Tropical Miami Tour - Art Scenes

MIAMI

Tropical

The US took florida from Spain to control the Seminole people and to capture the slaves that ran away into the jungle, starting the gentrification and urbanization of Florida which was seen as an exotic paradise close by the wealthy Spanish & English Caribbean ports — and today you can go back to the tropical rustic days of Cocoanut Grove, the oldest settlement in Miami.

Time period: 1800s

Movie/book: Everglades (2016)/ Images of America: Coconut Grove by Arva Moore Parks

Soundtrack: Buscabulla/Calypso music

Fashion: colorful outfit, Hawaiian shirt plus a straw hat

Budget:

Martha Dorn Timanus: Cocoanut Grove in 1896; Miami, 1973

This walking tour would you through the streets of Coconut Grove: the oldest neighborhood of Miami where where Bahamians escaped from economic collapse of the British colony building their own houses and churches; and where American and European industrialists moved to escape the filth of urban life in Gilded Age mansions. The area is characterized by: Spanish revival architecture, tropical-plants lined streets and historical houses. After the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1821 between the US and Spain, Florida became a territory of the USA and a state in 1845. Throughout this time the American government tried to moved the Seminole people west of the Mississippi (getting into 3 wars) but some resisted and moved to the Everglades (a unique habitat known as the “river of grass”). Little by little Americans started settling in, attracted by its exotic landscape and sunny weather; and in the 1870s the first black settlers of Florida arrived from the Bahamas to the rugged, rural, tropical village of Cocoanut Grove. They built cracker houses (wood houses with porches and high ceilings), worked in farms and set up street markets; helping urbanize the area, creating what we now know as the historical Little Bahamas around William Ave. The name got changed to Coconut Grove when Dr. Horace P. Porter opened a post office in 1873 with that name. Two years later Charles and Isabella Peacock moved from England to the village; and years later they open the first hotel in 1883, The Bay View House, later known as the Peacock Inn. Isabella was known as the “Mother of Cocoanut Grove” as she was the doctor, chef, judge, minister, and friend of the local community. By the 1890s the Bahamians started opening their own churches (you can still visit some of these historical churches) not because of segregation but because mass was to boring for them; they wanted to incorporate African musical instruments and dances giving us what we now associate as “African American Masses”. Henry Flagler extended the Florida East Coast Railway all the way down to Key West fostering development and migration to Florida; and soon different millionaires started building their mansions inspired by Spanish/Italian palaces like the Vizcaya Mansion: built for the gay industrialist James Deering in the 1910s. The village of Coconut Grove got annexed to the new city of Miami in 1925 and since then it developed as a high-end single housing residential area — but in recent years malls and high-rise condominiums have been built gentrifying the neighborhood with contemporary architecture. The tour suggests visiting the tropical garden of Kampong plus a historic walk and brunch during the morning; the oldest Florida cracker house, historical churches plus shopping at two small street markets in the afternoon; and to end the day more shopping (but now luxury) plus dinning around Merricks Park.