TRIBUTE
CAPTIMAN MEMORIAL
ON OCEAN DRIVE
By Andrew Capitman
M
iami Beach’s Art Deco District
has achieved worldwide renown
both for its effervescent 1930s
Streamline Moderne architecture and for the
efforts of several generations of committed
preservationists to protect this legacy. Now
the Miami Design Preservation League, in
cooperation with the City of Miami Beach has
erected a permanent memorial to its founder,
the creator of the Art Deco District preservation
movement, Barbara Baer Capitman (1920-1990).
The Barbara Baer Capitman Memorial was
funded with generous contributions from the
public, philanthropic and individual donors and
was designed by Laurinda Spear’s landscape
architecture firm, ArquitectonicaGeo. The
memorial features a bronze bust of Barbara
as a young woman sculpted around 1940 by
her mother, Myrtle Bachrach Baer. Located in
Lummus Park at Ocean Drive and 13th Street
directly across from the Cardozo Hotel, an early
MDPL headquarters and the first hotel property
to be restored after the Art Deco District was
listed on the National Register of Historic Places
in 1979.
Barbara Capitman grew up in the political
ferment of the Great Depression and was clearly
influenced not only by her artistic mother but
also the intellectual vigor and creative vibrancy
of New York City. A journalist, writer, market
researcher and professional publicist, she
was the first to recognize that Miami Beach’s
old buildings could be the stage set for the
revitalization of a fading resort. After founding
the Miami Design Preservation League in
1976, she led the League in achieving its
objectives of gaining both national recognition
and local protection for the Art Deco Dist