Colony Hotel
Henry Hohauser’s 1935 Colony Hotel, with its glowing blue neon sign suspended over 736 Ocean Drive, is widely considered the most-photographed hotel facade on South Beach — a single image that encapsulates the entire Art Deco era of Miami Beach.
At a glance
The Colony Hotel at 736 Ocean Drive is one of the earliest surviving Art Deco hotels on the strip, designed by Henry Hohauser and completed in 1935. Four years before the Cardozo and Breakwater were built, the Colony established the design vocabulary that would define the block: a flat-roofed three-storey volume in smooth stucco, its only ornament a shallow cornice, eyebrow projections over the windows, and a cantilevered canopy at street level. What transformed it into an icon was the large painted and neon-lit sign that announces COLONY HOTEL in capital letters above the entrance — a vertical billboard integrated into the architecture rather than bolted onto it.
Key facts
- Architect: Henry Hohauser (1895–1963)
- Completed: 1935
- Style: Art Deco
- Address: 736 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33139
- Heritage status: Contributing building, Miami Beach Architectural District (NRHP, 1979)
- Floors: 3
- Signature feature: Illuminated rooftop neon sign and vertical marquee
History
When Henry Hohauser designed the Colony in 1935, Miami Beach had been a resort destination for little more than fifteen years. The Flagler and Collins land developments had only begun in the early 1910s, and the oceanfront hotels of the 1920s boom were already being supplanted by smaller, more economical properties that could survive the Depression. The Colony was a working-class resort hotel, its rooms affordable to middle-income tourists arriving from the northeast by Greyhound or rail.
Hohauser’s programme was to create maximum visual impact at minimum cost. The Colony’s stucco surface was cheap; its ornament was almost entirely applied through light — the neon sign, the canopy lighting, and the way Florida’s intense sun raked across the eyebrow shades throughout the day. This logic of lighting-as-ornament became central to the South Beach Deco aesthetic, distinguishing it from the heavier, more plastic Deco of northern cities.
The hotel’s postwar decades followed the familiar Ocean Drive arc: military use, decline, neglect, and near-demolition. The NRHP listing in 1979 and the subsequent Miami Design Preservation League campaigns preserved the building. The Colony’s sign became one of the defining images of the 1980s South Beach revival, appearing on countless magazine covers and tourism materials as shorthand for the neighbourhood’s reclaimed glamour.
What you see
The Colony is a three-bay composition of unusual simplicity. The central bay opens to the street under a cantilevered canopy, while the outer bays carry windows at each floor, each shaded by a projecting eyebrow. What distinguishes the building from its neighbours is the signage architecture: a painted fascia band at the first-floor cornice spelling COLONY HOTEL in bold sans-serif capitals, and above it a vertical blade sign in neon that rises a full storey above the roof. In daylight the sign is white paint on concrete; at dusk it becomes a blue-and-white glow that draws the eye from a hundred metres.
Inside, the lobby retains its original terrazzo floor in a wave-and-chevron pattern, its colour scheme referencing the aqua-and-cream palette that Hohauser used across several of his Ocean Drive commissions. The ceiling is low and horizontal — in keeping with the Deco period’s preference for rooms that feel sheltering rather than monumental.
Practical information
- Visiting: Operating hotel; the lobby and terrace bar are accessible to visitors
- Photography: The neon sign is most photogenic at twilight and after dark; daylight shots show the painted signage and shadow-play of the eyebrow shades
- Guided context: The Art Deco Welcome Center (1001 Ocean Drive) offers maps, self-guided tour brochures, and docent-led walks
- Walking: 5-minute walk north to the Breakwater; 10 minutes north to the Cardozo and Carlyle
Getting there
The Colony Hotel sits at the southern end of the main Ocean Drive Deco concentration, at the intersection with 7th Street. From the MacArthur Causeway, head south on Collins Avenue and turn left onto 7th Street, then right onto Ocean Drive. Street parking on Ocean Drive is metered (check current rates); the 7th Street garage on Collins Avenue is a five-minute walk. Miami International Airport is approximately 16 km west.
Nearby
- Breakwater Hotel — twin-fin Deco landmark, two blocks north
- Cardozo Hotel — Hohauser’s 1939 Streamline Moderne on the northern strip
- The Carlyle Hotel — Dixon’s 1941 cinematic Streamline, between Cardozo and the district’s north end
- Miami Beach Architectural District — NRHP-listed district, 800-plus contributing structures
Sources
- Miami Design Preservation League — mdpl.org (Colony Hotel building record)
- Capitman, Barbara Baer. Deco Delights: Preserving Art Deco Architecture. E.P. Dutton, 1988.
- Heimann, Jim. Deco Miami. Taschen, 2018.
- National Register of Historic Places, Miami Beach Architectural District, 1979 nomination form — nps.gov
- Porterfield, Jason. Henry Hohauser: Art Deco Master of Miami Beach — Smithsonian Magazine coverage, 2015.
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