Stiltsville is a group of wood stilt houses located one mile south of Cape Florida, on sand banks of the Safety Valve on the edge of Biscayne Bay in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The structures stand on wood or reinforced concrete pilings, generally ten feet above the shallow water, which varies from one to three feet deep at low tide. Most sources claim the first stilt shack was built in the early 1930s, but some Dade County historians say that there were a dozen shacks in “the flats” as early as 1922. Today there seven houses remaining. Stiltsville’s frontier era ended with Hurricane Betsy in 1965. Beginning in August 1965, the state of Florida required building owners to pay $100 annually to lease their quarter-acre circular “campsites.” No permits for new construction were issued, and structures that sustained more than 50-percent damage could not be rebuilt. Building codes were implemented and the state banned commercial operations after 1969. read more…
Bal Harbour is a village in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The population is at 3,000. Since the 1920s, the Detroit-based Miami Beach Heights Corporation – headed by industrialists Robert C. Graham, Walter O. Briggs, and Carl G. Fisher – owned 245 acres (0.99 km²) of undeveloped, partially swampy land that stretched from the bay to the Atlantic. Mr. Graham assumed the duties as the developer for Bal Harbour. In the 1930s, city planners Harland Bartholomew & Associates were called in to design the Village. The company made several plans, and they were submitted to the Miami Beach Heights for review. read more…
North Miami Beach (commonly referred to as NMB) is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Originally named Fulford-by-the-Sea in 1926 after Captain William H. Fulford of the United States Coast Guard, the city was renamed North Miami Beach in 1931. The population is at 46,000. The hurricane of 1926 essentially ended the South Florida real estate boom, and in an effort to alleviate their losses and the damage to the city, local residents came together as the Town of Fulford. In 1927, the city was incorporated as the City of Fulford. Although the North Miami Beach boundaries once stretched to the Atlantic Ocean, this city on the Intracoastal Waterway no longer has any beaches within its city limits, although they are a short distance away across the inlet. North Miami Beach has a large middle classHaitian-American and Jewish-American community who were born in the U.S. or abroad. read more…
The Miami-Dade County Courthouse is a historic courthouse located at 73 West Flagler Street in Miami, Florida. Constructed over four years (1925–28), it was added to the U.S.National Register of Historic Places on January 4, 1989. The building is 361 feet tall with 28 floors. When it was built, it was the tallest building in Miami and in Florida. It is still in use as the main civil courthouse of Miami-Dade County. read more…
