22nd Street and the Ocean. |
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Carl Fisher's Miami Beach Railway Company helped to link Miami and Miami Beach. A single line connecting downtown and south Miami Beach ran via the County Causeway. |
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The construction of Star Island was begun by the Army Corps of Engineers. |
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December |
31 |
The Flamingo Hotel opened at 15th Street and the Bay on New Year's Eve. |
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| 1922 |
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The Bayshore Golf Course is completed. |
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| 1924 |
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The LaGorce Golf Course is completed. Fisher names it after his friend, Rockwell LaGorce. |
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January |
10 |
The Nautilus Hotel opened for business on the present site of the Mount Sinai Hospital. |
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| 1925 |
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The Floridian Hotel was built. |
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February |
18 |
The Olympia Theater opened. It was the first building in Miami to be air conditioned. The theater hosted a variety of acts, but its specialty was the vaudeville show. It drew large crowds through the 1950s, but later faced demolition until being purchased by Maurice Gusman in 1971. |
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| 1926 |
January |
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The Roney Plaza Hotel was completed and opened for business. |
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January |
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The Biltmore Hotel was completed after ten months of construction for a cost of $10 million. |
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February |
28 |
Venetian Way (now called the Venetian Causeway) opened to traffic. It was built over what had been the route for the Collins Bridge. |
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November |
11 |
Biscayne Boulevard was extended to Thirteenth Street. |
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| 1927 |
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The Million Dollar Pier is completed at the southern tip of Miami Beach. |
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The Kennel Club opens at the southern tip of Miami Beach. |
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February |
11 |
Biscayne Boulevard was extended to Twenty-ninth Street. |
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July |
28 |
The Greater Miami Airport Association was created. |
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| 1928 |
January |
04 |
The first nonstop flight from Miami to New York took place. |
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January |
16 |
The first scheduled passender flight from south Florida to Cuba took place. It was a Pan American Airways flight from Key West to Havana. |
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September |
15 |
Pan American Airways established its base of operations in Miami. It had previously been in Key West. |
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| 1929 |
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The city of Miami Beach acquires Flamingo Park and dedicates it as a public facility. |
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The North Bay Causeway opened. It linked Miami Beach with the mainland at what is today Seventy-ninth Street. The intersection at Seventy-ninth and Biscayne Boulevard subsequently gained importance, and as Miami emerged from the Great Depression and later World War II, it and its outlying areas experienced a period of intense development. Many of the buildings near this intersection built in the 1950s and 1960s were designed along classic Modernist lines. |
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| 1930 |
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The Boulevard Shops on Biscayne Boulevard were built. One block away from Miami's first Art Deco building - the Sears Roebuck store - this group of upscale retail shops was another fine example of this type of architectural design. They were designed by Robert Law Weed. |
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January |
13 |
The Miami Civic Center opened on Biscayne Boulevard. It was later renamed the Mayfair Art Theater. |
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| 1931 |
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Colonel Henry L. Doherty purchased the Miami-Biltmore, the Roney Plaza, and the Key Largo Angler's Club. In doing so, he formed the Florida Year Round Club. This move aimed to counteract the negative impacts of the Great Depression and establish Miami and Miami Beach as year-round tourist destinations. |
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| 1933 |
January |
01 |
Miami hosted its first Orange Bowl, even though it was not referred to as such. The University of Miami and Manhattan College played in "The First Annual New Year's Day Football Classic," which was held at Moore Park. |
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| 1934 |
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The Everglades National Park was created. Congress authorized 2,164,480 acres to be acquired for the park through public and private donations. Some of the largest landowners in the Everglades sought a minimun price for their land. The price of $5.00 per acre was chosen. |
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| 1935 |
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The Miami area began to emerge from the Great Depression. The recovery in South Florida preceded that which occurred in other cities. By the mid-1930s, a string of new hotels built in the Art Deco style began to rise from the ruin caused by not only the Depression, but the hurricane of 1926. |
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| 1936 |
December |
20 |
Parrot Jungle Island opened. Started by Franz Scherr and originally located on Red Road, one hundred visitors paid twenty-five cents admission to see twenty-five birds and the flora and fauna of his park on this first day. Today, Parrot Jungle is home to over one thousand birds and has moved to a site along the MacArthur Causeway between Miami and Miami Beach. The original grounds on Red Road remain, and the park has renamed as Pinecrest Gardens. |
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| 1938 |
March |
23 |
Fairchild Tropical Garden was dedicated. In 1935, Colonel Robert M. Montgomery and his wife Nell Foster Montgomery had purchased eighty acres and founded a public botanical garden, setting the stage for the establishment of the tropical garden that still exists today. |
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| 1939 |
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The Clevelander Hotel opened at 10th and Ocean Drive. |
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| 1940 |
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The Cadillac Hotel was built. Its name was changed to the Courtyard Oceanfront after a renovation in 2003. |
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The National Hotel opened in Miami Beach. Designed by Roy France, it was one of the last large hotels built in the Art Deco style. |
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The Deco Grossinger Beach Hotel opened. Later to be called the Ritz Plaza Hotel, it was designed by L. Murray Dixon in classic Art Deco style. Seven years later, the Delano Hotel opened directly across the street. |
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| 1941 |
April |
10 |
A memorial to Carl Fisher was dedicated. It was in Miami Beach at Fifty-first Street and Alton Road. |
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| 1942 |
April |
15 |
Formerly called Municipal Pier, the Serviceman's Pier opened to recreation-seeking soldiers. The Miami Beach Pier Association's first president, Kay Pancoast, worked tirelessly to raise funds for the project, and within one year, over 200,000 servicemen visited the pier. |
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| 1943 |
June |
14 |
The Greater Miami Port Authority was created. |
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| 1945 |
June |
11 |
The Dade County Port Authority was created. It replaced the Greater Miami Port Authority, which had been created two years earlier. |
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August |
01 |
The first ferry traveled to Virginia Key. |
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August |
08 |
Dade County established Virginia Beach as a black-only beach. The Virginia Key beach remained as such for years. |
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December |
01 |
The Serviceman's Pier in Miami Beach closed. |
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| 1946 |
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The Sherry Frontenac opened in Miami Beach. The construction of this hotel, designed by Henry Hohauser, marked a shift in the epicenter of tourist activity from the Lincoln Road area of Miami Beach to an area just north where hotels such as the Sherry Frontenac, the Delano, and the Fontainebleau were being built. There were certain aspects of the hotel's design, such as its smokestacks and "gangplank" bridge, that were quintessentially Art Deco. |
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January |
01 |
The Dade County Port Authority bought the airport on NW Thirty-Sixth Street. They purchased it from Pan American Airways for $2.5 million. |
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| 1947 |
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The Delano Hotel opened on Miami Beach next door to the National Hotel. The hotel was designed in the Art Deco style by Robert M. Swarthburg. |
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The Everglades National Park was dedicated. President Harry Truman was there for the dedication. |
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July |
21 |
Miami and Miami Beach adopted a tourist tax. It was a tax of 5% on hotel and apartment bills. |
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December |
06 |
President Truman dedicated Everglades National Park. |
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| 1948 |
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The Saxony Hotel opened in Miami Beach. It was designed by Roy France, who also designed the National Hotel of 1940. The Modernist Saxony was part of a new generation of hotels built in Miami and Miami Beach. It and many of the other new buildings lacked the ornamental Art Deco motifs that were to be seen for the last times in the designs of the Sherry Frontenac and the Delano hotels. |
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| 1949 |
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The Casablanca Hotel opened. Roy France designed the hotel, which was named after the famous film staring Humphrey Bogart. The hotel can be described as Modernist in its design, but it also incorporated elements of the International Style and Hollywood-themed kitsch. The latter of these came to influence the way developers in Las Vegas, Nevada designed their resorts decades later. |
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October |
29 |
The town of Hacienda Village was incorporated. It was to serve as a casino town. |
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December |
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The Sans Souci Hotel opened at 3101 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. The hotel's partners had hired architect Roy France to design the structure. When they became disappointed with his work, however, they brought in someone else. The Sans Souci would become the first hotel in the Miami area designed by the architect Morris Lapidus. While the exterior was left much as France had originally intended, the interior was infused with the style of Lapidus. |
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| 1951 |
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The Bombay Hotel opened. The hotel's name was later changed to the Golden Sands Hotel. It was the first hotel in Miami Beach to offer its guests a parking garage. Norman M. Giller designed the building. On why his was the first hotel to have a garage, Giller said that, "in the Art Deco days we were in a Depression, so nobody was thinking about cars, because not too many people had them." |
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| 1953 |
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The Lido Spa opened on Belle Isle along the Venetian Causeway. |
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December |
07 |
Miami's municipal pier collapsed. |
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| 1954 |
December |
20 |
The Fontainebleau Hotel opened for business on Miami Beach at 4441 Collins Avenue. It was one of the Miami Beach hotels designed by architect Morris Lapidus. |
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| 1955 |
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The Eden Roc Hotel opened on Miami Beach. The hotel was designed by architect Morris Lapidus. |
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| 1956 |
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The Hotel Americana opened in Bal Harbour. It was designed by Morris Lapidus, architect of several already significant Miami Beach hotels. |
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January |
03 |
George Engle unveils the Coconut Grove Playhouse. It was a renovated movie theater, yet resembled a Broadway playhouse with its lavish quarters for star actors and actresses, gold plumbing fixtures, and top-notch dining rooms and bars. It opened with the American premier of "Waiting for Godot." |
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| 1957 |
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The Deauville Miami Beach Resort Hotel opened on Miami Beach. It stood on the site of what had been the McFadden Deauville Casino, and hosted acts such as the Beatles, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin. Melvin Grossman, a protege of the renowned Modernist architect Morris Lapidus, designed the hotel. |
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January |
25 |
The Sunshine State Parkway opened. Later to be called the Florida Turnpike, it opened on this day between Miami and Fort Pierce. Leroy Collins, Florida's governor, dedicated the road at the Fort Lauderdale exit. At this time, the speed limit was 60 miles per hour and the cost of traveling its length was $2.40. |
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| 1958 |
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CORE (the Congress on Racial Equality) challenged Dade County's exclusion of blacks from the largest of the city's whites-only beaches, Crandon Park. While Father Theodore R. Gibson tried to be heard by the Dade County Commission regarding the matter, a group of blacks took it upon themselves to use the park's facilities. Police arrived, took no action, and thus Crandon Park remained desegregated from that day on. |
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| 1959 |
January |
24 |
Miami International Airport was dedicated. |
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February |
01 |
The 20th Street terminal at Miami International Airport opened. |
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| 1960 |
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The Lincoln Road Mall was built in Miami Beach. Lincoln Road business owners felt threatened by the trend towards building large tourist hotels with their own selection of upscale shops, such as the Fontainebleau, that were blocks away from Lincoln Road. They taxed themselves in order to raise the necessary funds for a large revitalization project. Morris Lapidus, designer of the Fontainebleau and other Miami Beach hotels, was hired for the project. Soon, the Lincoln Road Mall became one of the most significant arena for Modernist architecture in Miami Beach. |
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May |
03 |
Dade County voters approved a new county-wide road system. With their vote, they allowed a $46 million bond to be issued for what would be a six year project. |
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| 1961 |
April |
01 |
The first major Miami hotel that had previously been segregated admitted blacks. Six black players in town with the Chicago White Sox stayed at the Biscayne Terrace Hotel in downtown Miami. |
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| 1962 |
October |
01 |
Dadeland Mall opened. At this time, it was only an outdoor strip-mall with fifty-eight tenants. One of them was a Burdines. |
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| 1964 |
February |
16 |
The Beatles stayed at the Deauville Hotel. Their second appearance on the Ed Sullivan show was broadcast from there. |
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March |
31 |
The first Coconut Grove Festival was held. Now called the Coconut Grove Art Festival is one of the largest art fairs in the nation. |
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| 1965 |
August |
1965 |
The National Football League (NFL) awarded the City of Miami a franchise. Joe Robbie and Danny Thomas, the teams owners, were the individual recipients. |
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October |
25 |
The Disney Corporation announces plans for Walt Disney World. The company plans to establish it in central Florida. |
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| 1966 |
September |
02 |
The Miami Dolphins played their first NFL game. They lost to the Oakland Raiders 23-14 at the Orange Bowl. 26,766 fans attended the game. |
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December |
19 |
The maiden voyage of Ted Arison's "MS Sunward I" marked the beginning of Miami's cruise industry. Arison owned this boat that departed Miami for the nearby port of Nassau, Bahamas. Over time, hundreds of cruise ships would call at Miami's port on their way to destinations around the globe. |
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| 1968 |
January |
14 |
The first NFL Super Bowl was played in the Orange Bowl. The Green Bay Packers defeated the Oakland Raiders. |
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August |
05 |
The Republican National Convention was held in Miami Beach. It lasted through August 8. |
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December |
29 |
The passenger terminal at the Port of Miami was dedicated. |
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| 1971 |
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Maurice Gusman purchased the Olympia Theater. Architect Morris Lapidus was hired to restore the historic building. It was later transferred to the City of Miami and renamed Gusman Hall. |
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October |
01 |
Walt Disney World opened in central Florida. |
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| 1972 |
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The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 was passed. It was aimed at protecting all marine life, specifically Florida's manatees. |
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July |
10 |
The Democratic National Convention was held in Miami Beach. |
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August |
21 |
The Republican National Convention was held in Miami Beach. |
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October |
20 |
The Gusman Philharmonic Hall opened. |
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| 1973 |
January |
14 |
The Miami Dolphins won the NFL Super Bowl, completing their undefeated season. |
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| 1976 |
June |
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The Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) was established. Five designers were responsible, and their goal was to preserve the Art Deco style and all historic well-built buildings in Miami Beach. |
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| 1977 |
December |
02 |
The Fontainebleau Hotel was purchased by a group led by Steve Muss. It was part of a deal that Muss made with Hilton Hotels. The hotel's new name was the Fontainebleau-Hilton, and for the first time since it opened in 1954, a sign displayed its name. |
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| 1979 |
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The Everglades were designated as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations. |
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May |
14 |
The Miami Beach Art Deco District was listed as an historic landmark in the United States national register. It was the first district created in the twentieth-century (largely in the 1930s and 1940s) to receive this designation. |
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| 1980 |
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Biscayne Bay National Park was established. As the status was changed from a national monument to a national park, Congress authorized the acquisition of new keys and reefs in the bay. |
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July |
07 |
The Metrozoo opened. This first section was twenty-five acres. |
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| 1987 |
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Bayside opened along the bay in downtown Miami. Full of shops, restaurants, and other attractions, its creation gave the city its first bayfront gathering place since the 1920s. |
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| 1988 |
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Lummus Park is listed as an historic landmark in the United States historical register. |
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February |
01 |
The American Airlines Arena was built with dredging from the bay. |
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July |
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The Miami Arena opened in the Overtown/Parkwest area. Julio Iglesias performed at the first event held at the arena. It was also to serve as the first home of the Miami Heat from the time of the team's debut later in the year. The city had received an NBA franchise one year earlier. |
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October |
12 |
The Senator Hotel was demolished. Author and preservationist Barbara Baer Capitman had called it a "symbol of the Deco District." Nevertheless, the Royale Group proceeded to raze the strcture as the nearly seventy year-old Capitman was taken away by Miami Beach police. The company was seeking to build a parking garage on the site to service their other nearby properties. |
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| 1989 |
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The Everglades National Park Protection and Expansion Act of 1989 was passed. The act authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to restore, as much as possible, the park's natural hydrological conditions, and the purchase of 107,000 additional acres of land to increase water flow on the park's eastern side. |
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| 1990 |
February |
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Miami's Holocaust Memorial was dedicated. South Florida's large Jewish population raised the funds for Ken Triester to design the memorial that was placed on Miami Beach. |
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| 1993 |
April |
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The Florida Marlins brought professional baseball to Miami. They played in Joe Robbie Stadium, which like the Dolphins, was in part owned by the man who owned the city's new MLB team - Wayne Huizenga. |
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August |
24 |
Groundbreaking for the Homestead-Miami Speedway took place one year after Hurricane Andrew hit south Florida. After Hurricane Andrew devastated South Dade, particularly the City of Homestead, longtime Miami motorsports promoter Ralph Sanchez met with Homestead's then-city manager Alex Muxo to negotiate a deal that would bring the facility to town with hopes of aiding in the revitalization of the city. Before completion of the project, H. Wayne Huizenga, owner of the Miami Dolphins, joined the team as a partner. |
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| 1994 |
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The Everglades Forever Act was passed. Passed by Florida's state legislature, this act underwrote $685 million for construction, land acquisition, and water treatment. $320 million was to come from sugar farmers to clean up farm runoff, and the rest was to come from taxpayers. |
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| 2000 |
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Miami Beach was named the #1 Urban Beach by the Surfrider Foundation. |
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