Morris Lapidus

The Fountainbleau

Morris Lapidus (pronounced LAP-i-dus) (November 25, 1902 – January 18, 2001) was the architect of curvy, flamboyant Neo-baroque modern hotels that defined the 1950s 'Miami Beach' resort hotel style.

Born in Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) his Orthodox Jewish family fled Russian pogroms to New York when he was an infant. As a young man, Lapidus toyed with theatrical set design and studied architecture at Columbia University. Lapidus worked for the prominent Beaux Arts firm of Warren and Wetmore. He then worked independently for 20 years as a retail architect before being approached to design vacation hotels on Miami Beach.

After a career in retail interior design, his first large commission was the Miami Beach Sans Souci Hotel, followed closely by the Nautilus, the Di Lido, the Biltmore Terrace, and the Algiers, all along Collins Avenue, and amounting to the single-handed redesign of an entire district. The hotels were an immediate popular success. Then in 1952 he landed the job of the largest luxury hotel in Miami Beach, the property he is most associated with, the Fontainebleau Hotel, which was followed the next year by the equally successful Eden Roc and the Americana (later the Sheraton Bal Harbour) in 1956. The Sheraton was demolished by implosion shortly after dawn on Sunday, November 18, 2007.

In 1955 Lapidus created the Ponce de Leon Shopping Center near the plaza in St. Augustine, the Nation's Oldest City. The anchor store, Woolworth's, was the scene of the first sit-in by black demonstrators from Florida Memorial College in March, 1960, and in 1963 four young teenagers, who came to be known as the "St. Augustine Four" were arrested at the same place and spent the next six months in jail and reform school, until national protests forced their release by the governor and cabinet of Florida in January 1964. Martin Luther King hailed them as "my warriors." The Woolworth's door-handles remain as a reminder of the event, and a Freedom Trail marker has been placed on the building by ACCORD, in its efforts to preserve the historic sites of the civil rights movement.

The Lapidus style is idiosyncratic and immediately recognizable in photographs, derived as it was from the attention-getting techniques of commercial store design: sweeping curves, theatrically backlit floating ceilings, 'beanpoles', and the ameboid shapes that he called 'woggles', 'cheeseholes', and painter's palette shapes. His many smaller projects give Miami Beach's Collins Avenue its style, anticipating post-modernism. Beyond visual style, there is some degree of functionalism at work. His curving walls caught the prevailing ocean breezes in the era before central air-conditioning, and the sequence of his interior spaces were the result of careful attention to user experience: Lapidis heard complaints of endless featureless hotel corridors and when possible would curve his hallways to avoid the effect.

The Fontainbleau was built on the site of the Harvey Firestone estate and defining the new Gold Coast of Miami Beach. The hotel provided locations for the 1960 Jerry Lewis film The Bellboy, a success for both Lewis and Lapidus, and the James Bond thriller Goldfinger (1964). Its most famous feature is the 'Staircase to Nowhere', which merely led to a coat check but offered the opportunity to make a glittering descent into the lobby.

"My whole success is I've always been designing for people, first because I wanted to sell them merchandise. Then when I got into hotels, I had to rethink, what am I selling now? You're selling a good time."

His son, architect Alan Lapidus, who worked with his father for 18 years, said, "His theory was if you create the stage setting and it's grand, everyone who enters will play their part."

Lapidus' wife of 63 years, Beatrice, died in 1992. He died nine years later, at the age of 98 in Miami Beach, Florida.

Critical Reception

Lapidus designed 1,200 buildings, including 250 hotels worldwide. The architectural establishment, wedded to its doctrinaire expressions of International Modernism, tried to ignore his work, then characterized it as gaudy kitsch. This abusive critical reception culminated in a 1963 American Institute of Architects (AIA) meeting held at the Americana, where a variety of well-known architects insulted Lapidus to his face, in one of his own hotels.

A 1970 Architectural League exhibit in New York began the serious appraisal of his work. Lapidus tried to ignore the critical panning, but it had an effect on his career and reputation. He burned 50 years' worth of his drawings when he retired in 1984 and remained personally bitter about some aspects of his career. He was rediscovered in the post-modernist era: his autobiography Too Much is Never Enough, 1996, takes a shot at modernist guru Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's dictum 'Less is more.' According to his German biographer Martina Duttmann, he has always been more highly regarded in Europe than in the U.S., where the comparable jet-set futurism is designated "Googie". Today, books published by the AIA such as 'Architect's Essentials of Starting a Design Firm' 2003, refer positively to Morris Lapidus' works.

Projects

Temple Menorah in Miami Beach

List adapted from Works in Lapidus autobiography.

• Whitman (Co-op apartments)75 Henry St., Brooklyn, NY 1968
• Martin's Department Store, Brooklyn, New York City 1944
• Bond Clothing Stores flagship store, 372 Fifth Avenue at 35th Street, New York City, 1948
• Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami Beach, 1954
• Eden Roc, Miami Beach, 1955
• Deauville Resort, Miami Beach, 1950's
• Golden Triangle Motor Hotel, Norfolk, Virginia 1959-60
• Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, 1960
• Sheraton Motor Inn, New York, 1960
• Congregation Shaare Zion, Brooklyn, New York, 1960
• Richmond Motel, Richmond, Virginia, 1961
• Washington Plaza Hotel, 10 Thomas Circle, NW Washington, D.C., 1962
• 1800 G Street NW, Washington, D.C., 1962
• 1100 L Street NW, Washington, D.C., 1967
• 1425 K Street NW, Washington, D.C., 1970 since remodeled
• Portman Square Hotel, London, England, United Kingdom 1967
• Temple Menorah, Miami Beach, 1962 (remodeled)
• TSS Mardi Gras, 1975
• TSS Carnival, 1975
• Carnival Cruise Lines Terminal Building, Port of Miami (Dodge Island), Miami, Florida, 1975
• International Inn, Washington, D.C., 1975
• International Inn, now Washington Plaza Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1962
• Capitol Skyline Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1962
• Lausanne Apartments, Naples, Florida, 1978
• Grandview at Emerald Hills, Hollywood, Florida, 1981

External links

• Sketch of Lapidus' career.
• Frances Loeb Library: Bibliography.