[By John O'Conner and Diane G. Smart · Photographs by Robin Hill ]

Mid-Century Modern Architecture

"Mid-century modern" is a post-World War II architectural phenomenon that flourished from 1945 until 1972 in many parts of the United States. Most notably it thrived in Las Vegas, Nevada and Palm Springs, California, along Route 66 in the Southwest, in Wildwood, New Jersey, and in South Florida in Miami Beach, Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. Its architectural vernacular reflects visual glamour, space age optimism, and the freedom of the winged automobile to race along interstate highways that were beginning to crisscross the nation. Society was open to spontaneity, portability, informality and flexibility.

As Thomas Hine, author of Populuxe (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987) writes, "Mobility was a national obsession and the most unlikely products took their imagery from aviation and automobiles… People were aware that they were living in the jet age that was rapidly becoming the space age. Nothing was standing still. It was an age of speed, power and the excitement these engendered… Cities exploded outward from their centers and filled great swatches of landscape. Inside houses, walls disappeared and what had been rooms became ill-defined 'dining areas,' 'living areas.' Furniture became visually lighter and rooms were more open."

Fort Lauderdale was a post-war baby. Unlike Miami Beach, its neighbor 23 miles to the South, which had its first real boom in the Deco decade of the 30s, Lauderdale and neighboring Hollywood had their coming out parties 15 to 20 years later. As America's love affair with the auto kicked into high gear, much of Florida grabbed onto the dream of mobility. The drive-in restaurant was born, the carport came into vogue, and the place to stay became the motor-hotel. In Florida, modern architecture took its cues from International Style Modernism, but injected it with tropical style. Mid-century modern architecture became a celebration of modern life in the tropics. Instead of the post-war rectilinear box often found in northern states, that same structure in "SoFla" might be stretched into an S-shaped building with protruding "eyebrows" above the windows and then be painted shell pink. Suddenly, modern architecture had an indoor and outdoor life.

Celebrating new ways to manipulate materials, mainly steel-reinforced concrete, architects spread their wings and made the International Style fly. Staircases were pushed to the exterior of sunny Florida buildings and became plastic, able to span long stretches with very little visible support. Mid-century architects reveled in this "because we can" mentality and created works of art which completed their buildings like beautiful jewelry, - ornamentation without the ornament - enlivening the strict lines of Modernist architecture with cantilevered, space-age canopies, gull-winged rooflines and floor to-ceiling glass windows.

These buildings, from an era just before "central air" became household words, often went to great lengths to capture tropical breezes for their occupants. Igor Polevitzky's fabulous Fort Lauderdale confection, the Sea Tower (1957), is shaped like a boomerang and angled to collect the breeze from the ocean 400 feet away. It is also one of the many catwalk buildings of the area. All units open onto a long walkway and allow breezes to blow through from east to west.

Also in Lauderdale at Charles McKirahan's Coral Cove, apartments are wrapped in floor-to-ceiling jalousie windows and surrounded by catwalks, a love letter to the climate. Other buildings by McKirahan take cues from contemporary architecture in Brazil and India. The 1959 Birch Tower, a sleek white and seafoam green 17-story highrise on Lauderdale Beach is raised up on pylons, allowing the all important tail-finned automobile to drive right through unimpeded. Norman Giller's Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, a 1957 seven-story masterpiece of jet age imagery (demolished) was counter-balanced on two concrete pilings.

On Miami Beach, Morris Lapidus, the foremost hotel architect of the period, created fantasy environments and theatrical spaces in which America's middle class, flush with expanding postwar incomes and optimism, could fulfill its desire for glamour, relaxed luxury and leisure. His signature forms - chevrons, beanpoles, woggles or amoeba shapes, and curving walls and ceilings punctuated by cheese holes or cutouts - have become treasured icons of American postwar architectural vernacular. "These hotels are the very essence of Miami Beach's heyday - of fabulous Miami Beach," says Randall Robinson, director of the North Beach Community Development Corporation and co-author of MIMO, Miami Modern Revealed (Chronicle Press, 2004). Robinson describes the Eden Roc (Lapidus, 1955) as, "the greatest expression of the ocean-liner influence on Miami Beach architecture." He raves about the giant genies supporting a woggled porte cochere of the Casablanca Hotel (Roy France, 1949). Designed to impress guests arriving by car, such elaborate porte cocheres often evolved into dramatic undulating facades. "Super schlock" some called it. To others it seemed a successful theatrical hodgepodge designed to make guests feel like stars.

Most of these structures, nearing the half-century mark, are without landmark status. Without such protection they are coming down like rain. Already, many treasures have been lost: the Algiers, (Morris Lapidus, 1953) in Miami Beach; Norman Giller's Diplomat Hotel (1957) in Hollywood, and Driftwood (1952) in Sunny Isles; Charles McKirahan's Castaways (1958) in Sunny Isles; and in Fort Lauderdale Beach, Igor Polevitsky's Gold Coast Hotel (1953) and 550 Breakers (1951). Already in March of 2005, the demolition of Morris Lapidus' Americana, the demolition of Morris Lapidus' Americana (1956) in Bal Harbour, and of the Ireland's Inn in Fort Lauderdale Beach (Charles McKirahan/George Waddey, 1964) was announced.