South Beach

This guide to South Beach in Miami follows Barbara Capitman, an art historian who looked past the peeling paint of what locals nicknamed God's Waiting Room and saw the largest concentration of art deco architecture on earth. In the nineteen seventies she founded the Miami Design Preservation League and made a habit of standing between demolition crews and the buildings she meant to save, more than once chaining herself to their doors. Not every fight went her way: the Boulevard Hotel and the New Yorker both fell despite her efforts.