"If you create the stage setting and it's grand, everyone who enters will play their part," said Morris Lapidus, architect of the Fontainebleau Hotel, still the majestic, gargantuan queen of Miami's many vacation resorts. These photos from the Library of Congress' Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, which were taken one year after the hotel's grand opening in 1954, show the Fontainebleau in full "dream movie set" mode. It was a theatricality and exhibitionistic display not totally unlike how the hotel is today.
In 1955, the Fontainebleau Hotel Was Irrepressibly Glamorous. >>