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Welcome to the City
Beautiful – one of the most charming,
sophisticated, and gorgeous cities in the
country. The City of Coral Gables is the
ideal community in which to live,
work or play while in South Florida, as its timeless
beauty and numerous amenities stand out
among neighboring cities. As a visitor…dine
at one of our renowned restaurants, gaze upon globally recognized
Mediterranean architecture, or stroll
through sought after boutiques and art
galleries, all shaded by tropical foliage
and canopies of banyans, oaks, palms, and
royal Poinciana tress. As a resident…benefit
from top-rated municipal services, fine
residential areas, historic landmarks, and
superior quality of life. As an organization…do
business in the Corporate Capital of the
Americas, along with nearly 200 other
multinational corporations who take
advantage of prime office space and a
multilingual employment base.
However you
choose to spend your time in the Gables, you
will always remember this exceptional jewel
of South Florida!
ACCOMMODATIONS
Coral Gables is home to a superb selection
of hotels, which offer the very best in high
quality service. From hotels and extended
stay suites to full-service resorts, these
luxurious accommodations make Coral Gables
one of the most popular places to stay in
Miami. Accommodations in Coral Gables are
created to offer a quiet retreat from the
rush of the city.
Visitors are
just a short distance from Miami's
most popular attractions, such as
South Beach, Bal Harbour and Coconut Grove. All hotels
are just minutes from fine dining, culture,
shopping, historic venues and great entertainment. Please
click on “Accommodations” to the right,
to view our many local hotel and resort
partners.
DINING
Coral Gables is home to South
Florida's finest restaurants, from casual
eateries to the nation's most celebrated
restaurants, and an array of options to
satisfy every foodies taste, passion and occasion. Prepare
your taste buds for a treat, and take your
palate on an international tour! Please
click on the “Dining” link to the right
to view the delectable options in Coral
Gables!
SHOPPING
The City Beautiful is home to South
Florida's finest jewelers, award-winning
European and domestic furniture
manufacturers, art galleries, world-renowned
bridal shops, and designer boutiques. Coral
Gables offers some of the most sought after
shopping destinations in South Florida. In
particular, be sure that your shopping
experience includes trips to these amazing
locations:
§
Village of Merrick Park: 115
world-class shops and restaurants, all in an
outdoor village type setting, featuring
fountains, tropical foliage, and gardens.
§
Miracle Mile: The epicenter of
downtown Coral Gables. Everything you could
want on a pedestrian friendly boulevard:
fabulous restaurants with European style
outdoor dining, designer boutiques, live
theater, and more.
THINGS TO SEE AND DO
Coral Gables is a showcase of physical
beauty, charm and grandeur. The city's main
entrances are marked with graceful coral
rock arches dating back to the 1920s. Many
of the Mediterranean-style homes, businesses
and public buildings from the 1920s and
earlier have been lovingly preserved or
restored by Gables residents. Virtually
every
street is lined with stately trees, and many
are covered in canopies of banyans, oaks and
royal Poinciana trees.
§
Miracle Mile: The
epicenter of downtown Coral Gables.
Everything you could want on a pedestrian
friendly boulevard: fabulous restaurants
with European style outdoor dining, designer
boutiques, live theater, and more.
§
Venetian Pool: A Coral
Gables landmark, included in the National
Register of Historic Places. Built in 1923
from a coral rock quarry, the pool is spring
fed and designed to resemble an Italian
grotto.
§
The Biltmore Hotel: A
national historic landmark, this luxury
hotel was built in 1926. Amenities include a
championship golf course, spa, and the
largest hotel pool in the continental US.
§
Fairchild Tropical Botanic
Garden: Designed in 1938, the garden is
an 83 acre natural preserve on the edge of
Coral Gables, offering guided walking tours,
tram tours, and seasonal special events.
§
Matheson Hammock Park:
600 acres of paradise for both nature lovers
and boaters, including nature trails, over
15 species of native hardwood trees, and a
man-made island pool, flushed naturally by
the tidal action of Biscayne Bay.
§
University of Miami:
The largest private research university in
the Southeastern United States, UM offers
the Lowe Art Museum, sports, theater, music,
and other cultural events.
§
Coral Gables Merrick House
and Garden Museum: The Coral Gables
Merrick House is the boyhood home of George
Merrick, founder of the City of Coral
Gables. The house, which is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places, has
been restored to its 1925 appearance
featuring beautiful architectural details
created from local materials such as coral
rock and Miami-Dade County pine. The Merrick
House is filled with the family's personal
treasures, furniture and artworks.
§
Gables Gallery Nights:
On the first Friday each month, Virginia
Miller and the Coral Gables Gallery
Association organize Coral Gables Gallery
Night with participation by many of the best
local galleries, featuring complimentary
transportation and refreshments. Call
Virginia at 305-444-4493 for more
information.
Look for the special Coral Gables Gallery
Night buses that offer free transportation
between the major art galleries
§
Trolley: Free,
air-conditioned transportation along Ponce
de Leon Blvd. in
downtown Coral Gables!
HISTORICAL SITES
A Look Into The Past
By Stacey Steig
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.
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.
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.
By 1928 it became evident that George
Merrick's luck had run out. He fell heavily
into debt and was removed from the Coral
Gables Commission, retreating to Matecumbe
Key where he operated a resort property left
to his wife Eunice by her parents. While
Merrick eventually returned to Coral Gables,
becoming the postmaster for Dade County in
1940, he never fully recovered his losses
and died in 1942.
World War II breathed new life into the city
of Coral Gables as thousands of soldiers
flooded the area, occupying many of the
unused buildings, including the University
of Miami and The Biltmore Hotel, which
became an army hospital.
The emergence of Miracle Mile in the 1950's
marked the beginning of a new era of
development in Coral Gables, and paved the
way for the commercial development in the
1960's. During this time height restrictions
were waived and several high rises went up,
drawing large American, Latin American and
Caribbean companies to the area. Without the
watchful eye of Phineas Paist and the City's
other original architects and planners, many
of these newer buildings stood out as
anomalies, clashing stylistically with
Mediterranean Revival structures as much as
the Chinese Village of the early Merrick
years. In 1986, the City adopted a
Mediterranean Architectural Ordinance, which
provides incentives to builders who conform
to the Mediterranean Revival style, using
terra cotta colors and barrel tile roofs.
While there are a few glass sheathed
modernistic buildings lingering out there,
it appears that Coral Gables has come back
to its Spanish architectural roots.
Courtesy of Metro Magazine
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