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Coral Gables History
Alan Maltz
A Look Into The Past
By Stacey Steig
Coral Gables, the City Beautiful, stands out as a rare pearl
in South Florida, a cohesive community built on a grand
Mediterranean Revival architectural style to create an
overall harmony with the environment. Early city planners
and visionaries were influenced by the aesthetics of the
City Beautiful Movement that swept across America in the
early 1900's. Inspired by the works of landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed New York's Central
Park, The City Beautiful Movement encouraged the use of wide
tree-lined avenues, monumental buildings, winding roadways,
green space, ornate plazas and fountains galore. All these
elements of style have been and continue to be incorporated
by Coral Gables city planners.
Villa Viscaya, built in 1914 by James Deering, set the pace
for the Mediterranean Revival style that began to take hold
in South Florida during the 1920's land boom. Visionaries
like George Merrick of Coral Gables and Addison Mizner of
Palm Beach carried this style through, planning and
designing unparalleled communities to look as if they had
been picked up and transported directly from the
Mediterranean Coast in all their antiquity. For Merrick,
Majorca, Sevilla, Cartagena, and Malaga were not just cities
in Spain, but symbols of his American ideal; his dream was
to develop his vast land holdings while building on
Florida's rich Spanish history.
George Merrick (Founder of Coral Gables) came to Miami with
his family from Duxbury, Massachusetts in 1899. His father,
Reverend Solomon Merrick had purchased one hundred and sixty
acres of undeveloped land which he operated as a family
plantation, producing avocados, oranges and grapefruit on
land near what is now the Granada Golf Course. By 1921, ten
years after his father's death, George Merrick had amassed
about 3,000 acres of land, enough to begin a massive real
estate development project, unprecedented in Florida.
Merrick set out to prove that he was not only a man of great
imagination, but a man of action whose story is perhaps the
greatest Miami has ever known.
Merrick's plan was to create a new city called "Coral
Gables" named after the native rock home where he spent his
childhood. He would do it in a cohesive, aesthetic style
that would incorporate the visions of artists and poets,
like himself, who were rapt in the fever of the Florida land
boom and inspired by the simplest of beauties. It was an
exciting time for these frontiersmen, awestruck by Miami's
tropical climate and coastal magnificence. While they wanted
to put their own stamp on the real estate market, they were
anxious to share South Florida's beauty with the world,
seeking fame more than fortune. Together with a team of
extraordinary designers which included artist Denman Fink,
architects H. George Fink and Phineas Paist, and landscape
architect Frank Button, Merrick set out to create a unique
suburb of the city of Miami. A project that would be an
unrivaled beauty, constructed in the Mediterranean Revival
style, featuring all the elements of the City Beautiful
Movement right down to the finest details, like city lamp
posts. The Merrick land holdings were subdivided with clear
zoning and usage specifications. These original city
planners set aside residential and country club areas,
business, industrial and craft subdivisions and recreational
areas including bridle paths, parks, tennis courts and golf
courses.
Phineas Paist, the supervising architect or the city was
largely responsible for ensuring the continuity of
development of the city of Coral Gables and for creating the
aesthetic codes that keep Coral Gables beautiful today.
Paist established the Board of Architects Review Panel at
the city's conception, an organization that remains in
existence today. The Panel oversees architectural details
including paint selection and roofing tiles in terra cotta,
ocher and sienna colors which deflect and neutralize the
brilliance of the Florida sun. Paist was a known colorist
and created a vibrant color scheme for the city that ranged
from the pastels to the more intense, all true to the
original Mediterranean style. Under this master architect's
hand, even the newest buildings were made to look old.
Architectural designs featured the rounded arches and
loggias of ancient Rome, and the majority of homes were
built of concrete block or oolitic limestone (coral rock)
and finished with stucco. Artistic advisor Denman Fink who
was largely responsible for conceptualizing Coral Gables
Grand entryways and plazas, is credited for using exposed
brick on these colossal arches to give them the look of
antiquity.
By 1925, nearly the blink of an eye, the City of Coral
Gables was incorporated. During the four years between its
conception and incorporation seven million dollars of
property was sold, more than six hundred homes were
constructed, sixty-five miles roadway were built and over
eighty miles of sidewalks were added. Hence, the City of
Coral Gables was born.
The greatest miracle of this real estate boom in Coral
Gables, and an event indicative of the building fever that
swept over South Florida in the early 1920's was the rapid
erection of the Biltmore Hotel which stands today as an
enchanting example of Coral Gables trademark Mediterranean
style architecture. The Biltmore tower, which ends in a
three stage cupola, was inspired by the Giralda tower of the
Cathedral of Seville, Spain. This 400-room premier resort
designed by Leonard Schultze and S. Fullerton Weaver went up
in just 10 months, breaking ground in March of 1925 with a
grand opening held in January 1926. Today, the Biltmore
stands almost exactly as it did on opening day, right down
to its rich terra cotta color scheme.
As interest in Coral Gables real estate began to taper off,
George Merrick's creative wheels again began to turn and in
1926 he came up with a $75 million dollar plan to build what
was then the largest home development project in history.
Merrick's vision to build fourteen villages from different
international regions marked a severe departure from the
Mediterranean Revival style in Coral Gables. The goal of
this joint venture between Merrick, The American Building
Company and former Ohio Governor Myers Cooper was to attract
home buying prospects from up North by offering them some
variety in architecture. The Village Project which aimed to
showcase the architectural styles of China, France, Italy,
Mexico and Africa, among others was destined for failure, a
dream blown away with the Hurricane of 1926 and the ensuing
depression which put a screeching halt to land development.
Remnants of this dream stand today as vestiges of Merrick's
dream. Fewer than 80 of the 1,000 planned residences were
built, but many of them are still standing. The Florida
Pioneer village (Southern Colonial) stands today on Santa
Maria Street bordering the Riviera Country Club golf course,
the French 18th Century Village is located in the 1000 block
of Hardee Road, The French Normandy Village is on LeJeune
and Viscaya, and the Dutch South African Village is on
LeJeune at Maya Avenue. Also standing are the Italian
Village, which is spread throughout an area located just
south of Bird Road between Granada Boulevard and Riviera
Drive, and an 8-unit Chinese Village that stands out
colorfully from behind a gated wall on Riviera Drive, just
South of U.S. 1. A modern day group called The Villagers
currently has a project in the works to restore these
historic homesites.
By 1928 it became evident that George Merrick's luck had run
out. He fell heavily into debt and was removed from the
Coral Gables Commission, retreating to Matecumbe Key where
he operated a resort property left to his wife Eunice by her
parents. While Merrick eventually returned to Coral Gables,
becoming the postmaster for Dade County in 1940, he never
fully recovered his losses and died in 1942.
World War II breathed new life into the city of Coral Gables
as thousands of soldiers flooded the area, occupying many of
the unused buildings, including the University of Miami and
The Biltmore Hotel, which became an army hospital.
The emergence of Miracle Mile in the 1950's marked the
beginning of a new era of development in Coral Gables, and
paved the way for the commercial development in the 1960's.
During this time height restrictions were waived and several
high rises went up, drawing large American, Latin American
and Caribbean companies to the area. Without the watchful
eye of Phineas Paist and the City's other original
architects and planners, many of these newer buildings stood
out as anomalies, clashing stylistically with Mediterranean
Revival structures as much as the Chinese Village of the
early Merrick years. In 1986, the City adopted a
Mediterranean Architectural Ordinance which provides
incentives to builders who conform to the Mediterranean
Revival style, using terra cotta colors and barrel tile
roofs. While there are a few glass sheathed modernistic
buildings lingering out there, it appears that Coral Gables
has come back to its Spanish architectural roots.
Courtesy of Metro Magazine
Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce
360 Greco Avenue, Suite 100
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
Great news for Coral Gables... New Douglas Grand, with
grocery store, goes to market
By Frank Norton
With 159
apartments, a soon-to-open Publix and an asking price of $33
million, the Douglas Grand mixed-use development in Coral
Gables is on the market.
Development financiers Holliday Fenoglio Fowler are
marketing the historic 1500 Douglas Road address to possible
buyers interested in a mixed-use property.
The site was once
home to the Coliseum, a landmark venue built in 1927 by city
founder George Merrick and destroyed about 10 years ago for
redevelopment.
The
site, most recently a Service Merchandise store, is now home
to an eight-story mixed-use building called Douglas Grand,
owned by Douglas Road Partners. The
building offers a potential tenant mix of 22,000 square feet
of loft-styled office space, 159 mid-market apartments and a Publix supermarket to open early this summer, said Howard
Taft, senior managing director for Holliday Fenoglio
Fowler's Miami office. Publix
took over the lease for ground-floor space from Albertsons
supermarket after the chain decreased its Florida presence.
Abood
Wood-Fay Real Estate Group is marketing the office space to
business services such as law and accounting firms.
Amenities include a second-floor pool with views of Coconut
Grove and Miami, Mr. Taft said.
The
building's apartments, not accessible through Publix, opened
to residents in January and are now about 40% full, he said.
Building owners Douglas Road Partners, a partnership
involving BAP Development, were unavailable for comment.
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