Lure of the Southland and Miami Beach: Miramar
The extension of Flagler’s railroad to Miami and then Key West prompted
developers to create exotic, fantasy-inspired subdivisions to entice tourists to
remain in South Florida and make the vacation resort their permanent homes.
Famed aviator Glenn Curtiss developed the Arabian-themed Opa-Locka community in
1926, complete with Moorish architecture, stuccoed domes, minarets, and turrets.
In the same year, George Merrick chose the Mediterranean features of Washington
Irving’s Legends of the Alhambra (1832) as a source for his elegant Coral Gables
development.
As early as 1912, developer Frederick H. Rand, Jr. bought
property in a northern part of the city of Miami and designed it as a new
residential section of the city catering to the wealthy. The Miramar development
featured tropical shrubbery, parks, shade trees, and a common dock for all
property owners who purchased the elaborate stucco and stone houses built along
Biscayne Bay. This 1915 publication, The Lure of the Southland, predicted that
no section of the city of Miami would grow more rapidly than Miramar.
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