Lincoln Road Mall

This guide to Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach follows architect Morris Lapidus, dismissed by his own profession as a vulgar showman, hired in the late nineteen fifties to rescue a dying shopping street once nicknamed the Fifth Avenue of the South. You'll hear why he threw the cars out entirely, laying down piano-key paving, fountains and shaded follies for pedestrians only, and his blunt reasoning for banishing traffic from a shopping street. The guide also covers the mall's near-collapse in the nineteen eighties, and how artists and gallery owners brought it back.