Intersection of Fifth Street and Alton Road - 1980

Intersection of Fifth Street and Alton Road,
Miami Beach. (1980)
(Click here to enlarge.)
[via]

Newspaper ad for Harley-Davidson motorcycles - 1919

From the Miami Daily Metropolis, March, 5, 1919.

Newspaper ad for Rocky Graziani Restaurant and Lounge

From the Miami News, June 1, 1963.

Vintage postcard of Miami skyline at night - 1940s

Click to enlarge.

New Yorker Hotel, Miami Beach - March 1980

New Yorker Hotel, 1611 Collins Ave., March 1980.
Photographs by Walter Smalling
via Library of Congress. 

Vintage Miami Beach Postcard ca. 1930s

41st Street Bridge over Indian Creek, Miami Beach.
(Click to enlarge.)

South Beach - ca. 1975

Original caption: Residential hotels for retired persons
of limited means dot the South Beach area. 
The front porch is a favorite gathering place. 
Photograph by Flip Schulke via the National Archives. 
(Click image to enlarge.)

Original Caption: Resident of South Beach. A large proportion 
of the area's population are people of retirement age.
Photograph by Flip Schulke via the National Archives.

Coral Gables streetcars at Miami Beach electric plant in 1925

Photograph by William Fishbaugh
Click to enlarge.

[via]

On the Silver Screen in 1934

Newspaper ads from the Miami Daily News, March 20, 1934...

Paramount Theater, 257 East Flagler Street. 

Olympia Theater, 174 East Flagler Street. 

WTVJ in 1954: 'TV Made from Scratch'

Via the Wolfson Archive:

In the early days of television, most TV was local TV, and at four o'clock in the afternoon on WTVJ-4, it was time for "The Alec Gibson Show" -- an hour of (it was hoped) frolicsome fun led by Alec Gibson.

The Gibson show was produced live at WTVJ's downtown Miami studio and that meant that commercials were produced live in the studio too, like this one for America's favorite soft drink.

Miami Herald building under construction

Ground is cleared for new Miami Herald Building. 
Date unknown.
(Click all images to enlarge.)

Construction equipment at site of new
Miami Herald building.

Crane begins construction on new Miami 
Herald building, 1959.

Early stages of construction on Miami Herald building
in 1960. Nash Miami Motors which was located at entrance
to the Venetian Causeway can be seen in background

1961.

1961.

Workers hoist sign letters on new Miami
Herald building in March 1963.
Photo by Bob East. 

Sign at vacated Miami Herald building on Miami Ave. in 1963.
Photo by Ray Fisher. 

Trolley cars in downtown Miami - 1933

Pedestrians, traffic and three streetcars, looking north on N.E. 1st Avenue from the Flagler Street intersection.

Click to enlarge. 

Miami Beach nightlife in 1954.

Newspaper ads for various Miami Beach nightspots.

From the Miami Daily News, March 4, 1954.

The Latin Quarter on Palm Island. 

The Beachcomber at Dade Blvd. and West Ave,

The Delano.

The Crystal Room at the Sans Souci. 

Fan and Bill's at 21st Street and Collins Ave.

House boating on the Miami River - 1904

Image via the Library of Congress.
(Click here to enlarge.)

Jim Morrison exposes himself during a concert in Miami - March 1, 1969

From the Miami Herald, Dec. 9, 2010:

THE CONCERT

The Doors concert on March 1, 1969, had been highly anticipated by local teens, but The Miami Herald mentioned it only in passing.

Tickets were $6 in advance, $7 at the door. The band expected to play for 6,000 people for a $25,000 fee. But promoter Kenneth Collier, who ran Thee Image concert hall in Miami Beach, oversold the event, Morrison's camp claimed. Collier, who has since died, publicly blamed Morrison.

At showtime, 10,600 kids jammed the hall; thousands more milled about outside. Morrison was late after missing a Los Angeles-to-Miami flight. He began drinking, recalled the band's then-manager William Siddons in a telephone interview from California.

"Jim was always drunk; that was nothing unusual," said Siddons, who accompanied Morrison to Miami.

It was supposed to be a homecoming of sorts for Morrison. Born in Melbourne, the son of an admiral, he attended St. Petersburg Junior College and Florida State University before heading west to launch his poet-as-rock-star career.

Things unraveled quickly on stage. Morrison started and stopped in mid song. He peppered the crowd with questions, obscene requests and four-letter words. He called for a revolution among the spectators.

The audience grew angry, hurling insults.

Morrison finally asked: "Do you want to see
my c--k."

Miami Beach teen David LeVine, now 56, was at the foot of the stage with his camera.

"I had come expecting to shoot a baby-faced Morrison and was disappointed to find he had a bushy beard and you could hardly tell it was him, " he said.

One of LeVine's pictures, later presented in court, showed Morrison with his hand near the crotch of his pants. "Never saw him expose himself, though, " LeVine said.

Not true, said Theodore Jendry, 59, one of 30 off-duty Miami officers at the concert. "He pulled out his business and started whirling it, " said the retired Jendry, of Deerfield Beach. "He should have been arrested right there."

Siddons, the band's manager, said Morrison knew he had gone too far. On the limo ride back to a Miami Beach hotel, Siddons remembered Morrison telling him: "'Uh, oh, I might have exposed myself out there."

"He didn't do it for prurient reasons. It was theater, " Siddons said. "But it happened in Florida, a real black and white state, and it was the South."

Following the concert, Morrison and his band went on vacation to Jamaica. Meanwhile, the backlash against him in Miami picked up steam. Radio stations briefly stopped playing, Light My Fire, Hello, I Love You and Touch Me.

Then came the decency rally at the Orange Bowl. Backed by the Archdiocese of Miami, local teens organized the event and drew 30,000 people. Among them: singer and Florida native Anita Bryant. Even President Richard Nixon called to congratulate the organizers.

Four days after the concert, six warrants on obscenity charges were issued for Morrison, who eventually surrendered to the FBI in Los Angeles.

Arrest warrant for Jim Morrison. 
Click to enlarge. 

_____

April 5, 1969: Jim Morrison’s Indecency Arrest: Rolling Stone’s Original Coverage

_____

via History.com:

Jim Morrison prompts a rally for decency - March 23, 1969

"Dear Mike," wrote the recently inaugurated President Nixon to Miami-area teenager Mike Levesque in a letter dated March 26, 1969, "I was extremely interested to learn about the admirable initiative undertaken by you and 30,000 other young people at the Miami Teen-age Rally for Decency held last Sunday." The event of which Nixon spoke was organized in response to an incident at a Doors concert some three weeks earlier, when a drunk, combative and sometimes barely coherent Jim Morrison allegedly exposed himself to the crowd at Miami's Dinner Key Auditorium. The alleged exposure, whether it took place or not, created serious legal problems for Morrison. It also created an opportunity for socially conservative Floridians and their celebrity supporters to speak out against the counterculture at the massive "Rally for Decency" held at Miami's Orange Bowl on March 23, 1969.

The Associated Press described the event as being part of "a teen-age crusade for decency in entertainment." On hand to support that crusade was a handful of celebrities not normally associated with the youth market: Kate Smith, Jackie Gleason, The Lettermen and Anita Bryant, spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission.

Ms. Bryant, who would later become an outspoken opponent of gay rights, was not the only grownup to make political hay out of what began as a sincere event organized by the teenage members of a Roman Catholic youth group. On March 24, the day after the rally, President Nixon's daily news summary included a mention of the event along with a handwritten note from a young aide named Pat Buchanan: "The pollution of young minds...an extremely popular issue; one on which we can probably get a tremendous majority of Americans." Eight months later, Nixon would give his famous "Silent Majority" speech, and 23 years later, Buchanan would make a serious bid for the Republican presidential nomination running as a veteran of the so-called "Culture Wars."

Miami News, March 24, 1969.
(Click to enlarge.)