Miami. Jan Nijman

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      Figure 12. Governor John W. Martin meeting a Seminole Indian at the construction of the Tamiami Trail, 1927. State Archives of Florida.

      Widespread public awareness of environmental decline did not emerge until later in the twentieth century. The prevailing mind-set at the time is pungently expressed in the film Sunshine State: a sly developer points to the meticulously landscaped surroundings of an exclusive South Florida golf resort and declares in an imperious and self-indulgent manner to his golfing partners, “We created this nature on a leash.” Still, some important early voices helped to stave off even greater disaster. The first ideas to create a protected park in the Everglades took shape in the 1920s. In those days, environmental consciousness of politicians and business leaders in South Florida and in Tallahassee lagged considerably behind that of some federal agencies. The pioneers behind the initial local environmental efforts consisted of a small group of individuals with influence in Washington, D.C. They included Stephen T. Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, Ernest F. Coe, a Miami local and a landscape architect who was educated at Yale, and David Fairchild, a famous tropical botanist.²⁸ The latter was the first president of the Tropical Everglades Park Association, established in 1928.

      After a visit to the area in 1929, an investigative committee authorized by Congress issued a report that revealed the changing appreciation of the South Florida wetlands: “We are compelled to admit that in a good deal of the Everglades region, especially in those parts now readily accessible by road, the quality of the scenery is to the casual observer under most conditions somewhat confused and monotonous. Its beauty in the large is akin to that of the other great plain: perhaps rather subtle for the average observer in search of the spectacular; though sometimes very grand, especially when seen in solitude and at rest instead of from a hurrying automobile.”²⁹

      Congress authorized the creation of the Everglades National Park in 1934 and President Truman dedicated it in 1947. It covers almost one-third of Miami-Dade County. The same year saw the publication of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas’ classic Everglades: The River of Grass.³⁰ It was a milestone in South Florida’s historiography because it expressed a view of nature that had been completely overshadowed by the mantra of development. It struck a chord with some segments of the public, but most locals remained remarkably disinterested in the ecological environs of their city.

      In 1949 Life contained a feature article on Miami Beach, referring to the island as the “crown jewel” of South Florida. To be sure, the 1950s once again belonged to the Beach. The island became immensely popular as one of the nation’s hottest vacation spots, especially for the rich. The 1950s saw a return of the glitz and glamour reminiscent of the roaring 1920s. Yet again a new style of architecture emerged, mainly in the central and northern parts of Miami Beach. Art deco was already passé and considered gaudy. In MiMo, short for Miami modern, the square structures with rounded corners and symmetrical ornamentation of art deco made way for a whimsical tropical style that was curvaceous, asymmetric, and daring. The best example of MiMo is the Fontainebleau Hotel, at Collins and 44th Street.

      The Fontainebleau was designed and built in 1953 by Morris Lapidus, whose adage “Too much is never enough”³¹ fit perfectly with the hedonistic disposition of the Beach’s wealthy pleasure seekers. Many critics considered the building a monstrosity and despised its flamboyant style. It became a symbol. With five hundred rooms, the Fontainebleau was double the size of any existing hotel on the Beach. Indeed, it caused problems for a number of smaller hotels in the deco district. Such is the backdrop to Hole in the Head, a movie from the 1950s in which Frank Sinatra plays a struggling small hotel owner on Ocean Boulevard who tries to connect with the tycoons who hang out in the Fontainebleau. Lapidus also designed one of the first outdoor pedestrian malls in the country: Lincoln Road was converted from a heavy-traffic artery into a shopping way for pedestrians in 1960 and promoted as the “Fifth Avenue of the South.”

      In the course of the 1940s and 1950s, Miami Beach’s clientele started to diversify. Besides its customary niche for the rich leisure classes from up north, it began to attract middle-income residents and tourists, northern retirees of more modest means, and Cuban visitors. For a growing number of upper-middle-class Cubans, a vacation in South Florida became a yearly event; for the wealthy, daily shopping trips to Miami were not uncommon. Many of the new residents settled in South Beach, the area roughly equivalent with the deco district. Despite the gradual introduction of air conditioning in the 1950s, the large majority of wintertime people on the Beach were snowbirds. In 1952, for example, the winter population of Miami Beach swelled to about 200,000 while the summer population stood at 45,541 residents.³² The growing Jewish population on the Beach maintained a seasonal character well into the 1950s: “The constant influx of a great number of visitors gave a special character to local Jewish institutions. The synagogues have the highest rate of ‘out-of-town’ attendance in the nation.”³³

      South Florida, and particularly Miami Beach, also continued to be a magnet to organized crime. By the late 1940s, the area was firmly embedded in Mafia networks centered in Chicago and New York, making it the “winter gangster capital of the world.”³⁴ In 1947, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover remarked, “If you put a dragnet around Twenty-third and Collins, and slapped every mobster you caught into jail for life, you’d end organized crime in America.”³⁵ Big mob names from this era include Hymie “Loudmouth” Levin and Jack “Greasy Thumb” Guzik. Miami’s appeal consisted of the weather, beaches, wealthy patrons, lots of entertainment, the absence of state taxes, and relaxed policing.

      Since the end of Prohibition, the main focus of organized crime was on gambling. Some of it was legal, as at the Hialeah racetrack, but most of it was not—there was also much irregular gambling at Hialeah Park and at the dog races. Lottery games, such as Cuban bolitas, targeted people with lower incomes. Miami, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, and Hollywood had well-known gambling parlors, but most of the action was on the Beach. Much of the racketeering money was spent lavishly on alcohol, food, women, cars, and entertainment. The Mafia also used its financial prowess to influence elections and public opinion, and to bribe officials. Considerable funds were plowed back into real estate, hotels, industries, and sports.³⁶ Miami Beach hotels owned or controlled by the Mafia around this time included the Wofford, the Boulevard, the Roney, the Grand, and the Sands.

      In 1950, the U.S. Senate appointed the Greater Miami Crime Commission, chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver, to investigate the escalation of organized crime in Greater Miami. The committee conducted hearings in Dade and Broward counties and reported in detail on key figures, places, practices, and networks. Kefauver branded Miami as a “plunder-ground … for America’s most vicious criminals.”³⁷ The committee’s work received lots of publicity but it did not stop the Mafia from extending its activities.

      One of the leading figures during the 1950s was Meyer Lansky. Born in Russia, he migrated to New York as a child and grew up with the mob. He first visited Miami in 1936 and brought the New York Jewish Mafia along with him. Lansky was known as the chairman of the board of the National Crime Syndicate, one of the biggest criminal organizations of the 1940s and 1950s. The syndicate had close ties to the Cosa Nostra and maintained operations in New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Havana.³⁸ Lansky set up gambling halls across South Florida but especially in Fort Lauderdale, where the competition was less. Many big hotels on the Beach, such as the Fontainebleau and the Singapore, were owned or controlled by the Minneapolis Group, one of Lansky’s corporate fronts. Lansky was one of the most successful mobsters ever. He brilliantly mixed illegal earnings with legal activities and lived a quiet private life. Lansky’s name is inscribed as a benefactor СКАЧАТЬ