" We're in the heart of Miami Beach Lincoln road and Allan Schulman a local architect and architectural historian is gonna tell us a little bit about the history of this street. And this has always been the main shopping street right. Yes since the city was developed around 1915. This is planned as sort of a main street for Miami Beach. The developer this area Carl Fisher. Really wanted this to become not just the main street but a grand thoroughfare something on the order of the Fifth Avenue in New York with right with great. Elegant stores. It was planned to be very very wise yes this plant actually. To equal in width the real -- in Paris OK you can believe that or not know about that not hesitate to about a hundred Peter what a hundred feet yeah. Tell us about some of the buildings that went up by I know that's the tallest building on Lincoln road right behind us yeah exactly that was actually designed and built or built by Carl Fisher. Himself as the headquarters of his own real estate offices real estate enterprise and and it's built in a way to be a landmark for the road it was the tallest structure built on Lincoln road and built in the Mediterranean style in the Mediterranean style in the 1920s. With all the great features of the Mediterranean. In particular that great wraparound terrace on the roof and Mediterranean tiled roof. At the top level on the penthouse and it's now the Brandeis cafe and hotel right exactly. What about a building like this when they were looking at on the left here the sterling building right the sterling building is an example of the kind of growth and change that happens in Miami Beach it was first built in the 1920s. It was in the Mediterranean style. It was two separate buildings. Covered with moorish detailing really. And then like many buildings in Miami Beach around 19403940. They decided to renovate it and to modernize it. And when they did the art Deco style streamlined and Darren was really the popular. -- style at the time and so the building was done. According to all those according to that style. Now many of the stores that were developed here. Like most leaves the linen shop that's been there for over seventy years where one of a kind smaller. Deluxe stores but you also had the first department stores here right the big -- signs chain exactly because Miami Beach and because Lincoln road with an elegant destination. In the 1920s. The big retailers and for years wanted to be here. So Saks Fifth Avenue was in one of the prime locations right at the center of the road. At a building that still exists and then across this are actually one block down was -- color. A pretty large. Garment trade house. And -- there were number of other very elegance. Clothing and jewelry and fur stores that lined both sides of the road right and what about theaters. There were several theaters on Lincoln road I'm thinking maybe five or six there was the colony the Lincoln center. The Lincoln center was one of the best. It was done as a collaboration between a local architect and a national theater architect. It's now the home of the new world symphony. But has some of the best freezes. Art Deco freezes on its facade sort of florid scrollwork. -- really beautiful. Marquee that that projects out over the road. -- tell us about the Albion hotel. The Albion hotel was probably the grandest hotel built in Miami Beach in the 1930s and it was built right on Lincoln road. And because it's on Lincoln road it it mixes retail and hotel and offices some really sophisticated building. Just in the way it's planned. And it's planned around a courtyard patio witches which is very beautiful and and features these port holes that looking into the out -- into the underwater portion of the swimming pool which is on one of the mezzanine decks that goes around it. But I think what's really fabulous about the I'll be honest that is the lobby the two story lobby with a mahogany. Window walls at either end. Sort of an early example of a curtain wall but done -- wood. Now the next big transformation on Lincoln road takes place around 196061. Right right what happened there. Well Morris lapidus had just completed the fountain blue -- one of the great modern large hotels grandiose hotels of upper Miami Beach. That had its own shopping concourse and it drew a lot of customers a lot of energy off the road okay. Subsequently Lincoln road declined and so the city and the property owners here. Went to Morris laughter that's the designer of the Lou and also a retail genius in his own. In his own sort. And asked him what could be done what what plan could be made to revitalize the road. I'm not that -- came up with the idea mulling the road. Taking the cars off the road and just making it all a pedestrian mall exactly and -- this is where mulling the road was to transform it into a kind of a garden for. For the city so he. Not only took the cars off but created all these wonderful planting beds and fountains we're looking at a prime example of it right here with this long rectangular stools and the splashing water in the birds all over the place now. The plantings. Right mature exactly so and the planting was all very exotic the idea was to in effect bring to Miami. Some exotic species from all around the world and to play up the tropical holiday and the tropical. Character of the city so throughout this whole length of the road you find. Other features like this designed by -- in the form of shelters and again concrete forms that that. Rely on many of these strange reforms that he came up wherever they were sort of lyrical architecture that. I think he borrowed from South American architects of the period. And he used them as as pavilions that could be used to sell merchandise to. To display merchandise and also for exhibitions and for fashion shoots. So it was all very pragmatic he made it totally exciting Allan thanks Andrea thank you very much."