Coral Gables
Coral Gables, the City Beautiful, stands out as a rare pearl
in South Florida, a cohesive community built on a grand Mediterranean Revival
architectural style to create an overall harmony with the environment. Early city
planners and visionaries were influenced by the aesthetics of the City Beautiful Movement
that swept across America in the early 1900's. Inspired by the works of landscape
architect Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed New York's Central Park, The City Beautiful
Movement
encouraged
the use of wide tree-lined avenues, monumental buildings, winding roadways, green space,
ornate plazas and fountains galore. All these elements of style have been and
continue to be incorporated by Coral Gables city planners.
Villa Viscaya, built in 1914 by James Deering, set the pace
for the Mediterranean Revival style that began to take hold in South Florida during the
1920's land boom. Visionaries like George Merrick of Coral Gables and Addison Mizner
of Palm Beach carried this style through, planning and designing unparalleled communities
to look as if they had been picked up and transported directly from the Mediterranean
Coast in all their antiquity. For Merrick, Majorca, Sevilla, Cartagena, and Malaga
were not just cities in Spain, but symbols of his American ideal; his dream was to develop
his vast land holdings while building on Florida's rich Spanish history.
George Merrick
(Founder of Coral Gables) came to Miami with his family from Duxbury, Massachusetts in
1899. His father, Reverend Solomon Merrick had purchased one hundred and sixty acres
of undeveloped land which he operated as a family plantation, producing avocados, oranges
and grapefruit on land near what is now the Granada Golf Course. By 1921, ten years
after his father's death, George Merrick had amassed about 3,000 acres of land, enough to
begin a massive real estate development project, unprecedented in Florida. Merrick
set out to prove that he was not only a man of great imagination, but a man of action
whose story is perhaps the greatest Miami has ever known.
Merrick's plan was to create a new city called "Coral
Gables" named after the native rock home where he spent his childhood. He
would do it in a cohesive, aesthetic style that would incorporate the visions of artists
and poets, like himself, who were rapt in the fever of the Florida land boom and inspired
by the simplest of beauties. It was an exciting time for these frontiersmen,
awestruck by Miami's tropical climate and coastal magnificence. While they wanted to
put their own stamp on the real estate market, they were anxious to share South Florida's
beauty with the world, seeking fame more than fortune. Together with a team of
extraordinary designers which included artist Denman Fink, architects H. George Fink and
Phineas Paist, and landscape architect Frank Button, Merrick set out to create a unique
suburb of the city of Miami. A project that would be an unrivaled beauty,
constructed in the Mediterranean Revival style, featuring all the elements of the City
Beautiful Movement right down to the finest details, like city lamp posts. The
Merrick land holdings were subdivided with clear zoning and usage specifications.
These original city planners set aside residential and country club areas,
business, industrial and craft subdivisions and recreational areas including bridle paths,
parks, tennis courts and golf courses.
Coral
Gables homes for sale
Phineas Paist, the supervising architect or the city was
largely responsible for ensuring the continuity of development of the city of Coral Gables
and for creating the aesthetic codes that keep Coral Gables beautiful today.
Paist established the Board of Architects Review Panel at the city's conception, an
organization that remains in
existence today. The Panel oversees architectural details including
paint selection and roofing tiles in terra cotta, ocher and sienna colors which deflect
and neutralize the brilliance of the Florida sun. Paist was a known colorist and
created a vibrant color scheme for the city that ranged from the pastels to the more
intense, all true to the original Mediterranean style. Under this master
architect's hand, even the newest buildings were made to look old.
Architectural designs featured the rounded arches and loggias of ancient Rome, and the
majority of homes were built of concrete block or oolitic limestone (coral rock) and
finished with stucco. Artistic advisor Denman Fink who was largely responsible for
conceptualizing Coral Gables Grand entryways and plazas, is credited for using exposed
brick on these colossal arches to give them the look of antiquity.
By 1925, nearly the blink of an eye, the City of Coral Gables
was incorporated. During the four years between its conception and incorporation
seven million dollars of property was sold, more than six hundred homes were constructed,
sixty-five miles roadway were built and over eighty miles of sidewalks were added.
Hence, the City of Coral Gables was born.
The greatest miracle of this real estate boom in Coral Gables,
and an event indicative
of the building fever that swept over South Florida in the early 1920's was
the rapid erection of the Biltmore Hotel which stands today as an enchanting example of
Coral Gables trademark Mediterranean style architecture. The Biltmore tower, which
ends in a three stage cupola, was inspired by the Giralda tower of the Cathedral of
Seville, Spain. This 400-room premier resort designed by Leonard Schultze and S.
Fullerton Weaver went up in just 10 months, breaking ground in March of 1925 with a grand
opening held in January 1926. Today, the Biltmore stands almost exactly as it did on
opening day, right down to its rich terra cotta color scheme.
Coral
Gables homes for sale
As interest in Coral Gables real estate began to taper off,
George Merrick's creative wheels again began to turn and in 1926 he came up with a $75
million dollar plan to build what was then the largest home development project in
history. Merrick's vision to build fourteen villages from different international
regions marked a severe departure from the Mediterranean Revival style in Coral Gables.
The goal of this joint venture between Merrick, The American Building Company
and former Ohio Governor Myers Cooper was to attract home buying prospects from up North
by offering them some variety in architecture. The Village Project which aimed to
showcase the architectural styles of China, France, Italy, Mexico and Africa, among others
was destined for failure, a dream blown away with the Hurricane of 1926 and the ensuing
depression which put a screeching halt to land development.
Remnants of this dream stand today as vestiges of Merrick's
dream. Fewer than 80 of the 1,000 planned residences were built, but many of them
are still standing. The Florida Pioneer village (Southern Colonial) stands today on
Santa Maria Street bordering the Riviera Country Club golf course, the French 18th Century
Village is located in the 1000 block of Hardee Road, The French Normandy Village is on
LeJeune and Viscaya, and the Dutch South African Village is on LeJeune at Maya Avenue.
Also standing are the Italian Village, which is spread throughout an area located
just south of Bird Road between Granada Boulevard and Riviera Drive, and an 8-unit Chinese
Village that stands out colorfully from behind a gated wall on Riviera Drive, just South
of U.S. 1. A modern day group called The Villagers currently has a project in the
works to restore these historic homesites.
