The Urmey Arms...Coral Gables' first high-rise apartment building

On Jan. 18, 1926, a page one story in the Miami Daily News reported that a developer planned to build a $12.5 million, 25 story cooperative apartment building - the largest in the world - in the heart of Coral Gables. Work on the Urmey Arms would start immediately, the paper said.

Miami Daily News, Jan. 18, 1926.

Two days later, a full page ad in the paper boasted that the Urmey Arms would offer buyers of an apartment "the luxuries of a palace at the cost of a cottage."

Miami Daily News, Jan. 20, 1926.

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On Jan. 29, the Daily News reported that crews had already cleared the land for the project at the intersection of Segovia Plaza and Biltmore Way.

The paper reported "an army of engineers and construction workmen soon will start the mighty building on its majestic rise to the Coral Gables skyline."

News of the project drew the curious. The paper said that, "Throughout the day fashionable automobiles draw up to a stop on Coral Way and their occupants watch with eagerness the onslaught of the machinery in preparation for the construction engineers."

But the building never got past the ground clearing stages. By the summer of 1926, as real estate sales in Coral Gables waned, the Urmey Arms project was put on hold.

Miami Daily News, March 4, 1926.