Celia Cruz, the Havana-born Queen of Salsa dance music, led a world-record conga line at the 1988 Calle Ocho festival; her 2024 quarter made her the first Afro-Latina on U.S. currency.
Across the bay, on the barrier island, the same boom raised eight hundred buildings between 1923 and 1943 in a style all its own: Tropical Deco — pastel facades, eyebrow ledges, porthole windows, neon script — Art Deco adapted to a subtropical shore, and in 1979 that square mile became the nation’s first 20th-century urban historic district. The boom itself did not survive the decade. The Great Miami Hurricane of September 18, 1926 struck the young city head-on and ended the speculation overnight; greater Miami rebuilt through the Depression years in the same pastel vocabulary, which is why the era still reads on the skyline today.
Why People Visit Miami Florida
- Walk Calle Ocho in Little Havana — order a cafecito at a ventanita, watch the domino games at Máximo Gómez Park, and pick up pastelitos from a Cuban bakery.
- Stand before the Freedom Tower on Biscayne Boulevard, the 1925 landmark modeled on Seville’s Giralda that served as the Cuban Refugee Center from 1962 to 1974.
- Tour the 1916 Vizcaya estate and its gardens on Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove — the boom era’s Italian Renaissance fantasy, now a museum.
- Drive the Mediterranean Revival streets of Coral Gables, George Merrick’s 1925 planned city, stroll Miracle Mile, and see the coral-rock Venetian Pool of 1924.
- See the murals of Wynwood, the warehouse district turned open-air gallery north of downtown.
- Take a boat tour of Biscayne Bay from Bayfront Park or the Miami River — the skyline from the water is the city’s best portrait.
- Cross the Rickenbacker Causeway to Key Biscayne for beaches, the Cape Florida lighthouse, and bay views back toward the city — with the stilt houses of Stiltsville standing offshore on the flats.
- Day-trip west to the Everglades or south toward Biscayne National Park — the wild tropical frame around the metropolis.
- Time a winter visit for the height of snowbird season, when the bay is at its bluest and the café windows never close.