The Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables — a tower of glamour that opened into a storm

The Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables

Perched in the heart of Coral Gables, the Miami Biltmore Hotel arrived in 1926 as a statement: ambitious, ornate, and unapologetically grand. Designed by Schultze & Weaver for developer George E. Merrick and hotelier John McEntee Bowman, the Biltmore’s soaring tower stood the tallest building in Florida at 315 feet.

The hotel opened with much fanfare in January 1926. Ten months of rapid construction and a reported $10 million price tag produced a Mediterranean-Revival landmark with hundreds of rooms, an Olympic-size pool, tennis courts and two Donald Ross golf courses — everything the 1920s Florida boom promised visitors looking for sun, sport and spectacle.

But the timing could scarcely have been worse. The Biltmore’s debut coincided with the unraveling of Florida’s 1920s land boom — a speculative bubble that was already beginning to deflate by 1926 — and, within months of opening, South Florida was hit by the catastrophic Miami hurricane of September 18, 1926. The storm and the collapsing real-estate market together crushed many developers and chilled the flood of northern money and leisure that had fed lavish projects like the Biltmore.

Those twin blows — an economic bust and a devastating hurricane so soon after opening — forced the hotel and its backers into a bumpy early life. The Biltmore weathered changing owners, periods of underuse (including service as a military hospital during World War II), and the broader ups and downs of South Florida’s economy before being restored to its former splendor and ultimately recognized as a National Historic Landmark.

A few quick facts

• Completed and opened: January 1926.

• Height on completion: about 315 ft — Florida’s tallest building at the time.

• Hit by: the Great Miami Hurricane on September 18, 1926 (months after opening).

• Lost the “tallest in Florida” title in 1928 when the Dade County Courthouse was completed.
  

The Biltmore is more than a pretty tower. Its rise and early struggles dramatize the wild optimism and sudden fragility of 1920s Florida — a place where architects and developers stitched Mediterranean dreams onto a fragile tropical landscape, and where weather and finance could rearrange fortunes almost overnight. Today the Biltmore stands renewed, a living piece of that history: an artifact of audacity that survived both boom and bust.