South Beach occupies the southern end of the barrier island that forms the City of Miami Beach, a municipality separate from the City of Miami across Biscayne Bay. The Atlantic Ocean is its eastern edge and the bay its western; Government Cut, the ship channel into the Port of Miami, closes it at South Pointe. The northern limit is informal, usually placed at Dade Boulevard and the Collins Canal, or about 23rd Street on the ocean side. Ocean Drive, Collins Avenue, Washington Avenue and Alton Road run north to south, and Lincoln Road crosses between 16th and 17th Streets.
Development
Henry and Charles Lum bought 165 acres for coconut planting in 1870, and John Collins had assembled land from 14th to 67th Street by 1907; Carl Fisher financed the bridge that first carried cars across the bay, and the Town of Miami Beach was incorporated on March 26, 1915. Most of the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne building stock dates from 1923 to 1943. After decades of decline, the Miami Beach Architectural District, about 960 buildings bounded by the ocean, 6th Street, Alton Road and the Collins Canal, was listed on the National Register on May 14, 1979, following a campaign led by Barbara Baer Capitman and the Miami Design Preservation League. The area is effectively built out, and recent work has been hotel renovation, tower replacement south of 5th Street, and stormwater and sea level rise projects.
Parks & Recreation
Lummus Park fronts the beach along Ocean Drive, with South Pointe Park at the southern tip, Flamingo Park inland, and Collins Park and Maurice Gibb Memorial Park to the north. The Beachwalk promenade runs north from South Pointe along the dune line. Institutions include the Bass Museum of Art, The Wolfsonian-FIU, the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, the Holocaust Memorial, the New World Center and the Miami Beach Convention Center, which reopened in 2018 after a major renovation and hosts Art Basel Miami Beach each December.
Transit
No Metrorail crosses the bay to Miami Beach. The free Miami Beach Trolley’s South Beach Loop circulates locally, and Metrobus connects the island to the mainland: a Collins Avenue route runs between downtown Miami and Aventura by way of the MacArthur Causeway, with further routes using the Venetian and Julia Tuttle causeways and the airport. A rail connection to the beach has been studied since the 1980s and has not been built, so Metromover, Brightline and Tri-Rail are all reached in downtown Miami.