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Summer 2005
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"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.
Als
Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, 954.525.5500, ext. 234 or visit www.moafl.org
Miami Design Preservation League www.mdpl.org
North Beach Development Corp. www.gonorthbeach.com
Broward Trust for Historic Preservation www.bthp.org
Urban Arts Committee, Miami Beach www.mimo.us