Morris Lapidus

The Fountainbleau Morris Lapidus (November 25, 1902 – January 18, 2001) was the architect of curvy, flamboyant Neo-baroque modern hotels that defined the 1950s ' Miami Beach ' resort hotel style. Born in Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine ) his Orthodox Jewish family fled Russian pogroms to New York when he was an infant. As a young man, Lapidus toyed with theatrical set design and studied architecture at Columbia University . Lapidus worked for the prominent Beaux Arts firm of Warren and Wetmore . He then worked independently for 20 years as a retail architect before being approached to design vacation hotels on Miami Beach. After a career in retail interior design, his first large commission was the Miami Beach Sans Souci Hotel, followed closely by the Nautilus, the Di Lido, the Biltmore Terrace, and the Algiers, all along Collins Avenue, and amounting to the single-handed redesign of an entire district. The hotels were an immediate popular success. Then in 1952 he landed the job of the largest luxury hotel in Miami Beach, the property he is most associated with, the Fontainebleau Hotel , which was followed the next year by the equally successful Eden Roc and the Americana (later the Sheraton Bal Harbour) in 1956. The Sheraton was demolished by implosion shortly after dawn on Sunday, November 18, 2007. In 1955 Lapidus created the Ponce de Leon Shopping Center near the plaza in St. Augustine , the Nation's Oldest City. The anchor store, Woolworth's, was the scene of the first sit-in by black demonstrators from Florida Memorial College in March, 1960, and in 1963 four young teenagers, who came to be known as the "St. Augustine Four" were arrested at the same place and spent the next six months in jail and reform school, until national protests forced their release by the governor and cabinet of Florida in January 1964. Martin Luther King hailed them as "my warriors." The Woolworth's door-handles remain as a reminder of the event, and a Freedom Trail marker has been placed on the building by ACCORD, in its efforts to preserve the historic sites of the civil rights movement. The Lapidus style is idiosyncratic and immediately recognizable in photographs, derived as it was from the attention-getting techniques of commercial store design: sweeping curves, theatrically backlit floating ceilings, 'beanpoles', and the ameboid shapes that he called 'woggles', 'cheeseholes', and painter's palette shapes. His many smaller projects give Miami Beach's Collins Avenue its style, anticipating post-modernism . Beyond visual style, there is some degree of functionalism at work. His curving walls caught the prevailing ocean breezes in the era before central air-conditioning, and the sequence of his interior spaces were the result of careful attention to user experience: Lapidis heard complaints of endless featureless hotel corridors and when possible would curve his hallways to avoid the effect. The Fontainbleau was built on the site of the Harvey Firestone estate and defining the new Gold Coast of Miami Beach. The hotel provided locations for the 1960 Jerry Lewis film The Bellboy , a success for both Lewis and Lapidus, and the James Bond thriller Goldfinger (1964). Its most famous feature is the 'Staircase to Nowhere', which merely led to a coat check but offered the opportunity to make a glittering descent into the lobby. Then when I got into hotels, I had to rethink, what am I selling now? You're selling a good time." His son, architect Alan Lapidus, who worked with his father for 18 years, said, "His theory was if you create the stage setting and it's grand, everyone who enters will play their part." Lapidus' wife of 63 years, Beatrice, died in 1992. He died nine years later, at the age of 98 in Miami Beach, Florida .

( Learn how and when to remove this message ) The Fontainebleau Morris Lapidus (November 25, 1902 – January 18, 2001) was the architect of Neo-baroque Miami Modern hotels that have since come to define the 1950s resort-hotel style synonymous with Miami and Miami Beach .

The Fontainebleau Morris Lapidus (November 25, 1902 – January 18, 2001) was an architect, primarily known for his Neo-baroque "Miami Modern" hotels constructed in the 1950s and 60s, which have since come to define that era's resort-hotel style, synonymous with Miami and Miami Beach . A Jewish Ukrainian immigrant based in New York, Lapidus designed over 1,000 buildings during a career spanning more than 50 years, much of it spent as an outsider to the American architectural establishment.

American architect The Fontainebleau Morris Lapidus (November 25, 1902 – January 18, 2001) was an architect, primarily known for his Neo-baroque "Miami Modern" hotels constructed in the 1950s and 60s, which have since come to define that era's resort-hotel style, synonymous with Miami and Miami Beach . A Jewish Ukrainian immigrant based in New York, Lapidus designed over 1,000 buildings during a career spanning more than 50 years, much of it spent as an outsider to the American architectural establishment.