LINCOLN ROAD A PLACE IN THE NATIONAL REGISTRY OF HISTORIC PLACES
By Deborah DeSilets
In 2010, a group of students and the local community celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Lincoln Road with an Originals Ball. At that ball, we honored the legacy of the founding fathers of Miami Beach, and it began my life-long work of sharing the legacy of Morris Lapidus, the architect of Lincoln Road. Recently, during Covid, we as a country learned just how important it was to have outdoor spaces in our urban environment. In Miami Beach, Lincoln Road has been our community’s “urban garden” for six decades. While we enjoy daily the artistry of the mall, it was with the combined effort of myself and members of DO.CO.MO.MO., that now others will recognize not only is enjoyable but that it has historical value as a place of originality and withstanding the fads of the time. By being placed on the National Registry of Historic Places it brings prestige. In 2012, the nomination was awarded, and now Lincoln Road will receive a plaque or even two plaques—as it is 10 blocks long, running beach to the bay in Miami Beach, Florida—to mark its genius. Hopefully, within the next few months, the world visitors to this place we call Lincoln Road will learn what an urban legend this place really is. Currently, with a movement underfoot in Miami Beach to see that the plaques are acquired and placed, Lincoln Road will be publicly marked and acknowledged for its unique position in the history of place-making.
Lincoln Road has been a bustling road, serving as a wonderful shopping boulevard since its inception. Now, with a National Registry marker, we recognize a public place in our midst that for sixty years has been enjoyed by millions of tourists who walk the leisurely stroll of blocks basking in Florida’s sun or dining al fresco. Each year, it is the watering hole of millions who visit our community and enjoy the linear stroll or the spine, of our city center. It can and should be a model for other cities looking to have a city center that is vibrant, rich in diversity, offering myriads places for sitting, strolling, and being seen. Morris Lapidus said it best when he was asked about Lincoln Road, he said, “Why be exotic in private.” By the way, this is also the working title of a new documentary on the life of Morris Lapidus to be undertaken this year by the Austrian Director, Rudi Dolezal. A film is hopefully to be released by 2024.
To make sure that we all really know what is so special, I reprint here the following description of Lincoln Road as excerpted from the National Registry nomination. It is worth sharing now.
“Lincoln Road Mall is nominated to the National Register at the state level in the areas of Community Planning and Development, Commerce, and Landscape Architecture. Lincoln Road was an automobile thoroughfare laid out by developer Carl Fisher in 1914, but in 1960 the portion of the right-of-way between Alton Road and Washington Avenue was closed to automobile traffic and redesigned into a pedestrian mall by architect Morris Lapidus. Lincoln Road Mall is significant as possibly the second oldest, and best preserved, an example of a pedestrian mall in the United States. The landscape design embodies the distinctive characteristics of the modern landscape movement, and methods of construction, and constitutes an important artistic statement by architect/designer Morris Lapidus. He was highly influential in the arenas of retail store design and modern resort architecture and was one of the most significant proponents of subtropical modernism or Miami Modernism (MiMo). Lincoln Road Mall is also significant in the areas of Community Planning and Development and Commerce for its associative value in relation to the development of the pedestrian mall in the U.S. Pedestrian malls are an urban planning strategy designed to foster economic development and revitalization of urban downtown main streets in response to the post-World War II phenomenon of the suburban shopping mall. Lincoln Road is not only an example of a design and a type; it also demonstrates understanding and successful application of this urban planning concept.”
Development of the Pedestrian Malls in the U.S. as an Urban Planning and Retail Strategy
Confluences of factors lead to the overall decline of American downtowns, and to the development of a wide array of urban revitalization strategies. The most significant contributor to the decline of downtowns was the suburban retail complex. A largely Postwar phenomenon, suburban malls had advantageous proximity to new housing developments for a rising middle class (in some cases they were precursors to these developments); ample parking; and a relaxing, pedestrian-only shopping environment. As urban design solutions to economic development problems, pedestrian malls attempted to address two of downtown’s biggest issues: automobile traffic congestion in core areas and the rise of the suburban retail complex. After many proposals that never materialized, the first pedestrian mall believed to be built in the U.S. was designed by architect Victor Gruen and implemented in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1959. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed a surge in implementation with mixed results. By the 1980s, there were a total of 200 pedestrian malls implemented in the U.S. “
Working in Tallahassee on my master’s in architecture during covid, I was studying Lincoln Road. Looking at what are the “dimensions” to its success and simply asking: can we “break down” the road to an easily repeatable understanding of place? Wouldn’t it be nice to have more “green garden centers” in our Florida cities? And, we have an excellent prototype—a treasure— in our own backyard.
For more information on Lincoln Road please write to me at [email protected].