4441 Collins Ave.; Morris Lapidus, architect
Editor’s note: While Harold Bubil takes some time off, we’ll reprise some of his popular columns. This column originally ran on May 20, 2017.
It’s all about the curve.
If the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel (pronounced Fountain-Blue by the locals) had been built in a straight line, it might have been just another rectangular block of hotel rooms on a crowded shoreline. But Morris Lapidus, in the best traditions of Miami Beach architecture, chose to give his magnum opus a quarter turn.
Giving balconies to the top four floors helped break up the monotony, too.
From such whimsy, perhaps imagined as Lapidus brainstormed aboard a New York subway on his way to work in Manhattan, springs the delight that is the central element of architecture.
Here, we call it love.
The curve of the faade is not too sharp, not too slight. Put four of them together and you have a circle — but no beach views. At the Fountainebleau, guests finish the circle in their mind’s eyes until they go to their rooms and take in the ocean vistas.
The client was Ben Novack, who built the hotel on the old Harvey Firestone estate. Novack lost the property to bankruptcy in 1977, but a new owner bought it for $27 million a year later and invested $100 million in upgrades. Turnberry Associates bought it for $165 million in 2005 and completed a $1 billion renovation in 2008. The property now includes two condominium buildings to go with the 1,500-room hotel. Many of Lapidus’ design touches, including the bow-tie tile floor in the lobby, have been retained.
Everyone loves this hotel, movie producers and stars foremost among them. It has provided scenery for many productions over the years, including the James Bond thriller “Goldfinger” in 1964, the Whitney Houston-Kevin Costner vehicle “The Bodyguard” in 1992, and the farcical Jerry Lewis hit “The Bellboy” in 1960. That same year, Frank Sinatra televised there a welcome-home show for Elvis Presley, who had been in the Army for two years. More recently, it was the inspiration behind the fictional Miramar Playa hotel in the 2012-13 Starz series “Magic City,” set in Miami in the late 1950s.
Architects certainly love it. In 2007, the American Institute of Architects ranked it 93rd on its list of “America’s Favorite Architecture.” In 2012, it placed No. 1 on AIA-Florida’s “100 Years, 100 Places” online reader poll.
In 2008, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Lapidus was little-known before the Fountainebleau, which he called “the most pretentious hotel in the world.” But because of it, he was able to write a book titled “Too Much Is Never Enough.”
He once said, “If you create the stage setting and it’s grand, everyone who enters will play their part.”
The Fountainebleau has played its part as the hood ornament of the Florida dream for 63 years and, following the recent renovation, it is likely to stay that way for another 60 (sea level permitting).
Efforts to modernize the building have created more glitz and a bit less of the midcentury modern cool for which it was famous. But it still has the curve.
“Florida Buildings I Love” is Harold Bubil’s homage to the Sunshine State’s built environment.
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FLORIDA BUILDINGS I LOVE: No. 24: Fontainebleau, Hotel, 1954, Miami Beach - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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