RT South Beach

Neighborhood in Miami Beach, including Ocean Drive, known mostly for its Art Deco hotels and restaurants/bars, many of which have been prominently featured in numerous movies and media

General Information

Hours:

Fees:

Pet Policy:

Pets allowed

Closest cities with hotels:

Miami Beach

Seasons:

All year though Summer can be very hot and humid. Mosquitoes are less troublesome during Winter months

Miami, FL Weather Forecast

Getting There

Get on I-95 N from S Miami Ave. Get on FL-907 N/Alton Rd in Miami Beach from MacArthur Causeway. Follow FL-907 N/Alton Rd and 11th St to Pennsylvania Ave.

Overview

South Beach is the southern tip of Miami Beach, wedged between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It's best known for Ocean Drive, lined with pastel Art Deco hotels, sidewalk cafes, and nightclubs — several of which are famous in their own right, including the 1939 Colony Hotel, the most photographed Art Deco hotel in the world, and the Carlyle Hotel, whose exterior stood in for the drag club in The Birdcage. The Sunray Apartments here also appeared in the chainsaw scene from Scarface, and Miami's overall look inspired the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In 2020, Miami closed Ocean Drive to cars, turning it into a pedestrian promenade with expanded sidewalk seating. Just off the drive sits Casa Casuarina, the former home of Gianni Versace and one of the most photographed houses in North America. The neighborhood's colorful lifeguard towers, redesigned after Hurricane Andrew, have become another visual symbol of Miami Beach.

History

Developer Carl Fisher began building South Beach into its own city apart from Miami starting in 1913. The Art Deco, Streamline Moderne, and Nautical Moderne buildings that define the neighborhood today mostly went up between the Great Depression and the early 1940s, giving South Beach the largest collection of Art Deco architecture anywhere in the world. Many of these buildings were nearly lost to redevelopment before 1980, when preservationist Barbara Baer Capitman led the push to place almost a square mile of South Beach on the National Register of Historic Places, creating the Miami Beach Architectural District in 1979. The area is now one of Miami's most desirable — and expensive — places to live.

LGBT Community

South Beach has long been a center of Florida's LGBT life and nightlife, especially through the 1980s and '90s. Ocean Drive remains a social hub, and Lincoln Road is known for LGBT-friendly shopping and cocktails.

Lummus Park

This 74-acre beachfront park runs along Ocean Drive, with grassy lawns, palm trees, volleyball courts, and a wavy beachside Promenade — inspired by Roberto Burle Marx's oceanfront walk in Rio de Janeiro — that turns into a boardwalk past 21st Street. Its photogenic backdrop has made it a favorite filming location, most famously for Miami Vice.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "South Beach", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0