Florida's post-war building boom left behind more than faded postcards. A wave of hotels went up along the coast in the 1940s through the 1960s, when the state's tourism industry exploded and architects embraced the futuristic Miami Modern (MiMo) look — geometric shapes, dramatic angles, pools as centre-pieces. Many of those places have since been gutted and modernised, but a handful have managed the tricky balance of 21st-century comfort without sanding off the charm that made them famous.
The heavyweight is the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, Morris Lapidus's white crescent on the ocean from the 1950s, once the biggest MiMo building of them all. Frank Sinatra treated it as a home base, and the 1964 James Bond film "Goldfinger" shot scenes there. It has grown enormously, but the original tower and its theatrical interiors still anchor the nightlife.
Fort Lauderdale's Pier Sixty-Six has an odder origin story: it was built by Phillips Petroleum in 1965 in the space-age "Googie" style, crowned by a rotating rooftop lounge. A multibillion-dollar renovation completed in 2025 refreshed all 325 rooms and expanded the superyacht marina — and yes, the Pier Top Lounge still revolves.
Down in the Keys, the Islander Resort in Islamorada sits on land once owned by developer Henry Flagler, with its original Space Age sign still facing the Overseas Highway. It now offers breezy suites and bungalows, beachfront dining and water sports in the self-styled Sportfishing Capital of the World. In Key West itself, the Pier House Resort & Spa began as preservationist David Wolkowsky's low-key motel at 1 Duval Street in the 1960s. Its Chart Room Bar is where Jimmy Buffett played his first gig in 1971; the courtyard pool and the bar are both still going, alongside nearly 150 rooms and a spa.
Smaller and sleepier options round out the list. The Sunset Inn and Cabanas in Treasure Island is a 1940s motel — originally the Coral Lee — reborn in 2022 as an adults-only boutique hideaway with just four neon-bright rooms, Gulf-facing picture windows and retro cabanas you can rent by the day. Miami's Vagabond Hotel, a 1953 motor-court landmark on Biscayne Boulevard with a famous mermaid-tiled pool, was restored around 2012 and now has 42 rooms dressed in throwback furnishings. And the pink Colony Hotel has presided over Palm Beach near Worth Avenue since 1947, forever linked to a Slim Aarons photograph; recent updates added jungle-print wallpaper and coastal-chic rooms, while the pool scene at Swifty's still looks like one of his shots.
Why bother? Because these places let you sleep inside Florida's golden-age tourism story — Sinatra's bar stool, Buffett's debut stage, a rotating lounge from the jet-age fantasy era — without giving up modern beds, pools or restaurants. They suit road-trippers hopping down the coast, design nerds chasing MiMo, and anyone who finds new-build resorts a bit interchangeable.
