Pastel Art Deco hotels with rounded corners and neon signs face Lummus Park and the beach.
What Ocean Drive looks like
Three and four storey hotels run the length of Ocean Drive in pastel stucco, their corners rounded and the windows banded in glass block. Vertical neon signs spell out names like the Colony in script down the face of the building, lit along the sidewalk after dark. A painted bike lane and a wide concrete promenade separate the hotel terraces from and the sand across the street.
Farther north, the and the Carlyle share the same eyebrow window hoods and curved glass corners, their ground floors turned over to sidewalk cafes under canvas awnings. breaks the run behind iron gates, a coralline rock facade and arched windows set back from the sidewalk instead of built to its edge. Both stand three storeys, in line with the hotel row around them.
Most of the hotels date from the 1930s and early 1940s, built low and close to the curb with little room between the facade and the outdoor tables. Palm trees line both sides of the street on the park side and along the sidewalk outside the hotels, and the same pastel terrazzo paving runs from the cafe floors out past the curb to the crosswalks.
Ground floor windows are mostly glass block or divided into square panes, with canvas or metal awnings fixed above the doors. Door and window trim is often painted a darker shade than the wall behind it, tracing the rounded corners and the stepped lines above each entrance.
Shot in Ocean Drive
Scarface shot its chainsaw dismemberment scene inside the Sun Ray Apartments at 728 Ocean Drive, playing the real street as itself rather than disguising it as somewhere else. Dexter later used the sidewalk across from the for a season one crime scene, the same block of Ocean Drive near 7th Street.
Scarface, 1983
The Sun Ray Apartments
The chainsaw scene in a Colombian dealer's apartment was shot inside the Sun Ray Apartments building, whose Ocean Drive facade and round porthole windows survive behind a CVS pharmacy that replaced the block behind it. The three stacked portholes, now fitted with the store's own signage, are the ones the camera used. Street View
Dexter, season 1
Debra Morgan finds the Ice Truck Killer's van parked on Ocean Drive in the first season, directly across from the Colony Hotel with its vertical neon sign lit behind the police tape. The scene plays out on the street itself rather than inside the hotel, which appears only in the background of the shot. Street View
Vedado's seafront apartment blocks share Ocean Drive's Streamline Moderne curves and porthole windows, built across the same decades in a similarly humid climate. The pastel stucco is dirtier and the paint more worn in Havana than on Ocean Drive's restored facades, so a freshly painted frame reads closer to Miami. 1950s American cars at the curb work for either city. Try searching pastel stucco seafront apartments now.
Marine Parade in Napier, New Zealand
Napier's Marine Parade was rebuilt in Art Deco and Spanish Mission styles after a 1931 earthquake, with the same curved corners and geometric parapets found along Ocean Drive, though mostly two and three storeys rather than Ocean Drive's taller hotels. Hawke's Bay light is cooler and the beach is grey shingle rather than white sand, so keep palm trees and the water out of a wide shot. Try searching curved Art Deco parapets now.
De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, England
The De La Warr Pavilion's curved white Streamline Moderne facade and porthole windows echo the vocabulary of Ocean Drive's hotel row, built on an open seafront in the same decade. The surrounding town is low rise and residential, not a strip of hotels. English light reads flatter and greyer than Miami's, so keep the frame tight on the building alone. Try searching curved white seafront facade now.
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