Hialeah is a city northwest of Miami. Since I lived in South Florida for a total of Forty Years I…read moredefinitely know the recreational activities and demographics of the city. My happiest memories are of the historic Hialeah Park Race Track. Naturally when I had visitors from the North I usually found entertainment here. At one time it was a definite city that drew the tour buses full of tourists. I had Four Years of Spanish in Middle and High School but when I visit Hialeah I'm sorry to say I still have trouble communicating. This city has areas where they do not speak English. I recommend you visit this city that's rich in Florida History. Visit the race track at least!

Glenn H. Curtiss, aviation pioneer, inventor, and land developer Glenn H. Curtiss moved to Miami in…read morethe 1920's where he partnered with James Bright who made his fortune in cattle. Curtiss and Bright purchased 17,000 acres of scrub and pasture land that years later would become Miami Springs, Hialeah, and Opa-Locka. The city of Hialeah, located in north west Miami was named by a Seminole Indian named Willie Willie, When developer James Bright asked him to describe the property, he called it Hi-ale-ah, translating to pretty prairie or high prairie. The Seminoles used to dock their canoes in Hialeah and sell their wares. Bright dug the Miami Canal to drain the submerged land and Hialeah was incorporated in 1921. One million dollars of land was sold by the developers within 10 days. Bright built his home and cattle ranch at the corner of Hialeah Drive and East Second Avenue and Curtiss built an airfield in the Deer Park Creek neighborhood. G.R. Milliard, Hialeah's first resident, built a home at Okeechobee Road and Hialeah Drive where he operated the town's first post office, first real estate office, first general store, first car repair shop. and the first headquarters for the bus line to Miami. In 1921 his daughter Leah was the first child to be born in Hialeah. In the next two years the town had a dog track and a race course laid out by Glenn Curtiss. In the ensuing years Hialeah became the place where the working people settled buying inexpensive wood frame houses with canvas roofs. The September 1926 Hurricane struck destroying most of the town. This signaled the end of Florida/s land boom years followed by the Great Depression. In 1937 famed aviator Amelia Earhart set off for her doomed final flight from Hialeah. Hialeah and Florida bounced back with the return of GI's seeking a warmer climate after WWII. Hialeah is now the sixth- largest city in Florida with an estimated population 6,198,782 people. Homestead and Hialeah are the only places in Miami Dade County to have its own street grid numbered separate from the rest of the county. Hialeah is primarily Hispanic with the largest population of people of Cuban decent. Many exiles from Cuba who were fleeing Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution settled here. As a resident of Broward County I never gave Hialeah much thought. It was just an exit you passed by on your way to Miami. After taking some time to explore Hialeah I see I have been missing out on art, culture, shopping, architecture, and food. Hialeah has the ornate Mediterranean Revival architecture I love. Start your tour at the Hialeah entrance plaza. Some of the places I have recently discovered and enjoyed include Flamingo Plaza, Garden of the Arts, and the Leah Arts District. I put a collection up on Yelp for anyone interested in exploring Hialeah. Hialeah may not have a beach that draws the tourists but when you take the time to look it is filled with its own charm.

Alhambra Tower This…read moreis a very dramatic and regal looking building, and one that you surely notice. It is abflatiron shaped site in the heart of downtown Coral Gables, the Owner and City Board of Architects required a seamlessly integrated design that complimented Coral Gables' century old town. Class A+ highly usable floor plates for high-quality office space above ground-floor retail and dining services are integrated with an "architecturally screened" parking garage. The project was positioned to supply a market demand from growing multi-national financial institutions, international government services, and corporate users. Its design conveys a unique business experience to the affluent market clientele of Coral Gables, Miami, South America and Europe. The flatiron design of the building responds to the rich heritage of George Merrick's original 1925 Spanish Mediterranean style vision for the City of Coral Gables, Florida. The building composition and mass are organized in the classic tower idiom of "base, middle and top" with harmonic, syncopating rhythms of proportion, color, materials, and finishes.

I see this monument ALL the time when I am on the motorway and it means that I am nearly home! so I…read moredecided to go to the source. This makes for fab pics, very instagram worthy. This is what I found on the web about it. Sunshine State Arch is a national historic site located at the intersection between NW 13th Ave. and NW 167th St., at the entrance to the Sunshine State Industrial Park in Miami Gardens, Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA. It was inspired by the monumental Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

Amelia Earhart is not someone you would associate with Miami but she has a very special connection…read moreto South Florida. Born on July 24, 1897, the famed aviator would go on to become the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She also authored many books about her experiences flying and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots. In February 7, 1931 Amelia married publisher George Putnam. She spent some time in Ft. Pierce, Florida where her stepsons lived. She used to give flying lessons to George's son by Dorothy Binney, whose father invented Crayola Crayons. In 1936 Amelia Earhart started planning a trip that would make her the first woman to fly around the world. There was a failed first attempt in March of 1937 when she flew west from California and blew a tire in Honolulu causing her plane to crash. This caused her to change her plans and may have ultimately affected her fate. Instead of flying west from California to Hawaii and over the Pacific she would fly in the opposite direction to avoid bad weather. This decision would force her to have to find tiny Howard Island in the Pacific at the end of a tiring journey. On May 21, 1937 Amelia along with her navigator Fred Noonan embarked on a second attempt to circumnavigate the globe. They flew from Oakland California to Miami and once they landed Amelia Earhart announced her intention to launch her attempt to fly around the world. On June 1, 1937 Amelia Earhart left for her final flight from an airfield originally opened by aviator Glenn Curtiss, It is now the site of a Hialeah police department and a UPS sorting facility. One month and 22,000 miles later after stops in South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia, they took off from Lae, New Guinea. Amelia's last correspondence came from near Howland Island, an uninhabited coral island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where she was scheduled to refuel. What happened to her after that is a mystery lost to history. Amelia Earharts final flight is commemorated with a historical marker at the site of the municipal airport she took off from. For the two years, the Commission for Women collaborated with the GFWC Woman's Club of Hialeah to install a Florida historical marker for Amelia Earhart in front of the Hialeah Police Department Headquarters. The marker was unveiled on January 20, 2020. There is also a park about a mile away named for her.

There is no doubt this woman was epic n amazing. However, This monument is disappointing - it is…read morejust a sign with information on. THATS IT! Still, here is some information about Amelia - She decided that her next trip would be to fly around the world. In March 1937, she flew to Hawaii with fellow pilot Paul Mantz to begin this flight. Earhart lost control of the plane on takeoff, however, and the plane had to be sent to the factory for repairs. In June, she went to Miami to again begin a flight around the world, this time with Fred Noonan as her navigator. No one knows why, but she left behind important communication and navigation instruments. Perhaps it was to make room for additional fuel for the long flight. The pair made it to New Guinea in 21 days, even though Earhart was tired and ill. During the next leg of the trip, they departed New Guinea for Howland Island, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. July 2, 1937, was the last time Earhart and Noonan communicated with a nearby Coast Guard ship. They were never heard from again. What do you think happened?

This cottage is available to see at Pinecrest gardens. Listed below is information regarding this…read morecottage This cottage is typical of the pioneer dwellings built by homesteaders who settled in rural Dade County during the early 1900s through 1930s. It belonged to Carl Whilden, chief foreman at Fairchild Tropical Garderns. Whilden built the cottage in 1932 on land belonging to his wife Mary Carrier. The Carriers were an early pioneer family from Quebec, Canada, that homesteaded on 20 acres of pine woodlands located near Snapper Creek and Ludlam Road. The Whildens lived in this cottage from the Depression through the early 1970s. Their property included vegetable gardens, fruit trees, tropical specimens and native species bounded by oolitic rock walls and terraces. The cottage was designated a historic site by Miami-Dade County's Historic Preservation Board in 2000 and was relocated to Pinecrest Gardens in 2003.

Hialeah Entrance Plaza is one of the landmarks in the City of Hialeah. I have to say when it was…read morefirst restored in 2005 (for a whopping $411,000), I didn't like it. It grew on me as time progressed and I always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with it. Then again that exemplifies my whole experience being a born and bred Hialeahan. Hialeah's motto is the "city of progress", but being born and raised here I can tell you that the city and its people can get a bad rap from the rest of the county, state and heck even sometimes the rest of the country. Sometimes to be fair to the detractors, rightly so, other times very unfairly. Its to the point that the city is mocked as the land of "agua, fango y factorias", or water, mud and factories. There have been times where I have been judged for being from Hialeah. Its a working class/poor area of Miami-Dade County, heavily minority, with a large percentage of its residents who do not speak English. Still, I was born and raised in Hialeah and it has shaped who I am and who I became. In the end, this structure shows Hialeah is more than what its detractors say it is. It is beautiful, well maintained, with a cascading fountain. As an aside, one of my fondest memories of this place was when back in September 10, 2009 some high school student spiked the fountain with soap just before rush hour. I laughed so hard right on my way to work! Like to the story: https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/hialeah-fountain-throwing-a-suds-party/2051397/?amp=1 I took pictures myself that I found which are attached. Ahhh sweet memories!

It's not the Arc de Triomphe but it is the monument that serves as the entrance way to Hialeah. In…read morethe 1980s and 1990s, a coral rock fountain on a grassy patch at SE Fourth Street and Okeechobee was all that stood here. In 2005 the city built the that pale yellow Mediterranean style building that features two sentry towers and a stone fountain on the ground floor at a cost of a $411,848.56. In 2011 the Miami New times listed it as "the worst public works projects in Miami-Dade, where bureaucrats and elected officials take pride in wasting millions in taxpayer dollars on crap residents have little-to-no use for." They site the lack of parking, no sidewalk, and the inability to climb up to the top although there is a staircase on the inside. On occasion pranksters will fill the fountain with soap causing the suds to spill out onto the roadway. Although the New Times may have a point that the fountain was an expensive cost to tax payer, it's final price tag came in twice as much as it's budget, I still like it. It fits nicely in with the Mediterranean Revival theme that was popular in the 1920's when Hialeah was founded. It would however be better if it was more accessible for public use like the entrance ways to Coral Gables.

The city of Opa Locka was built during Florida's land boom years in the 1920's. During this time,…read morethe Middle East was a cultural fad thanks to movies like The Sheik and The Thief of Baghdad. When famous aviator Glenn Curtiss developed Opa Locka he designed it in an Arabian Nights theme. He first named the new development Opa-tisha-wocka-locka, meaning a big island covered with many trees and swamps, but it was later shortened to Opa-locka. Architect Bernhardt Emil Muller was hired to design the town and the streets were given names like Ali Baba Avenue and Sabur Lane. Eight six buildings were built in a Moorish Revival style. Curtiss boasted that he had built the "Baghdad of Dade County." The Hurricane of 1926 destroyed many of the Moorish style buildings but some survived and were added to the National Register of Historic Places. On March 22, 1982, the old city hall known as the Opa-locka Company administration building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places along with the nineteen Moorish Revival style buildings that still survived. The crown jewel of the buildings was the Opa-locka Company administration building whose design was inspired by the palace of Emperor Kosroushah in One Thousand and One Nights. Glenn Curtiss used it as the headquarters for his company, the Opa-locka Company which was the headquarters for the development and sale of land in Opa- locka. He designed it to be the anchor of his new city. later on it became the town hall. By the 1950's the buildings had begun to lose their thematic cohesiveness. The city is now a shadow of it's former glory and has one of the highest crime rates in the nation. The city hall was boarded up as of October 2017 and is in an advanced state of decay. It's a shame that Glenn Curtiss's dream died with his death and a building that was once so beautiful has been allowed to rot away. While I was trying to photograph it a man walked up next to me and started peeing on the vase near my feet. That was my cue to leave.

I came here to have a look at the unusual Pueblo revival style architecture before this sad…read morebuilding demolishes even more. It probably once was a very majestic building, such a crying shame it was allowed to get into such disrepair. I won't tell you all about the history as someone else has kindly told it (thank you). I did look on the internet though, and it would seem that there has been movement to restore it, although no evidence so far from what I saw. Fingers crossed this does happen as Opa Locka certainly needs a revamp!

This house was built in 1926 and designed in the Pueblo Revival style. It was added to the National…read moreRegister of Historic Places in 1985 and designated a Miami Springs Historic Site in 2003. The first occupant of the house was Lua Andrews Curtiss Adams who was the mother of famed aviator Glenn Curtiss. Glenn had the house built for his mother when she decided that she wanted to move from California to live closer to him. It is only one of four original buildings in Country Club Estates now named Miami Springs. When Glenn Curtiss had the house built he made sure he had large windows facing north to let in light for his mother who was a painter. Other features of the two story house are it is curved to allow air to flow through, the living room has a vaulted ceiling and a floor to ceiling fire place, and the exterior has rough hewn logs called vigas that are used to decorate the outside of adobe buildings. The house has been nicknamed the Alamo and there is a sign on the outside of the house. After only living in the house for a short time Lua Curtiss decided the house was too small so her son built a second larger house called Lua Curtiss House No, 2. This house is privately owned so you can't see the inside. On Saturday mornings however you can tour the Pueblo Revival Curtiss Mansion just up the road which was the home of Lua's son Glenn Curtiss.