Vacation Rentals in Miami |
A long slender arm of land between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, three miles off mainland Miami, MIAMI BEACH was an ailing fruit farm in the 1910s when its Quaker owner, John Collins, formed an unlikely partnership with a flashy entrepreneur, Carl Fisher. With Fisher's money, Biscayne Bay was dredged. The muck raised from its murky bed provided the landfill to transform this wildly vegetated barrier island into a carefully sculptured landscape of palm trees, hotels and tennis courts. After a hurricane in 1926 devastated the city and especially the beach, damaged buildings were replaced by grander structures in the new Art Deco style and Miami Beach as we know it appeared. Since then, its history has been checkered: by the 1980s, crack dens and retirement homes were equally commonplace in South Beach, but the 1990s saw a renaissance spearheaded by a few savvy hoteliers and Miami's gay community.
One of the groups that remained in Miami Beach through it all was its sizable Jewish population, including many Holocaust survivors and their families. The Holocaust Memorial at 1933 Meridian Ave (daily 9am-9pm; free; tel 305/538-1663), at Dade Boulevard and Meridian Avenue opposite the visitor center, is a complex, uncompromising monument to their experience. From a distance, the impression is of a giant, defiant hand punching into the sky; as you approach, however, you make out the mass of wailing people scrabbling up the wrist. Following the wall of names, inscribed with a relentless list of Holocaust victims, brings you to the foot of the sculpture, hidden from the road, where distressing statues portray more writhing, emaciated human figures. The whole, brutal, ensemble is underscored by the accompanying quote from Anne Frank: "Ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered."
A few blocks northeast is the prestigious Bass Museum , in a lovely Art Deco building at 2121 Park Ave (tel 305/673-7530 for opening times and prices). The museum has been undergoing major renovations, overseen by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, and its reopening has been put back several times: at time of writing, it was scheduled for early 2002. The museum's permanent collection consists of fine, if largely unremarkable, European paintings, although its temporary exhibitions are often lively and worth visiting.
The beaches of Miami Beach
If you took away the Art Deco, the beautiful people and the glittering nightlife, you'd still be left with the simple truth that Miami has a fabulous choice of beaches , twelve miles of calm waters, clean sands, swaying palms and candy-colored lifeguard towers - even if much of the sand in Lummus Park was shipped in from the Bahamas. The young and the beautiful soak up the rays between 5th and 21st, a convenient hop from the juice bars and cafés on Ocean Drive. Lummus Park , from 6th to 14th, is the heart of the South Beach scene, and there's an unofficial gay section roughly around 18th. North of 21st it's more family-oriented, with a boardwalk running between the shore and the hotels up to 46th. To the south, Ocean Park and South Pointe are favored by Cuban families, and are especially convivial at weekends. For swimming , head up to 85th, a quiet stretch usually patrolled by lifeguards.
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from $69.95 USD