CREATIVE AGENCY
PUBLISHED BY
EDITED BY
Allastyle
Allapattah: A History
Words by Paul S. George, Ph.D.
Renowned historian Paul S. George, Ph.D takes us on a tour of Allapattah’s
storied past, that now shapes its dazzling days ahead.
As Miami’s center city neighborhoods go,
Allapattah has been, until recently, largely
overlooked by investors who have otherwise
invested heavily in other bustling areas like
Wynwood, Design District, Brickell, and Little
Havana.
This is not the case today, however,
as this community, ideally located and
informally defined by borders stretching from
Northwest 7th to Northwest 27th Avenue, and
from S.R. 112 to the Miami River, is seeing
significant new investment and development
in several quarters.
The name “Allapattah” is said to be a Native
American term for Alligator or Crocodile.
Clearly, Allapattah rests in a place, on the
north bank of the Miami River, where these
reptiles roamed.
Referred to as the Allapattah Prairie in early
1900s newspaper accounts of activities
there, the small community of settlers who
comprised it counted among their ranks
the pioneering Wagner family on its eastern
edge and the Braddocks, whose descendants
included longtime county school board
member Holmes Braddock, farther west.
At the beginning of the 1900s, “Braddock’s
Corner” referred to an area of activity at the
intersection of today’s busy N.W. 17th Avenue
and 20th Street.
Virtually everyone in the sparsely populated
area farmed, thanks to the region’s rich soil.
Crops included tomatoes, eggplant, guava,
pineapples, and citrus. Amazingly, farming
was still active as late as the 1950s in an area
near the north bank of the Miami River,
slightly west of N.W. 17th Avenue.
Limited development in Allapattah followed
the entry of oil and railroad baron Henry
M. Flagler’s railroad into Miami in 1896,
which birthed, in the same year, the City
of Miami; two years later, Flagler built a
9-hole golf course, on N.W. 11 Street near
N.W. 12th Avenue. A dozen years later, in
1910, Highland Park, one of the young City
of Miami’s first suburbs, opened on the west
side of today’s Northwest 7th Avenue and
11th Street amid much hoopla. Soon after,
on the city’s 15th birthday in July 1911,
astonished Miamians and visitors witnessed
an aerial exhibition by Howard Gill in a
Wright Brothers’ airplane flying over the
Flagler golf course.
Around 1915, Glenn Curtiss, holder of pilot
license number one and a speed record
holder with race cars, opened a flight
training school around today’s N.W. 20th
Street near 17th Avenue. By then, John
Sewell, Miami third mayor, had built a
palatial three-store home overlooking from
afar the Miami River. Today this singular
creation is part of the University of Miami’s
Sylvester Cancer Center, amid the massive
Health District that has emerged since
1916, when the nascent city hospital moved
from an address near today’s Biscayne
Boulevard and Northeast 8th Street to the
piney woods. Two years later, the hospital
was overflowing with victims of the “Spanish
Flu” pandemic, necessitating the erection of
tents for additional patients on the grounds
surrounding the facility. In 1924, the hospital
was renamed Jackson Memorial Hospital
in honor of early Miami’s most famous
physician, Dr. James Mary Jackson, who had
died a few months earlier. As the decades
unfolded, Allapattah would host one of the
largest medical complexes on the east coast
of the United States, the aforementioned
Health District.
The great real estate boom of the mid1920s led to a radical transformation of
Miami; nowhere, perhaps, was its impact
more far-ranging than in Allapattah. With
the Boom, which peaked in 1925, Allapattah
witnessed the creation of numerous
residential subdivisions while a rising
retail and institutional center emerged on
Northwest 36th Street and along Northwest
17th Avenue. One of the county’s oldest high
schools, Andrew Jackson High, today’s Miami
Jackson High School, opened, as did other
schools and houses of worship.
HISTORIC BUSINESSES
Most important of these businesses was
Merrill Stevens Boatyard, still in business
more than almost 100 years later. Other
Allapattah maritime businesses of that era
included Lou Nuta’s boatyard, the preferred
businesses for rumrunners since it outfitted
their vessels with Liberty Aircraft engines,
allowing them to power past Coast Guard and
other police vessels attempting to apprehend
them and their contraband cargo. The Ebsary
family and their eponymous foundation
company, standing a few blocks west of
Nuta’s boatyard on the north bank of the
stream, were pioneers in marine construction
and the laying of deep foundations. It remains
an active business nearly one hundred years
after its inception.
Merrill Stevens Boatyard, still in business
more than almost 100 years later. Other
Allapattah maritime businesses of that era
included Lou Nuta’s boatyard, the preferred
businesses for rumrunners since it outfitted
their vessels with Liberty Aircraft engines,
allowing them to power past Coast Guard and
other police vessels attempting to apprehend
them and their contraband cargo. The Ebsary
family and their eponymous foundation
company, standing a few blocks west of
Nuta’s boatyard on the north bank of the
stream, were pioneers in marine construction
and the laying of deep foundations. It remains
an active business nearly one hundred years
after its inception.
THE EVENTFUL DEPRESSION YEARS
In the Depression Decade of the 1930s, Allapattah experienced additional development, which increased the diversity of its offerings. In the northeast corner of Allapattah arose Moore Park, which quickly became one of the city’s most important athletic facilities, the home to University of Miami football games, and the Palm Festival, a New Year’s Day game and the predecessor of the Orange Bowl football classic. Additionally, the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, which put millions of persons to work in building and other programs, was responsible for the construction of a first-rate tennis facility in the park.
Allapattah became more heavily urbanized in the expansive period following World WarII with the growth of the Jackson Hospital Complex, the rising level of businesses on the north bank of the Miami River, and the opening of Miami Stadium in 1950, which became the spring training home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and, in 1956, that of the Triple A Miami Marlins. By the 1960s, it was hosting the Baltimore Orioles each spring and would continue to do so into the last years of the twentieth century.
Allapattah was the venue for Donn Gardens, the first low-cost housing complex for the elderly in the southeastern United States. Located in the 1800 block of busy N.W. 28th Street, this facility opened in 1961. Three years later, the Abe Aronovitz Villas, also for the elderly, opened across the street from it. In the meantime, Northwest 36th Street became a storied neighborhood “main street” filled with retail, professional offices and institutions. Other businesses of note on that thoroughfare included Orange Blossom hobbies, Woolworth’s, a movie theater, J.Byrons Department Store, Singletary’s Restaurant, a Bank of America branch, and adental office.
Just north of Northwest 36th Street, State Road 112, one of the first segments of a massive expressway system, opened in 1962, moving motorists from the airport to Miami Beach and many points in between.
THE IMPACT OF ADDITIONAL TRANSIT CONNECTIONS
Metrorail is a limited rail network of twenty-two miles, which sweeps through the northern sectors of the county. The rail began operating north of downtown Miami in 1985, after completing the southern leg, stretching from the DadeLand area to downtown in the previous year. Allapattah offers three Metrorail stations: Santa Clara, Allapattah, and Earlington Heights. Decades after its inception, these stations have assumed new importance with the Santa Clara station serving as the stop for persons visiting the newly-opened Rubell Art Museum and the Farmers Market, a part of which will be replaced by a large mix-use development. The Allapattah Station, in recent decades, has witnessed large scale residential development east of it. Standing on the northern edge of Allapattah, Earlington Heights is the transfer station for many riders coming and going to the airport on Metrorail’s Orange Line.
THE CONTINUING DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEALTH DISTRICT
One of the largest health districts in the United States rests in Allapattah. Its anchor is Jackson Memorial Hospital, which has resided there since 1916. The massive JMH complex has drawn other players in the booming health care business, including the University of Miami and the Veterans Administration Hospital. Renowned specialty providers like Bascom Palmer Eye Clinic and the University of Miami’s Sylvester Cancer Center draw patients from many parts of the world.
Near the edges of the Health District are Miami Dade College’s flourishing Medical Campus and the University of Miami’s Life Science and Technology Park. Additionally, the county’s Lindsey Hopkins Technical College, which is wedged in between the above centers, prepares many students for careers in various areas of health care.
A CIVIC CENTER AND MORE
On the site of the old Miami Country Club, a Miami
mainstay since the 1920s, arose in the second half of
the 1950s an expansive civic center with governmental
offices at the municipal, county, and state levels. As
it developed, the center came to include a facility for
the Sheriff’s Department, the Richard Gerstein Justice
Building, the Miami Police Department, Cedars of
Lebanon Hospital (today’s U-Health), and, by 1968, the
Veterans Administration Hospital. Suddenly, a quiescent
area without a main north-south street running through
it, was transformed into a bustling beehive of activity.
The Civic Center and Health District represent the
busiest areas of Allapattah, but other quarters also
resonate with activity and importance. As noted,
Northwest Seventeenth Avenue and Northwest
Thirty-Sixth Street were the earliest, most important
commercial, professional and institutional streets, and
they have remained important in the final decades of
the twentieth century and beyond. In the meantime,
Northwest Twentieth Street, in the same era, rose in
importance with emergence of a mile-long discount
clothing district. Just north of the street stands the right
of way of the Florida East Coast Railway’s extension,
which led to the emergence of an industrial district on
the edge of it.
ADDITIONAL CHANGES
The Farmers’ Market, which has been a fixture in Allapattah since the mid-1930s,
has, in recent times, found itself in the sights of developers, one of whom is Robert
Wennett, the builder of the iconic Lincoln Road parking garage, located at its
western edge. Wennett purchased the ten acre market for $16 million in 2016 ,
with plans to build an elaborate mixed use complex, part of which will rise above
the sheds of the old market. Wennett hired Bjarke Ingels, the Danish “starchitect,”
to design the new complex. The market, however, remains active with forty
retailers and wholesalers operating there in 2019.
In recent years, the stunning success of nearby Wynwood has spilled over onto
the eastern flank of Allapattah with the opening of another iteration of the popular
Wood bar from the latter neighborhood. Wall art, which propelled Wynwood to
international fame, began to appear in that area, too.
ALLAPATTAH: TODAY AND TOMORROW
While two Miami River-oriented residential complexes of scale arose in the 1980s immediately west of Northwest 17th Avenue, they pale by comparison with the $440 million River Landing mixed use complex that opened in 2020 on the site of the old Mahi Shrine buildings near Northwest North River Drive between 14th and 16th Avenues. Additionally, Lisette Calderon, one of the area’s most prominent developers, and the builder of two widely-lauded Miami River residential complexes: Neo Loft and Neo Vertika, and her Neology Life construction firm, completed a tall apartment complex near the Miami River on Northwest 17th Avenue. In October 2021, Calderon oversaw the groundbreaking for Neology Life’s Julia Tuttle, named for Miami’s “Mother,” which, when completed in 2023, will stand tall as a rental complex on Northwest 20th Street near Northwest 17th Avenue. Other major projects are sure to follow as Allapattah continues its transformation into an attractive, diverse neighborhood near the vital—and revitalized– center of one of America’s most beguiling cities.