A history of Miami Beach,
since 1915
Postcards, papers and photographs of Miami Beach from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗In 1870, father and son Henry and Charles Lum purchased land on Miami Beach for 75 cents an acre. The first structure built on this uninhabited oceanfront was the Biscayne House of Refuge, constructed in 1876 by the United States Life-Saving Service through an executive order issued by President Ulysses S. Grant, at approximately 72nd Street. Its purpose was to provide food, water, and a return to civilization for people who were shipwrecked. The structure, which had fallen into disuse by the time the Life-Saving Service became the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915, was destroyed in the 1926 Miami Hurricane and never rebuilt.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Miami Beach’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
2 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewPolo at Miami Beach, Florida, 1890: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Miami Beach
See all 60 →
Miami Beach, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Polo at Miami Beach, Florida (1890) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Historic places
National Register · via Wikidata
From Wikimedia Commons (2), the Library of Congress (3) and the National Register (1). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.