The house that Lapidus built.

Rare Miami home of Morris Lapidus. “Design me a house,” demanded the dentist as the architect sat there benumbed with Novocain (or so the story goes). “I don’t do houses,” Lapidus mumbled. “I do hotels.”



above: fontainebleau in 1976.



It is still hard to get a handle on the man and his buildings. His place in architectural history wavers somewhere between outright canonization and bemused mockery. But Lapidus remains the reigning deity of Miami Beach development—he did as much as anyone to shape its modern image with his string of hotel extravaganzas: the Sans Souci (1949), the Algiers (1951) and his masterpiece, the Fontaine­bleau (1954). And his name continues to carry remarkable cachet with both developers and tourists—even after the recent wave of trendy boutique hotels by Ian Schrager, André Balazs, Philippe Starck and others.

via magazine.wsj. ( thank you Carlyn Meyer )

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