The first part of the city to be built
South Beach is the part of Miami Beach south of Dade Boulevard, between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic. Its northern edge is generally described as Dade Boulevard from Lincoln Road on the bay side, then east-north-east to 24th Street. It was the first section of Miami Beach to be developed, starting in the 1910s.
From the bay side, its principal north-south streets are Bay Road, West Avenue, Alton Road, Lenox, Michigan, Jefferson, Meridian, Euclid, Pennsylvania, Drexel and Washington Avenues, then Collins Avenue, which is State Road A1A, and Ocean Drive.
The Art Deco District
The Miami Beach Architectural District, also called the Miami Art Deco District, was designated on May 14, 1979. It is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Sixth Street, Alton Road, the Collins Canal and Dade Boulevard, and contains 960 historic buildings.
Its Art Deco buildings cover Streamline, Tropical and Med-deco styles and went up mostly between the Great Depression and the early 1940s. Before Art Deco, the district built mainly in Mediterranean Revival, and many of those buildings, mostly from the early to mid-1920s, still stand. The Ocean Drive hotels run from 5th to 15th Streets and front onto Lummus Park, a public park and beach.
The city created its first two local historic districts in 1986, covering Espanola Way and most of Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue. The districts added in 1992 took in Lincoln Road, Collins Avenue between 16th and 22nd Streets, and the area around the Bass Museum.
Where the apartments and condominiums are
Flamingo/Lummus, named for the two parks inside it, is the largest residential district of South Beach. It runs from 5th Street to Lincoln Road and from Alton Road to Lummus Park, and holds many Art Deco and Mediterranean Revival apartment buildings from the 1920s and 1930s. Flamingo Park covers 36.5 acres, with an aquatic center and 17 tennis courts.
The West Avenue Corridor runs from 5th Street to 17th Street, between the east side of Alton Road and Biscayne Bay. It holds over 40 condominiums, several single-family homes and a number of rental buildings.
Lincoln Road and the stages
Lincoln Road Mall is a pedestrian street running east-west between 16th and 17th Streets. Morris Lapidus designed it with gardens, fountains, shelters and an amphitheater, in the MiMo style he pioneered in the 1950s, and it was added to the National Register on May 6, 2011. The Colony Theatre and ArtCenter/South Florida are on it.
In January 2011 the New World Symphony moved into the New World Center, designed by Frank Gehry, and the Miami City Ballet is housed in a 63,000-square-foot building near the Bass Museum of Art. Espanola Way, from Collins Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue, was conceived by N.B.T. Roney in 1925 as “The Historic Spanish Village.”
Worth weighing before you buy
- Most of Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue, Espanola Way and Lincoln Road lie in the city’s local historic districts, where staff may approve repairs, windows, awnings and paint and total demolition needs the Historic Preservation Board.
- In Flamingo/Lummus, a 1920s or 1930s apartment building held as a condominium with three or more habitable stories was due its first milestone inspection before December 31, 2024, so its summary should be on hand.
- For the West Avenue Corridor’s condominiums, the structural integrity reserve study: for budgets adopted from December 31, 2024, owners in an association that must have one can no longer vote to fund less than it requires.
