It is part of the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida. The municipality is located on natural and human-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay , the latter of which separates the Beach from the mainland city of Miami. The neighborhood of South Beach , comprising the southernmost 2. The Art Deco District is the largest collection of Art Deco architecture in the world [ 9 ] and comprises hundreds of hotels, apartments and other structures erected between and The movement to preserve the Art Deco District's architectural heritage was led by former interior designer Barbara Baer Capitman , who now has a street in the District named in her honor.
The first structure to be built on this uninhabited oceanfront was the Biscayne House of Refuge, constructed in by the United States Life-Saving Service through an executive order issued by President Ulysses S. Grant , [ 10 ] 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. Coast Guard in , was destroyed in the Miami Hurricane and never rebuilt. Miami Beach then initiated the planting of a coconut plantation along its shore in the s, led by New Jersey entrepreneurs Ezra Osborn and Elnathan T. Field, but the venture failed. Collins , who achieved success by buying out other partners and planting different crops, notably avocados, on the land that would later become Miami Beach.
In fact, the pine trees on today's Pinetree Drive served as an erosion buffer for Collins' plantations. Collins' family members saw the potential in developing the beach as a resort.
Until then, the beach here was only the destination for day-trips by ferry from Miami, across the bay. By , Collins and Pancoast were working together to clear the land, plant crops, supervise the construction of canals to get their avocado crop to market and set up the Miami Beach Improvement Company. Much of the interior landmass at that time was a tangled jungle of mangroves. Clearing it, deepening the channels and water bodies, and eliminating native growth almost everywhere in favor of landfill for development, was expensive.
