Century Beach Club (now part of the Marriott South Beach), 161 Ocean Drive
In 1997, the Century Beach Club — a small, 18-room beachside hotel that also functioned as a jazz club, and which was connected with the Century Hotel (see below) across the street — closed its doors. Its owners sold the property to corporate hotel developers, who eventually "incorporated" (read: emasculated) the structure as part of the huge Marriot South Beach, which can be seen in the background. With its superficial flourishes and pastel paint job, the Marriott tries to fit into the neighborhood. Ultimately, however, it is a Marriott hotel, and while that may comfort the traveler from the midwest looking for something familiar, this building is not South Beach, and should never have been built. The city certainly should never have allowed the virtual destruction of the Century Beach Club in this fashion.
As its name implies, this Mediterranean Revival structure on the west side of Ocean Drive was and is an annex to the Century Hotel just to the south. It has historically housed the Century's restaurant. The previous restaurant was called simply "Century" and closed in 1997. Joia, co-owned by South Beach impresarios Ingrid Casares and Chris Paciello, opened its doors shortly thereafter, serving modern Italian cuisine and attracting its fair share of the glitterati crowd.
This is the crown jewel of lower Ocean Drive, and one of the great Art Deco structures in all of South Beach. This small, 30-room hotel on the west side of Ocean Drive was designed by Henry Hohauser in unabashedly pure Art-Deco style and built in 1939. Its renovation was awarded the Miami Design Preservation League's Marker of Excellence in 1993. Probably the hippest place to stay on lower Ocean Drive, this unmatched beauty is still the second home of many fashion photographers and models when they are in town.
This Mediterranean Revival structure on the west side of the street, although altered over time, slipped away inexplicably at the dawn of the 21st century. It was renowned as an inexpensive but still funkily chic place to stay on lower Ocean Drive. The small lobby, portions of which can be seen in the above photo, had a clean, sleekly elegant design that was always worth a walk past. This building will be missed. We include it here as a cautionary tale as to how quickly Deco dreams can be demolished.
This Streamline Moderne style structure is, together with the Savoy, the Ocean Walk, and the Simone Hotel, the last of the pre-World War II beachside hotels in South Beach. It has seen better days, and is pretty much in the category of an SRO hotel, with low-income tenants frequently milling about in front, and is thus very much lower Ocean Drive as it was in the 1980s.
This small apartment building is typical of what is known as Post War Deco, the transitional form of Art Decon architecture spawned in the late 1940s. It is currently being overshadowed by the relatively massive Bentley Beach Hotel being constructed on the lot just to the south.
This is Miami Beach's first hotel. Built in 1915 by William J. Brown, it was constructed of pine and was modernized and stuccoed over the years, during which time it has changed names from the original Atlantic Beach Hotel to the Rainbow Hotel to, in its most recent incarnation until it closed in the 1990s, the Star Apartments. For the most part, however, it has been known as Brown's Hotel. William J. Brown claimed that the hotel was built on top of the stern of a hundred-year-old ship with oak planking four inches thick. Hurricane Andrew ripped some of its stucco off in 1992, revealing the original pine panels, which looked almost as if they were new. An unassuming white box until 2001, it underwent an incredible renovation that year when the stucco was stripped off. This realtively simple renovation has returned Brown's Hotel to what, as pictures from 1915 show, it originally looked like. The developer of this site should be given the key to the city and a ticker-tape parade.
Century Annex (originally the Seacrest Hotel, now Joia Restaurant), 150 Ocean Drive
The Century Hotel, 140 Ocean Drive
The Red Sands Hotel (formerly the Hotel Norwyn, and now a vacant lot), 126 Ocean Drive
Villa Luisa (former Hotel Walburne), 125 Ocean Drive
Seacrest Apartments, 121 Ocean Drive
Brown's Hotel (originally Atlantic Beach Hotel), 112 Ocean Drive