The Fontainebleau

What It Is

The Fontainebleau is a sprawling oceanfront resort on Collins Avenue in Mid-Beach, designed by Morris Lapidus and opened in 1954 on the former grounds of the Firestone estate. Its signature is the sweeping curved tower wrapped around a lavish pool and lobby — a deliberate piece of theater that Lapidus built around the idea that guests should feel like the stars of their own movie. The "stairway to nowhere," the bow-tie marble floor, and the famous columns were all stagecraft. Over the decades the property has been expanded, renovated, and reinvented many times, but its scale and ambition have never shrunk.

Why It Matters

The Fontainebleau is the anchor of Mid-Beach and arguably the single building that defined Miami Beach's MiMo postwar boom. Where the earlier Art Deco district was small-scale and modest, Lapidus gave the postwar era a new register — big, curvy, and shameless. It hosted Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, appeared in films, and became shorthand for a certain kind of American glamour. It also set the template Miami would keep returning to as it grew into a Latin American business and leisure capital: the city has always understood that spectacle is a product, and the Fontainebleau sold it first.

Neighborhoods: Mid-Beach Eras: The MiMo / Postwar Boom Related people: Morris Lapidus