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Tour of Miami Beach's Fontainebleau Hotel

Bob Vila visits Miami Beach's Fontainebleau Hotel, an architectural gem that symbolizes Miami. This curving white hotel, designed and built in 1954 by architect Morris Lapidus, is now a Hilton Resort near Miami's Art Deco District. As an architect, Lapidus flew in the face of conventional architecture, using curves instead of straight lines and avoiding corners in his designs. His grand spaces and stairways were reminiscent of French Chateaux. Lapidus' fanciful design was panned and ridiculed, but it still stands as a testament to the excesses of Miami Beach in the Post World War II era. More information