Last month, I took the kids on a quick, last-minute trip to Miami Beach for their spring break. We just missed the bulk of college party-goers, so Ocean Drive was busy but not overwhelming.

It had been over twenty years since I’d last visited Miami Beach. Back then, I was living in Atlanta, though for a few years I spent much of each week in Florida for work. So much work, in fact, I barely made it to the beach or the nightclubs or the art galleries.

In the 90s, Miami Beach had made a comeback after decades of crime, not to mention a glut in tourism following the 1971 opening of Disney in Orlando, which siphoned off vacationers. To compensate for the downfall of tourism, landlords and hotel owners soon began catering to middle-to-lower-class retirees. Meanwhile, better-off retirees soon began fleeing to tonier parts of South Florida. Miami Beach had become something it never wanted to be and never wants to be again: uncool, poor, old, and boring. It was during this time this quip took hold:

"Miami Beach is where neon goes to die."

But, by the later 80s and early 90s, artists and celebrities started flocking to the Beach, with the likes of Madonna, Prince, and Versace taking up residence there. Then, in 1997, in plain sight, Versace was fatally shot on the steps of his Ocean Drive home. It was perhaps a mere coincidence, but the designer’s murder seemed to mark an end to this great era. Things unraveled for a while, then bounced back again. Nowadays, the Beach is largely defined by its signature annual events: Art Basel Miami Beach, the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, and Winter Music Conference/Miami Music Week.

I was there at the height of the glamor and drama of the 90s if only to zip in and out for work. So, one morning while on vacation last month, I let the kids sleep in after a long day at the beach and went on a walking tour of the Art Deco district on Miami Beach, something I’d always wanted to do but never had the time. Not exactly a wild and crazy wish, but, you know, it was a family vacation.

Miami Beach is one of the cities with the highest concentrations of Art Deco buildings in the world. The historic district in South Beach boasts 800+ buildings built between 1923-1943. Despite a devastating 1926 hurricane and the real estate shock during the Great Depression, developers remained interested in Miami Beach. Fancy hotels and luxury condominiums began to crop up along the coastline, all in the style du jour, Art Deco.

Miami Beach’s building boom came during the second phase of Art Deco known as Streamline Moderne. It was less decorative—a more sober reflection of the Great Depression. It relied more on machine-inspired forms and American ideas in industrial design. It was buttressed by the belief that times would get better and was infused with the optimistic futurism extolled at America’s Worlds Fairs of the 1930s.

Miami Beach in the early 90s. Photo by British photographer and film director, Barry Lewis who started to document Miami Beach in South Florida in the late 80s, regularly flying out from London to capture portraits and street scenes.

The principal architects were New Yorkers Henry Hohauser and L. Murray Dixon, who designed approximately 70% of all of the buildings within the Miami Beach Art Deco District. The PBS show American Experience notes how their buildings were less expensive and less ornamented than more flamboyant Art Deco hotels, like New York City’s Waldorf Astoria, which was designed by the firm where Dixon got his career start. Their work was low-cost in order to serve middle-class tourists.

What makes Miami Beach remarkable is not only the way in which these architects used Art Deco to meet the local need for lower-cost resort architecture but the way in which they adapted the style to incorporate local motifs and historical styles. Miami Beach architects used local imagery to create what we now call Tropical Deco. These buildings feature relief ornamentation featuring whimsical flora, fauna, and ocean-liner motifs to reinforce the image of Miami Beach as a seaside resort.

The Art Deco district actually barely made it through the downtrodden 70s, when efforts were made to demolish much of the city's trademark Art Deco architecture and replace it with new urban development. Thankfully, the preservationists prevailed, in large part due to the work of one woman: Barbara Baer Capitman.

In 1976, Capitman and a group of historic preservationists formed the Miami Design Preservation League. They began a fight to save the long-neglected art deco buildings in Miami Beach. She lobbied politicians and developers with her forceful personality, in flowing dresses and tennis shoes.

She and her supporters held candlelight vigils, protest marches and stood in front of bulldozers that were about to demolish buildings. Several of the buildings the group sought to preserve were torn down including the Senator and New Yorker Hotels. However, many more were saved.

The group's efforts were rewarded when Miami Beach's Art Deco District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

My tour guide had also witnessed the golden 90s (perhaps a little more intimately than me, I’m guessing) and was well-versed in the architecture that fortunately still stands.

On tour, I was reminded of the “eyebrow, ” a little shelf above windows to provide shade (see above photos of Carlyle Hotel and Esses House) and the needle-like spire and radio tower often featured on the front of buildings.

It’s also way more evident to me now how many of the Beach’s Art Deco buildings are shaped like a ship with porthole windows and all.

Then, there are the geometric shapes, vertical lines, bright colors, and minimalist facades. The buildings of South Beach were originally painted white with subtle pastel trim. The candy colors came along in the 80s when interior designer Leonard Horowitz devised a palette of tones to draw attention to the architecture—and away from the squalor.

And, my goodness, all the coral.

Luxurious finishes and materials are classic elements of Art Deco design, and Miami Beach architects mined the ocean to clad entire facades and hotel lobbies. The use of coral was also a nod to the unique quality of Miami Art Deco—Tropical Deco. Some buildings incorporate raw and rough coral, while others have dyed and polished coral finishes.

Of course, mining coral has fortunately now been banned.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR:

So, if you find yourself in Miami Beach taking a stroll, here are the key design elements to keep an eye out for:

Over-all symmetry
ziggurat (stepped) rooflines
glass block
decorative sculptural panels
eyebrows
round porthole windows
terrazzo floors
coral finishes
curved edges and corners
elements in groups of three
neon lighting (used in both exteriors as well as interior spaces)

And be sure not to miss The Betsy Orb, a public work of art that honors the two famed principal architects of historic Miami Art Deco buildings. This egg-shaped, third-floor sky bridge connects two architecturally significant hotels: The Betsy (designed by L. Murray Dixon, built in 1941) and The Carlton (designed by Henry Hohauser, built in 1937).