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The Guide: Miami

Samantha Brooks

November 1, 2005

Attractions
If you are a James Bond fan, stop into the Fontainebleau Hilton where Bond famously played cards with Goldfinger. The 50-year-old hotel recently underwent a $400 million renovation, but much of the original architecture of Morris Lapidus remains (Lapidus also designed the Eden Roc down the street). Other architectural sites worth touring include: the Ancient Spanish Monastery, the oldest building in the Western Hemisphere, which was built in Spain in 1141 and reconstructed in Miami in the early 1950s; Merrick House, the former residence of the family that developed Coral Gables; and the Deering Estate at Cutler, a 442-acre property that was once home to the mammoths, dog-size horses, tapirs, jaguars, sloths and bisons whose remains were discovered in an on-site fossil pit. For garden tours, check out the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, an 83-acre garden designed by William Lyman Phillips in the early 1930s, which is one of the few places in the United States that can grow tropical plants year-round. The Venetian Pool, built in the early 1920s to resemble a Venetian lagoon, was used by George Merrick as a sales center for real estate in Coral Gables.

The Ancient Spanish Monastery was purchased in 1925 by William Randolph Hearst and later reconstructed in Miami by Allen Carswell. Photo courtesy Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau. (Click image to enlarge.)