
The Colony Hotel
Streamline Moderne hotel with an inverted-T blue neon sign, among the district's most photographed nighttime landmarks.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Colony Hotel on Miami Beach's Ocean Drive traces architect Henry Hohauser's nineteen thirty-five design: the inverted-T neon sign, among the street's first neon marquees, paired with new steel-wrapped corner windows and Depression-era luxuries like private bathrooms and radios. It follows Ocean Drive's slide by the nineteen seventies into the nickname 'God's Waiting Room,' and preservationist Barbara Capitman's fight to save buildings like this one, which helped land the district on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-nine.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
South Beach
Sun-soaked stretch of sand fronting a candy-colored art deco hotel strip, once nearly bulldozed for high-rises.
Art Deco Welcome Center
Visitor hub and museum inside a pastel Art Deco landmark, gateway to South Beach's historic hotel district.
Ocean Drive
Palm-lined beachfront strip of pastel Art Deco hotels and open-air cafes facing the Atlantic.
Eden Roc Miami Beach
Miami Modern beachfront resort with grand staircases and rosewood columns, built to outshine its rival next door.
Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU
Restored Art Deco synagogue with a copper dome and eighty stained glass windows, now a museum of Jewish heritage.
Fontainebleau Miami Beach
Neo-baroque oceanfront resort famed for a theatrical floating staircase leading to nowhere but a coat check.