Eden Roc Miami Beach

Architect: Morris Lapidus
Year: 1956
Style: Mid-Century Modern
City: Miami, FL
Collection: mimo — miami modern

The Eden Roc, at 4525 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, was completed in 1955-56 as Morris Lapidus's answer to his own Fontainebleau next door, built for hotelier Harry Mufson, the estranged former partner of Fontainebleau owner Ben Novack. Mufson gave Lapidus one instruction: 'I don't want any of the French stuff you used at the Fontainebleau. That's for kids' — and the resulting hotel, built on the former Warner Estate once owned by Albert Warner of Warner Brothers, deliberately broke from its neighbor's look. Renovated in 2008, the 621-room hotel now also operates as the Nobu Hotel Miami Beach.

the building

Mufson's instruction. Hotelier Harry Mufson told Lapidus he wanted nothing like the ornamental 'French stuff' of the Fontainebleau, pushing the architect toward a harder-edged Miami Modern look for the Eden Roc, built just two years after its rival opened next door.

A rivalry made in concrete. Mufson and Novack had once run the Sans Souci hotel together before splitting acrimoniously, and Novack was reportedly infuriated when his former partner hired the same architect to build a competing hotel immediately to the north.

The Warner Estate site. The Eden Roc was built on the former Warner Estate, land once owned by Albert Warner of Warner Brothers, next door to the Firestone Estate grounds that had already become the Fontainebleau.

the style

Where Lapidus dressed the Fontainebleau in a florid, ornamental idiom, Mufson's demand for something plainer pushed the Eden Roc toward the cleaner-lined Miami Modern style — the same architect working out two different answers to the same postwar Collins Avenue luxury-hotel problem within two years.

the architect

Morris Lapidus designed the Eden Roc for Harry Mufson just two years after completing the Fontainebleau immediately to its south for a rival owner, making it one of two competing hotel commissions Lapidus carried out back-to-back on the same stretch of Collins Avenue.

nearby

The Montmartre Hotel 370 ft · Mid-Century Modern · 1958
Fontainebleau Miami Beach 0.1 mi · International Style · 1954
The Mimosa 0.2 mi · Mid-Century Modern · 1962
Sorrento Hotel 0.2 mi · Mid-Century Modern · 1948
Monmartre Hotel 0.2 mi · International Style · 1958
Montmartre Hotel 0.2 mi · Mid-Century Modern · 1958

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