Dade County Architecture

From Wilderness to Metropolis, a study of Dade County architecture through 1940, was part of a preservation initiative launched in the early 1970s with the founding of the Dade Heritage Trust. The title of the report is particularly appropriate since the region was only settled by European Americans around the middle of the nineteenth century and the change from pioneer society to vacation spot was very sudden. Local materials, climate, and living conditions are reflected in the earliest architecture. But by the time the region came under extensive development--beginning in the 1890s--it was so rapidly transformed from pioneering agricultural community to urban-based resort town that there was little time for the architecture of gradual transformation that can be found in other locales. Those who were interested in the rapid development of the region concluded that it was an ideal vacation spot. It needed only hotels and the housing and commercial buildings to support the industry. In a very short time after the railroad was extended to the county it became a magnet for the wealthy and attracted large numbers of people interested in the jobs available in the booming region. By the turn of the century most of the east coast of America had long ago passed anything resembling a pioneer phase and so styles, materials, and architects could all be imported to Florida very easily. Because it grew so quickly and was so prosperous the county was remarkable for the homes of th

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rapidly growing suburbs. Though they could hardly be called typical, mansions such as William Jennings Bryan's Villa Serena (c. 1911-15) display many of the common traits of south Florida architecture. This huge house was built around a central court, its sections were hipped-roofs with terra-cotta tiles, and the deep porches, careful groupings of windows, and overhanging roofs supplied the need for air circulation and shade. The most interesting aspect of these houses, however, is their relative lack of decorative detail. In the Villa Serena, in the Highleyman House (1916) on Brickell Avenue, and in the famous Villa Vizcaya (built after 1910) the styles chosen were those generally related to hot climates and, whether they resembled Renaissance palaces or bits of Spanish architecture, these houses were very plain. The fact that money was not a problem in their construction speaks to a definite taste for rather plain (but completely ostentatious) forms. Even at the Villa Serena the planter boxes, the stepped carving in the arches, and the stepped parapets have a certain austerity that was not always found in other great mansions and public buildings in this era of Beaux-Arts influence. Traces of this influence remained thro

Category: Arts - D