Miami Biltmore Hotel

The Miami Biltmore Hotel is a luxury hotel, located at 1200 Anastasia Avenue in Coral Gables, Florida. The hotel was converted into a 1200-bed hospital during World War II and then in 1947 was renamed "Pratt General Hospital" in honor of Colonel Fabian Lee Pratt. In 1968 the hospital was deactivated. After being abandoned for many years, the building was restored and in 1987 resumed its function as a hotel. In 1986 the U.S. government designated the Miami Biltmore Hotel as a National Historic Landmark.

Quotes

The Biltmore Hotel and Country Club was the centerpiece of developer George Merrick's dream to create a beautiful city. Incorporated as a city after only four years of existence, Coral Gables had homes but no landmark. The 400-room Biltmore Hotel instantly became so, not only as the tallest building in south Florida but also as the center for activities drawing the rich and famous to Coral Gables. ... Teaming up with Biltmore hotelier John Bowman, Merrick hired architects Leonard Schultze (1877-1951) and S. Fullerton Weaver (1879-1939), who had just finished the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel, to create a striking structure broadly inspired by Mediterranean architecture. ... The Biltmore has suffered but survived economic downturns, and today, operated by a private consortium but owned by the City of Coral Gables, its future seems secure.
- Judith Paine McBrien, Pocket Guide To Miami Architecture. Norton Pocket Guides. W. W. Norton & Company. 2012. p. 16. ISBN 0393733068.

Donald J. Ross, the most prolific of golf architects in the 1920s, designed the two 36-hole courses at the Biltmore. In the 1940s, one of the courses was sold to a private group and became Riviera Golf and Country Club in Coral Gables.
- Richard Moorhead, Nick Wynne, Golf in Florida: 1886-1950. Images of sports. Arcadia Publishing. 2009. p. 64. ISBN 0738568414.

Citizens' activism increased in 1971 after the Veterans Hospital, housed in the former Biltmore Hotel, closed and the government announced it would trade the property with a developer who would build condominiums on the site. In 1973, after a heated debate and bond referendum to purchase the property, the city of Coral Gables acquired the property.
- Arva Moore Parks, George Merrick's Coral Gables: Where Your 'castles in Spain' are Made Real. Past Perfect Florida History. 2006. p. 58. ISBN 0974158968.

The grand opening party was an extraordinary display of jewelry, furs and clothing by the 1500 guests. Famous band leader Paul Whiteman conducted one of three orchestras that entertained the guests. Although the 18^th amendment to the Constitution (January 1920) prohibited the sale and manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor, it did not spoil the party since, it was said, champagne was flowing. ...
The hotel's 300-foot-high belfry is visible from just about any spot in Coral Gables's low-zoned residential area. Lighted by day by the subtropical sun and at night by powerful spotlights, the orange Mediterranean-Moorish belltower, modeled after the Giralda tower in Seville, rises between two seven-story wings. Guests enter into a large impressive space with marble under foot and more than two dozen 25 foot-tall Corinthian columns supporting a ceiling coffered in the center and groin vaulted at either end. The room, with a fireplace in one wall, is decorated with new and antique furnishings and carpets chosen to evoke the grandeur and elegance of an earlier era.
- Stanley Turkel, "John McEntee Bowman (1875-1931): International Sportsman and Extraordinary Developer of Biltmore Hotels". Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry. AuthorHouse. 2009. p. 1–23. ISBN 1449007546. (quote from p. 17)

The Miami Biltmore Hotel was the crowning achievement of the ready-made city of Coral Gables. Today elegantly restored, it continues to beckon guests from the world over. When it opened in 1925 it was the tallest structure in Florida.
- Gregg M. Turner, The Florida Land Boom of the 1920s. McFarland & Company. 2015. p. 6. ISBN 1476620628.