Miami Tourist Guide

South of Miami River

To reach the southern portion of Downtown, head through the square surrounded by high-rise towers which is known as DuPont Plaza, and walk across the bridge-crowned by a moody, of a crossbow-toting Tequesta warrior and his wife-and you’ll pass from the soul of the city to its wallet.
This area, know as Brickell (rhymes with pickle), is the city’s financial center. Money was the original foundation of this area, and the early developers Mary and William Brickell, who ran a trading post nearby, planned a wide, tree-lined avenue that could be built up with mansions for their friends. In doing so, they created the city’s most desirable neigborhood-it was the address in 1910’s Miami- and Brickell Avenue soon earned the nickname Millionaires Row.
From the late seventies, Miami emerged as a corporate banking center, cashing in on political instability in South and Central America by offering a secure home for Latin-American money, some of which needed laundering. Miami has manoeuvred to become second only to new York in serving as the headquarters for international banks; and the forests of mirrored buildings that cluster along Brickell Avenue sprouts new offshoots every year. Recent years have seen the Brickell area returning to that gleaming heyday, as the intensive construction of the luxury residential condos and high-end condo-hotels like the Four Seasons have drawn wealthy young professionals to live closer to their offices Downtown.

The Miami Circle

Local developer Michael Baumann purchased the triangle of land east of Brickell Avenue wedged against the Miami River- once the sight of a 1950’s apartment complex- for $8 million in the mid 1990’s and planned to throw up a premium priced high-rise. Archaeologists were hired to clear the area for construction as per local ordinances and, unfortuneatly for Baumann, they found something, a coral rock circle, 38 feet in diameter and carve four feet deep into the bedrock, carbon dated to be at least 10,000 years old and known as the Miami circle.
Its age is the only indisputable thing: experts argue over the circle’s original purpose, whether it was a religious, community, or commercial center, or even who might have built it. While they debate, others are considering how best to display this find for the local community; no final decision’s been made, and thus you can’t visit it yet. It will likely take at least five years before people can visit the Miami Circle close up- check with the Dade Heritage Trust for updates. If you’re determined to see it close up, stay in the nearby Sheraton , and ask for a room that overlooks the site- at least until the new hotel is razed by its new owners to make for yet more high-rise waterfront condos. Don’t weep for Baumann, though- he was able to strongarm the city into paying 26.7 million to purchase the land back from him, turning a tidy profit of more than $18 million without laying a single brick

The Atlantis

At 2025 Brickell Ave, the Atlantis apartment complex is the project that turned the Aquitectonica design
team, husband and wife architects Laurinda Spear and Bernardo Fort-Brescia, from wannabes to A-listers; it was built on the site of one of the grandest mansions on Millionaires Row, the Mitchell-Bingham residence, home to Mary Tiffany Bingham, sister of glass guru Louis. Like a cored-apple, the Atlantis complex has a square hole through the middle, filled like a single palm tree, a Jacuzzi, and d fire-engine-red spiral staircase. Built some twenty years ago, its playful design is even more eye-catching now among the earnest bombast of nearby skyscrapers; it clearly owes much to the stylish mischief of mid-century pioneers like Morris Lapidus. You won’t be allowed inside unless you know some one who lives there, which might be just as well: even its designers admit the interior doesn’t live up to the exuberance of the exterior, and claim the building to be “architecture for 55mph”-seen best effect from a passing car.