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About
Morningside Miami Homes and Real Estate in Florida
A
BRIEF HISTORY OF MORNINGSIDE
The area
now comprising Morningside has a history as old as the
City of Miami itself. Today's Morningside occupies land
at the southern boundary of Lemon City, a pioneering
community once larger than the neighboring city of
Miami. Natural channels in Biscayne Bay provided access
through shallow bay waters to a bight in the shoreline
at what is now NE 61st Street. Then called Lemon Avenue,
the main street of Lemon City grew up around the dock
located at this street's terminus at the bay.
In 1922,
a mostly undeveloped bay front tract just to the south of
Lemon Avenue and north of the then Miami city limits,
was platted. Bounded on the west by the railroad tracks,
the south by present-day NE 50th Street and on the north
by present-day NE 60th Street, this area, called Bay
Shore, was subdivided by the Bay Shore Investment
Company. These few blocks constituted the first of three
phases that would be developed by the company between
1922 and 1924. By 1925, Bay Shore's limits had been
extended southward to present-day 55th Terrace. That
year also saw the area of Bay Shore, as well as Lemon
City, annexed into the City of Miami.
James H.
Nunnally, president of the Bay Shore Investment Company,
envisioned Bay Shore as an exclusive residential
community, planned for every modern convenience. In
designing Bay Shore, the architects and landscape
designers adapted the best of the "garden city" movement
of England, as well as contemporary suburban planning
concepts, to this bay front location....
Although
Bay Shore developed steadily during the boom years of
the 1920s and even during the Great Depression, the area
experienced its greatest building expansion between 1936
and 1942, with many of the district's finest houses
built during this period. In 1936, the neighborhood was
enlarged; the block along present-day NE 55th Street and
the south side of NE 55th Terrace were subdivided as Bay
Shore Plaza by the company of Islands, Incorporated.
Deed restrictions similar to those of Bay Shore
guaranteed a continuity in architectural development.
Following the United States' entry into World War II,
construction in the district, and the city as a whole,
virtually stopped. Building resumed after the War....
[and expanded southwards toward the limits of Bay Point
throughout Bay Shore Plaza and eastwards into a new
development called Park Plaza. The Slote Construction
Company built many houses in these developments during
the 1950s on what was said to have been a tropical
hammock.
The
expansion of Biscayne Boulevard in the 1940s and 1950s
divided the original Bay Shore tract, separating the
area to the west from that lying between the Boulevard
and the Bay... [In 1953, the City built a
state-of-the-art park on the bay front and gave it the
name Morningside Park. Morningside, properly the area
west of Biscayne Boulevard in the mid-60s, began more
and more to be associated with the area around the park.
Finally, in 1960, the Bay Shore, Bay Shore Plaza, and
Park Plaza Homeowners Association, founded in 1942,
revised its charter and changed its name to the
Morningside Civic Association. Later on, the blocks west
of Biscayne Boulevard were "de-annexed".
Morningside remains today one of Miami's most intact
historic neighborhoods. Realizing its historic and
unique character, residents petitioned the City of Miami
for recognition as an historic district in the early
1980s. Many hours of hard work in documenting the area's
historic structures paid off, as in 1984, Morningside
was designated as the City of Miami's first historic
district. The Morningside Historic District is comprised
of the houses located in the portion of
Morningside from NE 55th Street to NE 60th Street,
between Biscayne Boulevard and the Bay.... This was
followed by the placement of the Bay Shore Historic
District on the National Register of Historic Places in
1992. -adapted
from The Historic Houses of Morningside by Keith Edward
Soto, A.I.A
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