In the South Beach area, in Miami Beach, Florida, USA, is the largest Art Deco District in the world. With its nearly a thousand buildings, in addition to being the largest Art Deco neighborhood in the United States of America, it is considered the largest district in the world in this genre. From the 1940s when the district was in decline it was called “Old Miami Beach”. Subsequently, thanks to the significant restoration and conservation that was carried out in numerous of its buildings, from Collins Avenue to Ocean Drive, in 1979 the Art Deco Historic District of Miami Beach was inscribed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In the Art Deco style, also known as the interwar period, since it began at the end of the First World War in 1918 and ended at the beginning of the second in 1939, decoration prevailed over functionality. It was characterized by the influence of styles such as Art Nouveau, Cubism, Bauhaus, Egyptian, Oriental, African and American art, both in decoration and architecture. In the latter discipline, for example, apart from primary geometric shapes such as cube, circle, or straight lines, zig-zag, parallel and flashes or rays, staggered volumes, terrazzo floors, symmetry, moldings on ceilings, tropical colors in pastel tones, bas-reliefs, as well as the introduction of luxurious materials such as marble or granite; Neon lights are also undoubtedly one of its most characteristic features.
This important style had its origin in Paris, specifically in the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts that took place in this city from April to October 1925, when it was at its peak. The style bets on artisanal quality as opposed to the industrial rationalist ideas of the Bauhaus. The Art Deco style had great influence on the decoration of the time, theater, cinema, photography, advertising and also on architecture, as evidenced by its appearance in such famous television series as Miami Vice.
The influence of the Art Deco style came from Europe with great force to the United States, also to the city of New York, as evidenced by some of its most representative skyscrapers built in the 1930s such as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, -one of the most famous due to the pyramidal finish of stainless steel top finish with the characteristic triangular windows, or the General Electric Building, formerly known as RCA Victor Building, whose crowning finish could well have influences of Antoni Gaudí’s own Modernism made in La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
In San Francisco, after erecting the two huge towers of the Golden Gate Bridge that saves the entrance to San Francisco Bay, the design team realized that the towers did not offer an aesthetic aspect that was at the height of the monumental work, so after several studies they came up with the great idea of giving the bridge an Art Deco style, booming during those years; however, one observer defined the Golden Gate Bridge as “the largest Art Deco sculpture in the world.”
In Miami, the trend of boutique hotels, which served a particular location, service and design, became very fashionable in the 1980s, so that numerous bars, cafes, nightclubs and trendy restaurants were installed on the extensive Collins Avenue and Ocean Drive, where cars of the brand of the time such as Cadillac or Rolls-Royce were parked that recreated the Art Deco atmosphere of the 1920s; Of course all of them two steps from the turquoise blue beach.
The Art Deco style had its peak during a -great depression- or economic crisis, which motivated Americans to begin to be interested in this beautiful classic and at the same time modern style, which undoubtedly managed to greatly raise the spirits of the country. The Art Deco Historic District of South Beach could be considered as an authentic open-air architectural museum in which you will find emblematic buildings and symbols of the Art Deco style as important as the Colony Hotel, the Delano Hotel or the Berkeley Hotel, among many others.
