Dinner Key

What It Is

Dinner Key is a stretch of Coconut Grove bayfront that served, in the 1930s and 1940s, as Pan American Airways' base for its flying-boat clippers, the seaplanes that linked Miami to Latin America before long runways made them obsolete. After the airline left, the streamlined terminal building was repurposed, and Miami City Hall moved in. The surrounding area now holds one of the city's larger marinas and stretches of public waterfront.

Why It Matters

Dinner Key is where Miami's role as the gateway to Latin America first took physical form: Pan Am chose it precisely because the city was the natural jumping-off point south, an early version of the connectivity the postwar boom would build on. The conversion of the clipper terminal into City Hall is a tidy bit of Miami symbolism, a building made for reaching Latin America turned into the seat of local government. It keeps a piece of aviation history anchored on the Coconut Grove shore.

Neighborhoods: Coconut Grove Eras: The MiMo / Postwar Boom