There’s no doubt that South Beach is hot, but today’s buzzy iteration of the picture-perfect slice of South Florida is not its first or only heyday. The barrier island was mere farmland through the early 1900s, when two Miami businessmen and visionaries had the idea to develop the island by building single-family homes; construction of the Collins Bridge (later replaced by the Venetian Causeway) began in 1913.
With several roads sufficient to accommodate automobile traffic, the Town of Miami Beach was incorporated in 1915—just in time for the Roaring Twenties. And the era’s elite, with their mansions and their penchant for the finer things, came flocking. The ensuing decades were the golden age of South Beach, a time when the rich, the famous, and the stylish chose this stretch of sand as the place to see and be seen. Ritzy hotels were constructed all up and down the shoreline, particularly in the 1950s.
