The Colony Hotel

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.