SLS South Beach Hotel

skyscraper
art-deco
FL
Miami

About the SLS South Beach Hotel in Miami
Architect and team
Architectural style
Spaces and uses
Structure and materials

The SLS South Beach Hotel is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by L.Murray Dixon, and built between 1939 and 1940 in Miami, FL.

SLS South Beach Hotel is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

Grossinger Beach Hotel between 1939 and 1946.
Ritz Plaza Hotel between 1946 and 2004.
SLS South Beach Hotel from 2012 until this day.

Its precise street address is 1701 Collins Avenue, Miami, FL. You can also find it on the map here.

At the time of its completion in 1940 the SLS South Beach Hotel incorporated solutions that were quite advanced at the time, these included air-conditioned, which is taken for granted today, but the SLS Hotel was actually the first Hotel in Miami to incorporate it.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1990 and 2012.

Building's timeline

Grossinger Beach Hotel

1939

Construction completed

1940

Ritz Plaza Hotel

1946

Restoration

1990

Restoration

2012

years ago

2024

1989 to 1990 - The hotel was restored, recovering the Art Deco details lost during occupation by the military in the Second World War.
2004 to 2012 - Remodeling of the rooms, addition of a terrace with a pool, among other updates, to transform the building into a luxury boutique hotel. The architect in charge was Philippe Starck and Kravitz Design.

Architect and team

L.Murray Dixon was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Grossinger family as the Main Developer.

Architectural Style

The SLS South Beach Hotel can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

Spaces & Uses

The SLS South Beach Hotel reaches an architectural height of 203ft (62m). It has a total of 12 floors, which combined offer a total of 91,192 sqf (8,472m²) of usable space.

Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1940, the SLS South Beach Hotel has mainly been used as Hotel space.

About the Hotel

The hotel is a 4 stars category hotel, with a total of 142 rooms available to the public. The name of the hotel is SLS South Beach Miami. You can learn more about the hotel by visiting their website here.

Materials & Structure

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a centered main door, flanked by a large window on each side. From the second level upwards, a central section painted in a darker tone and with small windows arranged in groups of three by level extends up, all the way to the flat roof, on the side of which rises the tower with the hotel's name on it. Two setbacks in the lateral bodies mark the completion of the structure, while forming three bays on each side with windows placed in a row .