Bal Harbour Shops

This guide to Bal Harbour Shops in Miami follows developer Stanley Whitman's gamble in 1957 on scrubby, army-scarred land north of Miami Beach, and his refusal to build a sealed, air-conditioned mall like everyone else. He hired one architect, fired him, and built an open-air maze of limestone walkways and koi ponds instead. Only his wife and mother believed the plan would work; walk the same paths past the fountains and storefronts open to the ocean air.