History: The Suburbs—Part Two
As was noted last week, Miami Beach has eight suburbs if Fisher Island is counted, but even without the historically interesting piece of property, the city still can claim seven legitimate and actual incorporated suburbs including North Bay Village, Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands, Indian Creek Village, Surfside, Sunny Isles Beach and Golden Beach, which borders Hallandale Beach and Broward County on the north.
In terms of incorporation, other than Miami Beach, which was incorporated in 1915, it appears that Golden Beach is the next oldest municipality on the east side of Biscayne Bay, having been chartered as a town in 1929. The town is approximately one mile long, from the north end of Sunny Isles Beach, to its northern border with Hallandale Beach and is about four blocks wide (perhaps half a mile) wide.
A very upscale community, the town’s charter does not allow high rises, apartment houses, stores or commercial buildings of any kind and it is, as many Miamians and Beachites know, one of the nation’s most affluent communities, with many of its homes being valued—even in this “down” economy—in the several millions of dollars. Current and former home owners are and have been Bill Gates, Ricky Martin and Paul Newman. The main job of the police force is, of course, to protect the town’s residents and this is done with strong surveillance of traffic on Collins Avenue as well as on the inland waterway. The speed limit signs in Golden Beach are there for a reason and the police enforce that limit scrupulously.
Surfside, although initially developed by Henri (Henry) Levy beginning in 1924, when he named the lower third of what would, in 1935, become a town, “Normandy Beach.” (Levy would also develop Normandy Isle and the beachfront area between approximately 71st and 74th Streets calling that development Normandy Beach South).
Levy had different names planned for the streets of Normandy Beach than exist in Surfside today. While Bay Drive, on the far west side of today’s town, was named by Levy, his plat showed that street curving through Biscaya Island and continuing east to Collins Avenue. Today the east-west portion of what Levy called Bay Drive is Surfside’s 88th Street, the town’s furthest south street. (Surfside begins, on the south, just north of Miami Beach’s 87th Terrace; the Dezerland Hotel is Miami Beach’s northernmost hotel).
Eighty-ninth Street was to be Lake Avenue and 90th Street—the northern limit of Normandy Beach—was to be called Avondale Avenue, likely a remembrance of the Cincinnati neighborhood in which the Levy family spent a number of happy and prosperous years prior to moving to Miami Beach because of the brutal Ohio winters.
Going from east to west today the streets of Surfside are named for English or American poets or writers from Abbott through Irving but Levy originally numbered them First through Ninth, going from east to west, with only Collins Avenue’s name remaining unchanged today. To honor his older daughter, he named the block-long diagonal street between Lake Avenue and Bay Drive “Clemence Avenue.”
Next week: The story of the suburbs continues with more on the history of Surfside.
Category: HISTORY
