By Clotilde Luce

Organized by the Alliance Française of Miami, the May 1 panel discussion brought together architects and professors from the University of Miami, the head preservationists of the Miami Beach Planning Department, and two special guests from the National Monument Center (Centre des Monuments Nationaux, CMN) in Paris.

The two French guests, Stéphanie Celle, curator of national monuments and state architect and urban planner, and Laurence Sabatié-Garat of the department of institutional and international relations, surprised many in attendance in describing the preponderant role that a handful of major sites in France (e.g. le Mont Saint Michel) have in ensuring the survival of less frequently visited sites. Even in France, where local associations and public powers are well aware of issues surrounding heritage preservation, arousing the public’s enthusiasm for 20th-century monuments remains a challenge.

For example, major efforts must be taken to draw even a modest number of visitors to the Villa Savoye, designed by Le Corbusier in the town of Poissy, 20 miles northeast of Paris, and highly venerated as an important step in the evolution of his work and of Modernism in architecture. Similarly for Mallet-Stevens’ Villa Cavrois, also designed in the late 1920s, in the town of Croix, near the Belgian border.

The CMN’s approach for the Villa Cavrois has been to create an interesting gestalt by bringing together not only the villa’s original furniture but also by encouraging visitors’ sensitivity to a physical approach of the villa’s overall environment without falling into the “theme park” trap that is often used in attracting visitors to heritage sites in the United States. In France, the State and the Center for Historical Monuments guarantee the preservation of such exceptional villas, even when they draw few visitors.

Miami Marine Stadium. Photo Leslie Harris.

In contrast, business and even show business are called upon to save prime examples of 20th century architectural heritage in South Florida such Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, as William Cary of the city’s Planning Department explained at the panel discussion. Transformed in 1960 into one of the first commercial pedestrian streets in the United States, Lincoln Road, with its playful modern furniture designed by the architect Morris Lapidus, is an enormous success to judge by the flow of pedestrians toward stores such as Banana Republic and the Apple Store.

Nevertheless, the public lack of enthusiasm for pure examples of Modernism led to the international preservationist movement DoCoMoMo, as Jean-François LeJeune, one of the movement’s South Florida co-founders, explained.

Without the funding of a government-funded organization such as the CMN or of the State itself, as in France, the role of associations remains essential in the United States. Therefore the real suspense of the evening’s discussion centered around the delicate question of the Miami Marine Stadium, a 6500-seat stadium built in 1963 with stands directly facing the bay and with an incredible view of downtown Miami in the distance. The stadium long attracted fans of speedboat racing and of concerts played on a floating stage, including Ray Charles, Queen and Sammy Davis, Jr.

The roof, spread out like a stretched origami and suspended over 109 yards, constituted the world’s longest concrete cantilever roof when it was built. The Marine Stadium is also considered the last surviving structure of the Modernist style known as Pan-American. The stadium’s architect Hilario Candela, who came out of the Havana School of Architecture, was on hand that evening to meet guests from the CMN.

The stadium was abandoned after the devastating passage of Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and now, without the intervention of preservations, would be destined to disappear in favor of yet another mall and more so-called “world class condos.”

Following a relentless campaign by the association Friends of the Marine Stadium, the structure was placed in 2009 on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of important threatened sites, then on the list of the World Monuments Fund. This year, Miami government officials granted the stadium a two-year reprieve during which 30 million dollars would need to be raised for its repair and restoration.

Graffiti on the stadium. Photo Clotilde Luce.

“What’s encouraging,” said Stéphanie Celle of the CMN, “is the way in which people voluntarily got involved to save this architectural heritage. I think that we can learn from you because of such dedicated involvement. In France we have very strong laws [concerning heritage sites] and as long as the State has departments to apply those laws we manage to conduct a heritage policy of quality. But at a given time we’ll need the local population to participate in that heritage policy, as you’ve done.”

What direction did she think should be explored in the stadium’s rehabilitation and use?

“I have the feeling that economic questions are very tied up in this, and even if this enormous structure is protected as “a historical monument” there’s going to have to be some flexibility in order to develop a use for it. That means looking at with an eye to the structure’s quintessence, its roof, and the magnificent gift of its landscape. The rest, in my opinion, can move…”

The stadium currently looks like a forgotten temple from the jungle in an Indian Jones movie. Under a ramp that’s already covered by graffiti, young people are ready to spray paint new murals. A student and her friends are using this concrete background for a fashion shoot. In the stands, they and others smoke, send text messages, and watch jet-skiers go by. This 20th-century architectural heritage has found a new generation of “friends.”

For Laurence Sabatié-Garat, once the stadium’s restoration is underway, it would be a shame to eliminate the graffiti, which is a part of its history of abandonment and survival.

“Some speaks of keeping on some of [the graffiti] and ‘framing’ it,” she said, “but the most significant aspect of graffiti is freedom.”

Promoting conservation without being conservative, the experts from the CMN have made new friends in Miami.

© 2012, Clotilde Luce

Clotilde Luce is a travel writer and preservationist. She co-wrote “Art Deco in Shanghai and Miami Beach” (2009) and has freelanced for Libération, Vogue Hommes, Fortune, the Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. As contributing editor at Home magazine she has covered architecture in Miami, Kyoto, Royan and Rio.  Luce hosted bilingual radio shows on Radio France Internationale, was a Paris stringer for BBC Radio 5, and recently produced a story for NPR South Florida.

This article was originally written in French for the Paris-based Association des journalistes du patrimoine. Translation by Gary Lee Kraut.

At least that’s how it appears when reading between these two headlines of today’s (Jan. 13, 2012) Miami Herald:

1. “Florida schools slide in national ranking”

2. “School-prayer bill passes key test in Legislature”

In that scene in “The Birds,” one woman, i.e. the expert, has been insisting that birds of different species don’t have the social network to work together to act aggressively against people. Another insists that the birds have gotten out of hand. Some stay calm, some are freaking out, some listen, some ask questions. Meanwhile, outside, the birds have been manipulating the scene and the people in the station are making all the wrong choices so things then go from bad to worse.

Now everyone in the restaurants sees that gas has been spilling from one of the tanks outside. And a man in the station, unaware of what’s going on, is lighting a cigarette and about to throw his lit match to the ground. The people, watching with horror as the scene unfolds, begin banging on the window to stop the man with the cigarette, but they’re now powerless, too far away to be heard.

I’ve thought of that scene a number of times of the past few weeks while reading about the fantabulous debt ceiling debate and the scary world view of presidential candidates. Overseas, we are all knocking on the window, but no one hears.

I’m also reminded of the 2008 presidential campaign when gas prices were rising and John McCain, reaffirming is right to say anything you want to hear, and Hillary Clinton, thereby securing her position in an Obama administration, declared that what the American people truly needed in times like that (which, gas prices aside, also happen to be times like these) was a holiday from the 18.4 cents federal gas tax.

I’m writing this today because I’ve just read that Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia have gone ahead with their annual sales-tax holiday. Supposedly this favors of citizens with children in public schools who need to buy school supplies, but everyone can see—can’t they?—that at best it only favors a few big retailers who would otherwise reduce their own margins.

The cost of the sales-tax holiday to the budgets of those states is small potatoes, of course, representing no more than a few hundred jobs and a few new classrooms. What’s one little match?

From overseas we’re banging on the window.

Aug. 14, 2011.

The pardon may be irrelevant at this point, but these are boom times for cobblestones leading to Morrison’s grave.

Jim Morrison's grave in Paris. Photo GLK.

What’s Florida-born Morrison doing buried in Paris anyway? Well, in 1970, while out on bail during the appeal process of the 6-month jail sentence for which he has now been pardoned, Morrison came to Paris intending, perhaps, to make the transformation from rock ‘n roll sex symbol to literary luminary.

He stayed in Paris for part of the summer of 1970 then did some European traveling in the fall and winter and returned to Paris in March 1971, which pretty much sounds like junior year abroad.

Whatever his plans then, they were soon tackled by heightened drug and alcohol abuse. On July 3, 1971 he was found dead in his bathtub at 17 rue Beautreillis in the 4th arrondissement (the Marais), apparently from a mix of drugs and alcohol, though some contend that his body was carried there from a nightclub.

The Greek inscription on his tombstone in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris means “According to his spirit,” more or less meaning “true to his spirit” or, to quote fellow crooner Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way.” Florida has now forgiven him for it. The security and maintenance staff at Père Lachaise Cemetery probably have not.

- Photo and text, GLK

First, political entertainer Glenn Beck entertained his faithful by slamming a Holocaust survivor for not being Republican by referring to liberal philanthropist George Soros as “a Jewish boy sending Jews to the death camps.”

Then, looking to obtain contracts for train projects in the United States, France’s train company SNCF acknowledged with “profound pain” in Florida something that the company had yet to do directly in France: the state-run company’s active wartime compliance and contracts with Germans from 1942 to 1944 that resulted in the company transporting about 75,000 Jews toward concentration camps during the German Occupation of France. The company’s previous unwillingness to acknowledge its wartime role had all but blacklisted it from the competition for major rail contracts in Florida and California. SNCF’s American mea culpa business campaign can be read here. Now, France’s ambassador for human rights, while encouraging SNCF to be upfront about its wartime history, has accused American politicians of exploiting the issue for protectionist purposes.

This was followed up over the weekend by The New York Times’ revelation of a 600-page Justice Department report detailing how, in the years following WWII, the U.S. government and its intelligence services assisted the entry of Nazis into the United States and provided them with safe haven.

So Glenn Beck’s listeners may have gotten a good chuckle, SNCF is back in the running for the Tampa-Orlando high-speed line, and it turns out that that old neighbor of yours you thought might have been a Nazi might actually have been one.

Now that we’re clear on the moral issues, any chance the dollar’s going to rise soon?

- GLK