billwisserphoto.com

Keywords: El Cyclon, Florida, Miami, Miami Beach, Post-Modern, STA Architectural Group, SoBe, South Beach, South Pointe, TheC yclone, USA, architecture, postmodern, style, townhouse

This Jetsons-like lifeguard stand was designed circa 1993 by architect Bill Lane and his friend, pop artist Kenny Scharf, and together they donated the design to the City of Miami Beach A body-painted waitress at the Groove Jet night club back in 1999 when South Beach was the center of the party universe Artist Stewart Stewart outside his Miami Beach home. The torrid 1990s, South Beach nightclub, The Warsaw Ballroom, orignally built as a cafeteria in 1939 and currently a delicatessen. Art Deco bas-reliefs including nudes on a small Miami Beach hotel designed by Henry Hohauser in 1936 An Art Deco bas-relief of nudes on a small Miami Beach hotel designed by Henry Hohauser in 1936 Brazilian models enjoying Miami Beach. Vintage sign on the exteror of a small Miami Beach aprtment house. This photo was made in November 1993, when many seniors still lived in the then rapidly gentrifying South Beach neighborhood. By 2000, the neighborhood was much more expensive, and the seniors were mostly gone. A Miami Beach mural painted by Lazaro Amaral advertises Mojitos -- a Cuban rum and mint leaf cocktail -- at Lario's on the Beach, a restaurant owned by singer Gloria Estefan and her manager/huband, Emilio The bustling Lincoln Road pedestrian mall features space-age, Miami Modern (MiMo) structures like this one designed by architect Morris Lapidus in 1959. Architect Morris Lapisus -- designer of the Fountainbleau and Eden Roc hotels and many other MiMo (Miami Modern) masterpieces. I photographed Morris several times -- here in his self-designed, South Beach duplex for The New York Times in December 1999 when he was 97 years old. The Art Deco-style Fairwind Hotel on Miami Beach's Collins Avenue was designed by L. Murray Dixon in 1939. The Colony Hotel on Miami Beach's neon-drenched Ocean Drive was designed by architect Henry Hohauser in 1935 -- a classic expression of this historic nighborhood's signature, streamlined Art Deco style. Art Deco door on a private home in the historic Flamingo Park area A 1965 Buick Riviera at Mac's Club Deuce Bar, an infamous Miami Beach watering hole and and dive bar where celebrities and supermodels rub shoulders with bag ladies and bums. Vintage Deco bas relief on door to a back room at Mac's Club Deuce Bar. The Murano Grande at the Miami Beach Marina on Biscayne Bay Art Deco finial on Miami Beach's MacArthur Hotel designed in 1930 by architect T. Hunter Henderson Art Deco detail, the Crescent Hotel, designed by Henry Hohauser in 1938 Palms wave against a tropical yellow, chartreuse and magenta postcard-sunset sky with Photshop-adjusted colors inspired by the heavily airbrushed, vintage 1930s and '40s photo postcards of Florida that I collect A classic, large letter, "Greetings from Miami Beach" postcard with a World War II spin -- there's a B-17 bomber at upper right and two uniformed men at lower left. Military training planes occuply the first letter M, while all the other letters feature traditional peacetime postcard fare: bathing beauties, palm trees silhouetted at sunset, a fishing boat, and so forth. During the war, the hotels were converted into barracks and South Beach became an Army Air Corps traiining camp. Thousands of men, including Clark Gable, who became a waist gunner and photographer on a B-17, trained here. Meanwhile, German submarines sank some U.S. tankers off the coast and smoke from burning ships could be seen from the beach. This postcard is from my collection. A beat-up lawn chair at a retirement home in a crumbling Art Deco, Miami Beach hotel in 1996, when many seniors still lived in South Beach. Hundreds of them stayed in hotels like this. Since then, hipsters and, later, mainstream tourists took over the neighborhood, and now it's no longer known as "God's Waiting Room." Tony Mendoza's paintings for sale at Art Deco Weekend street festival on Miami Beach's Ocean Drive A South Beach mural copies Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel The Raleigh Hotel pool, designed by architect L. Murray Dixon in 1940, was hailed by Life magazine as the most beautiful pool in Florida. Some say it still is. Miami Beach's Art Deco-style Beach Patrol Headquarters with two lifeguards standing on the roof...Designed by architect Robert A. Taylor, this remarkable Nautical Moderne structure was built in 1934 and resembles a ship's bridge, complete with porthole windows and a mast-like flagpole. An Art Deco sign. probably from the 1940s, advertises air conditioning at the Henrosa Hotel. Sadly, this charming and historic sign was removed when the hotel was recently remodeled. The splendid Lincoln Theater was designed in 1935 by Robert E. Collins and Thomas Lamb.