Part of a city built for an affluent citizenry seeking to live out their dreams, Coral Gables' theme villages certainly weren't shy about presenting a fantasy. In the case of the Pioneer/Colonial Village designed by the architectural firm of John Pierson, and John and Coulton Skinner, there's an idealized, if quite vague, notion of an old world United States.
Could this be the antebellum South, with every man a Rhett Butler and every woman a Scarlet O'Hara? Gone With The Wind wouldn't be written for 20 more years, but the southern gentry fantasy was probably there. Does the Pioneer village's location, surrounded by the Riviera Country Club, not evoke a landed estate? Or maybe you're a swashbuckling Alexander Hamilton, about to duel whoever it was that he famously dueled, with Mrs. Hamilton waiving her handkerchief from the verandah? Or George and Martha Washington at Mount Vernon. It all made sense, if you were living the dream.
· Coral Gables Theme Villages coverage [Curbed Miami]
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