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On Miami’s Lincoln Road, variety spices the life

MIAMI

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 05, 2012|By Necee Regis

Diners enjoy the weather at a Lincoln Road restaurant. (ROBERT SULLIVAN/AFP/Getty…)

MIAMI - It’s 73 degrees on a Saturday night in January and the crowds are promenading slowly along this pedestrian mall in South Beach. Young women in 6-inch heels toss their long tresses and tug at their skin-tight dresses as they stroll, mingling with perfumed Latin men, families pushing strollers, T-shirt-clad gawkers, manicured metrosexuals, sunburned tourists, Joan Rivers look-alikes leading tiny dogs on rhinestone-studded leashes, cigar-chomping elders, skateboarding teens, tattooed twentysomethings, stylish gay couples, and me.

“I’ve never been anywhere where there’s such a mix of people,’’ said Rick Hanley, owner of the Pink Palm, a fun, sophisticated urban card and gift shop. “That’s what I love about the street. I’m constantly meeting people from every walk of life.’’

Hanley is talking about Lincoln Road, a shopping-eating-drinking strip that’s once again riding a wave of popularity and renewal. This may or may not have surprised Carl Fisher, referred to as “the founding father of Miami Beach,’’ who in the early 20th century envisioned this street as the “Fifth Avenue of the South.’’

“The road itself is at least 100 years old. That will take a lot of people by surprise,’’ said Becky Smith, head of the library and archives at History Miami. “The road was named after Abraham Lincoln. Fischer was a big fan.’’

In its long history, Lincoln Road has experienced cycles of boom-bust-boom-bust-boom.

“In the 1930s, Lincoln Road was like Rodeo Drive,’’ said Hanley. “It was where the super-rich came to shop, arriving in limos at Saks Fifth Avenue, Harry Winston jewelers, and Bonwit Teller.’’

Decades later, as business slumped, the city hired architect Morris Lapidus to redesign the strip in 1959. He did so with the same flair employed at his famed Fontainebleau and Eden Roc hotels, enlivening the road with gardens, fountains, bold-patterned paving, and architectural shade structures in his signature Miami Modern architecture (“MiMo’’) style.

“I designed Lincoln Road for people - a car never bought anything,’’ said Lapidus, in response to his decision to close the road to traffic, thus creating one of the nation’s first pedestrian malls.

By the 1980s many storefronts were again vacant, though as Ocean Drive was rediscovered and restored to its Art Deco glory, this area came to life again.