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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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