The COVID lockdown of the past two years has actually proved quite productive for me. Unable to go carousing out on the town, I was forced to stay home and write. In addition to researching and writing A Dance to Lost Time, comparing the authors Marcel Proust and Anthony Powell, I have also written Building Paradise, a history of Miami, my hometown.
Less
than one hundred and thirty years ago, Miami did not exist. Apart from a small,
abandoned army post and some derelict slave quarters, the only sign of life was
an orange grove planted by a middle-aged widow.
In less than a decade after Julia Tuttle cleared a space in the
wilderness to plant her first orange tree, Miami sprang magically to life and
today, that same humble orange grove has a glittering glass and steel skyline
to rival Shanghai or Manhattan.
In
the Florida Land Boom of the early twentieth century Miami became ‘Paradise
Found’, the most exotic and sought-after city in North America. It was a
tropical paradise filled with Hollywood celebrities, movie stars, European
aristocracy, Washington big shots, Wall Street tycoons and all the leading
mobsters between Las Vegas and New York. Miami was a developers’ paradise, new
buildings and sub-divisions sprang up almost daily, to accommodate the endless
stream of new arrivals lured by the Magic City’s reputation of sun, sand, sin,
and sex. Miami had become a paradise for starting over, for creating a new
life. Refugees from political oppression or economic despair and people
escaping from past indiscretions or serious legal problems could all find a new
beginning in this sunny paradise of optimism and endless opportunities.
But
it all came crashing down in the late seventies, when Miami became synonymous
with deadly race riots, civic corruption, violent drug warfare and political
scandals. In November 1981, Time Magazine featured a cover headline
describing South Florida as ‘Paradise Lost’. By the end of the century Miami
was bankrupt and Wall Street rated its bonds as worthless junk.
But
whether from hurricanes, police scandals, race riots or bankruptcy, the Magic
City displays an endless ability to bounce back and reinvent itself. As we enter the twenty-first century,
Paradise has, once again, been restored. The city has a AAA bond rating
from Wall Street, Miami neighborhoods from South Beach to Wynwood have become
synonymous with all that is hip, cool, and fashionable, while property values
are, once again, the highest in the nation. Whether it’s for the Ultra Music
Festival, the Miami Book Fair or Art Basel Miami Beach – the Magic City
continues to entice and attract visitors from all over the world.
In
just one-hundred years, Miami has already had more history, more glamour, more
stories, and more excitement than most other cities see in a thousand, and this
new book ‘Building Paradise’ aims to tell those stories.
