Miami Beach History: From a 1912 Plat to a City of Its Own

No, Miami Beach is its own municipality across Biscayne Bay, incorporated on March 26, 1915, almost 19 years after the City of Miami, which Miami-Dade County dates to July 28, 1896.

Miami-Dade County keeps one list of its incorporated municipalities with the date each one incorporated, and Miami and Miami Beach appear as separate entries (Miami-Dade County). The table below takes the two cities and several nearby municipalities from that list, plus the 1917 date the City of Miami Beach gives for its own reincorporation. The same county list dates Surfside to May 18, 1935 and Bal Harbour to June 16, 1947, both decades younger than Miami Beach.

The two cities were tied together from the beginning even so. The Lummus brothers who platted Miami Beach in 1912 were former mayors of Miami, and the bridge that made the island reachable connected it to Miami (City of Miami Beach). Miami Beach remains a separately incorporated municipality with its own history and its own city government, so its Art Deco district is not part of the City of Miami; the Digital Towns Art Deco Miami Beach guide covers that district.

Miami Beach began in July 1912, when brothers John Newton Lummus and James Edward Lummus filed the first official plat to develop the barrier island across Biscayne Bay, then reachable only by boat.

The City of Miami Beach describes the island before development as covered in mangroves, pine trees and wild coconut palms (City of Miami Beach). John S. Collins, a New Jersey businessman, first tried to grow coconuts on the land and then shifted to real estate. In 1912 there was still no bridge to the mainland and travel required a boat (City of Miami Beach).

The Lummus brothers partnered with Carl G. Fisher, a pioneer of the automobile industry, to form the Ocean Beach Realty Company, and filing the plat let that company begin subdividing land for sale, the city says (City of Miami Beach). The plan from the start, in the city's account, was a resort that would draw wealthy visitors from the north escaping cold winters.

Collins built his own company as well. The Miami Beach Improvement Company, founded by John Collins, platted the Oceanfront Subdivision in 1916, and a 2020 state marker says the company's name was the first official use of the term Miami Beach (Florida Division of Historical Resources).

The Collins Bridge, completed in 1913 with Carl Fisher's financial backing, gave Miami Beach its first road link to Miami, and the settlement incorporated as a town on March 26, 1915 and as a city on May 1, 1917.

Construction of the bridge began shortly after the July 1912 plat, and its completion in 1913 made the development accessible by road (City of Miami Beach). The city's account credits Fisher, an automotive tycoon, with the financial backing that completed the Collins Bridge and set up the growth that followed (City of Miami Beach).

Incorporation came two years later. The Town of Miami Beach was incorporated on March 26, 1915, with John N. Lummus as its first mayor, and it reincorporated as the City of Miami Beach on May 1, 1917 (City of Miami Beach). At incorporation Miami Beach had a population of only a few dozen people (City of Miami Beach).

The city's own pages word the 1915 step differently. The 110th anniversary article says local residents voted to incorporate Miami Beach as a city on March 26, 1915 (City of Miami Beach), while the July 1912 history calls the 1915 body a town and dates city status to 1917. Both pages are City of Miami Beach publications; the town then city sequence is the more detailed account.

The September 18, 1926 Great Miami Hurricane pushed the Atlantic clear across Miami Beach and Biscayne Bay into the City of Miami, after a lull that drew people back toward the mainland from Miami Beach.

The National Weather Service Miami office describes Miami Beach in 1926 as a place of constant new construction, built on a chain of barrier islands across the bay that had been bulldozed out of mangroves (National Weather Service Miami). The storm's calm eye passed over downtown Miami around 6:30 a.m., the lull lasted only about 35 minutes, and people even began returning to the mainland from Miami Beach during it.

The back half of the storm was the worst for the island. From about 7 a.m. onshore southeasterly winds drove the surge, which the forecast office puts at 10 feet on Miami Beach and the other barrier islands, and at its height the water extended across Miami Beach and Biscayne Bay into the City of Miami for several blocks (National Weather Service Miami). On October 9, 1926 the Red Cross reported 372 deaths and over 6,000 injuries across the storm area, and damage was put at $105 million in 1926 dollars.

The Miami Beach building record follows the same boom and bust rhythm. The state marker for the Collins Waterfront district ties that district's mix of buildings to boom and bust cycles, with Mediterranean Revival from the 1920s boom and the district's largest wave of development in the mid-1930s through the early 1940s (Florida Division of Historical Resources).

World War II made Miami Beach an Army Air Forces training base from February 1942, where up to a quarter of the officers and a fifth of the enlisted men of the Army Air Forces trained.

The City of Miami Beach says the city served as a base for training headquarters of the then Army Air Forces Technical Training Command, with many municipal properties and hotels repurposed for the war effort (City of Miami Beach). When the school opened in February 1942 it was one of the largest training centers and officer candidate schools anywhere in the United States.

The rent was nearly nothing. In a May 25, 2023 release, Mayor Dan Gelber said city records show the federal government paid about $6 per year between 1942 and 1945, and the city announced it planned to return $420 in inflation-adjusted rent with a check payable to the U.S. Treasury, ahead of that year's Hyundai Air and Sea Show (City of Miami Beach). His father, former Miami Beach Mayor Seymour Gelber, trained in Miami Beach with the Army Air Corps.

The war also shaped the postwar city. Gelber said many of the service members who experienced Miami Beach later returned to start families, buy houses and open businesses, which led to one of the largest expansions in the city's history (City of Miami Beach). The state marker for the Collins Waterfront district notes its post-World War II Mid-Century Modern buildings in Miami Beach.

Three building eras survive side by side in the Collins Waterfront Architectural District of Miami Beach: 1920s Mediterranean Revival, mid-1930s to early 1940s Art Deco and Art Moderne, and post-World War II Mid-Century Modern.

The district runs from 44th Street south to 24th Street, between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Creek and Pine Tree Drive, a two-mile isthmus with significant architecture from 1922 through 1962 (Florida Division of Historical Resources). It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.

The City of Miami Beach summarizes the same sequence for the whole city: Mediterranean Revival architecture and lavish hotels in the 1920s, then Art Deco in the 1930s and 1940s (City of Miami Beach). For the South Beach Art Deco district and its walking tours, the Digital Towns Art Deco Miami Beach guide is the place to go next. Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the City of Miami Beach history pages, the Miami-Dade County municipalities list, the state marker record and the National Weather Service Miami account of 1926.