Rat Pack's lair gone in a cloud of dust
The demolition of the 645-room Sheraton Bal Harbour Hotel with its unique gardens and passageways took seconds and will clear the way for an even more ritzy 350-unit condominium and a 250-unit ''ultra luxury'' St. Regis Hotel owned by Miami's Related Group and Starwood Hotel & Resorts, which had kept the Sheraton name.
John F. Kennedy slept there in the final week of his life.
Frank Sinatra and his ''Rat Pack'' -- Dean, Sammy, Joey, and Peter -- held court at its Carnival Supper Club.
And there were the hundreds of thousands of tourists, who strolled through the Sheraton Bal Harbour hotel's majestic and mosaic lobby during its half-century existence.
Sunday morning, with a staccato series of booms, it all became part of the past. The hotel, which opened to the public in 1956 as the Americana, came tumbling down.
The demolition of the 645-room hotel with its unique gardens and passageways, took seconds and will clear the way for an even more ritzy 350-unit condominium and a 250-unit ''ultra luxury'' St. Regis Hotel owned by Miami's Related Group and Starwood Hotel & Resorts, which had kept the Sheraton name.
For Miami-Dade, the hotel at 9701 Collins Avenue marks yet another loss on the local architectural landscape.
Designed by famed architect Morris Lapidus as part of his trilogy of hotels on Collins Avenue -- The Fontainebleau and the Eden Roc were his other two creations -- the Americana was an early showcase hotel for the Tisch family, which owns the Loews hotel empire.
''The Americana was a jewel in the Beach's heyday, which stretches from the late 1940s to the early 1960s,'' local historian Paul George said. ''When you entered the hotel, you knew it was a special place,'' George said. ``But for me, it represents the discovery of tourist of the north end of the Beach, something that happened after Word War II.''
The Americana opened its doors in 1956, the same year Elvis Presley appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, actress Grace Kelly married the Prince of Monaco and Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House.
Bal Harbour and Miami Beach were considered America's Riviera, a magnet for the era's celebrities and high society -- and the hotel was one of the most glamorous resorts in South Florida.
As one of Miami-Dade's few large union hotels, the Americana hosted three nationally televised AFL-CIO constitutional conventions during the 1960s and '70s that featured Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.
Kennedy stayed at the hotel four days before his assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
Not even the hotel's historic past or architectural pedigree could save it from an implosion. Although it was a Lapidus creation, it underwent extensive renovations and make-overs -- and renamed the Sheraton Bal Harbour in 1980.
Even preservationists agree there was little of the Lapidus touch -- curves and angles -- to win it a historical designation, sealing its fate.
Controlled Demolition of Baltimore, which recently knocked down the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas and the Everglades Hotel in downtown Miami in 2005, did the honors.
A combination of dynamite and the more powerful linear-shaped charges were strategically placed in the three structures being knocked down -- two towers, one 17 and the other 12-stories and both made of concrete, and an addition built of steel that will require the stronger hit, Loizeaux said. At 7 a.m., Sunday, the first explosion was set off, a thunderous sound heard miles away on the mainland.
And then a piece of South Florida history was gone in a cloud of dust.
