Lincoln Road

If there is one street every first-time visitor to Miami Beach ends up walking, it is Lincoln Road. Running east to west between 16th and 17th Streets in the heart of South Beach, from Washington Avenue in the east to Alton Road in the west, Lincoln Road is a pedestrian mall: no cars, just people, palms, shop windows, cafe tables, fountains, and street performers. It is the place Miami Beach goes to see and be seen, and it has been for more than a century.

Lincoln Road began, like almost everything in early Miami Beach, as mangrove swamp. In 1912 the developer Carl Fisher — the man who, more than anyone, invented Miami Beach as a resort — had a strip of mangroves cleared from the Atlantic side of the island to Biscayne Bay, raised the ground with fill dredged from the bay, and laid out a broad main street. Fisher kept his own real estate office on the road, and he promoted it as the town's social center and shopping street. It was soon being billed as the "Fifth Avenue of the South," and for decades the billing was not far off: the road drew premium names including Bonwit Teller and Saks Fifth Avenue, along with Cadillac and Packard dealerships, restaurants, and movie palaces. To stroll Lincoln Road in the 1930s and 1940s was to take the pulse of Miami Beach itself.

The street is named for Abraham Lincoln, Fisher's idol — a piece of boosterism that stuck. What Fisher built was a conventional, car-filled commercial street, and for its first half-century it worked beautifully. By the late 1950s, though, it was in trouble: traffic clogged the road, shoppers were drifting toward the new suburban malls, and the street that had defined Miami Beach risked becoming just another congested thoroughfare.

The rescue came from Miami Beach's own most famous architect. In the late 1950s, Lincoln Road's property owners turned to Morris Lapidus, the architect of the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc hotels, and asked him to save their street. Lapidus's answer was radical for its time: close the road to cars entirely and turn it into a garden promenade.

Lapidus described his vision in 1960 in words that still describe the street today: "It will not just be a place of shopping. It will be a promenade where people can walk and see beautiful flowers and foliage, in addition to what they see in the store windows." His design organized the mall around a black-and-white, piano-key-like paved central spine, interspersed with planting beds, water features, fountains, and whimsical architectural follies — small shelters, pergolas, and an amphitheater — in the subtropical modern style that came to be called Miami Modern, or MiMo. Lapidus, who had pioneered that style in his hotels, later called Lincoln Road the "one place that gives me the greatest pleasure."

The pedestrian mall opened on November 28, 1960, billed at the time as "the most magnificent mall in all of the Americas." It was one of the first major American thoroughfares ever closed to traffic and pedestrianized, and it remains the oldest pedestrian mall in Florida. The experiment worked: shoppers returned, cafes spread their tables across the car-free pavement, and Lincoln Road became the model other American cities studied when they tried to revive their own downtowns. In 2011 the mall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Lincoln Road Mall, recognized both for its role in the development of the pedestrian mall in the United States and for Lapidus's landscape design.

Lincoln Road rewards looking up. The street is an open-air survey of Miami Beach architecture, from the Art Deco of the 1930s to the exuberant MiMo of the 1950s and the contemporary landmarks of the 2000s.

Two historic theatres anchor the story. The Lincoln Theatre, at 541 Lincoln Road, was designed in Art Deco style by the great cinema architect Thomas W. Lamb and opened in 1936 as a movie palace. It showed films for decades, then, after sitting vacant in the 1980s, was bought by the New World Symphony in 1990 and restored as a concert hall; the symphony performed there until moving to its new home in 2011, and the building now houses retail, its restored Art Deco exterior still commanding the street. A few blocks west, the Colony Theatre, at 1040 Lincoln Road, opened in 1935 as a Paramount Pictures movie house, was given a MiMo makeover by Lapidus himself in the 1980s, and today, owned by the City of Miami Beach, is home to Miami New Drama and a year-round program of theatre, dance, and comedy. Its oversize marquee and curved neon are among the most photographed sights on the street.

At the western end, 1111 Lincoln Road stops almost every walker in their tracks. Designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron and completed in 2010, it is a parking garage, shops, and event space rendered as open concrete decks and staircases — a building the architects described as all muscle and no clothing — and it has become a landmark in its own right. Next to it, the 1100 block itself was redesigned in 2010 by landscape architect Raymond Jungles as an "urban oasis" of native planting, water gardens, and biofiltration beds, extending the pedestrian mall to Alton Road. Nearby, the New World Center, Frank Gehry's concert hall for the New World Symphony, brings a gleaming white sail of a building to the Lincoln Road neighborhood, and its outdoor wallcasts let crowds gather on a lawn to watch performances for free.

Between these landmarks, look for the details Lapidus left behind and later restorations have kept: the patterned paving, the fountains, the shade structures, and the storefronts that mix restored Art Deco facades with contemporary glass. The Miami Beach Community Church building on the mall, designed by Walter De Garmo, is another survivor from the street's early decades, now repurposed for commercial use.

What makes Lincoln Road more than an architecture walk is that it is still, above all, a place to linger. The street's cafes and restaurants spill their tables onto the pavement under big umbrellas, and people-watching is the main event: tourists fresh from the beach, locals meeting for coffee, families with ice cream, artists and performers working the crowd. Galleries and artist studios — the ArtCenter/South Florida studios among them — line the street alongside national retailers and independent boutiques, so a single stroll can take in fine art, fashion, and street performance in a few blocks.

On Sundays the street takes on a different rhythm. The Lincoln Road Farmers' Market sets up on the stretch between Washington Avenue and Meridian Avenue, with produce, flowers, plants, bread, jams, and prepared foods; on selected Sundays the Antique and Collectible Market brings vendors selling vintage clothing, jewelry, furniture, and art. Both markets are worth planning a visit around, and both are part of why locals, not just tourists, still claim the street as their own.

Evenings change the mood again. As the heat breaks, the lights come on, the cafe tables fill, and the street fills with the after-dinner crowd heading to a film at the multiplex at the Alton Road end, a show at the Colony, or a concert at the New World Center. Lincoln Road is also the natural hinge of a South Beach day: the beach and Ocean Drive's Art Deco hotels lie a short walk to the east, and the quieter residential streets and bayfront lie to the west. Walk it in the morning for the calmest light and the easiest cafe tables, at midday for the full buzz, and after sunset for the neon and the crowds.

Start at the eastern end, at Washington Avenue, and walk west toward Alton Road, so the street unfolds block by block and you end at the Jungles gardens and 1111 Lincoln Road. Give yourself at least an hour for the walk itself and half a day if you plan to shop, eat, and duck into galleries. Wear comfortable shoes and bring water: the pavement is flat and fully walkable, but Miami sun is serious, and shade comes in patches between the palms and awnings.

Do not try to do Lincoln Road as a checklist of stores. Its pleasure is slower: a coffee at a pavement table, a detour into a gallery, a pause at a fountain, a look up at a theatre facade you might otherwise walk past. And remember what Lapidus intended. He did not design a shopping center; he designed a promenade where the flowers and foliage matter as much as the shop windows. Walk it that way, and you will understand why, more than sixty years after the cars left, this street is still the place Miami Beach comes to meet itself.

- Lincoln Road was cleared and laid out by developer Carl Fisher beginning in 1912, and promoted as Miami Beach's main street and the "Fifth Avenue of the South."

- The street runs east-west between 16th and 17th Streets in South Beach, from Washington Avenue to Alton Road, and is named for Abraham Lincoln.

- In the late 1950s, architect Morris Lapidus — designer of the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc hotels — was commissioned to redesign the street as a pedestrian mall.

- The pedestrian mall opened on November 28, 1960, one of the first major American thoroughfares closed to traffic, and is the oldest pedestrian mall in Florida.

- Lapidus's design centered on a black-and-white "piano key" paved spine with planting beds, fountains, shelters, and follies in the Miami Modern (MiMo) style.

- The Lincoln Theatre (1936, architect Thomas W. Lamb) and the Colony Theatre (1935) are the street's two historic movie palaces, both still standing on the mall.

- The 1100 block was redesigned in 2010 by landscape architect Raymond Jungles as an "urban oasis," extending the pedestrian mall west to Alton Road.

- 1111 Lincoln Road, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is a celebrated parking garage, retail, and event building at the street's western end.

- Lincoln Road Mall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 6, 2011, for its role in the pedestrian-mall movement and Lapidus's landscape design.

- Today the mall holds more than 200 boutiques, galleries, restaurants, and bars, plus the Colony Theatre, artist studios, and Sunday farmers' and antiques markets.

Address: Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, FL 33139 (pedestrian mall between Washington Avenue and Alton Road, between 16th and 17th Streets)

Transit: Miami Beach is served by Miami-Dade Transit buses and the free Miami Beach trolley routes; check current routes before visiting, and note the mall itself is car-free — arrive on foot, by bus, or by rideshare to a nearby cross street

Hours/Admission: Lincoln Road is a public pedestrian street, open to walk at any hour with no admission charge; individual shops, restaurants, galleries, and theatres keep their own hours, so check lincolnroad.com or the individual business before visiting for current opening times

Best timing: Weekday mornings are calmest for cafe tables and photos; Sundays bring the farmers' market (and, on selected Sundays, the antiques market); evenings are liveliest, with theatre, cinema, and concert crowds — allow at least an hour for the walk and half a day to shop, eat, and explore