Should Capone’s Home Be Saved?
The famous Chicago gangster’s Miami Beach estate faces demolition
On Monday September 13th, the Miami Beach Preservation Board is set to debate the destruction of an old house. This is pretty much business as usual for the board, so why has the meeting gained attention everywhere from the New York Times to Elle Decor? It’s all about the first owner.
Capone in Winter
In 1939, Alcatraz opened the gates and let it’s most notorious prisoner, Al Capone, go on parole. By this point he was a shadow of his once pugnacious self, physically and financially hobbled by syphilis and back taxes.
Like many before him, and many after, Capone came to Miami Beach looking for a fresh start. The Gangster wanted, as do most South Florida retirees, respite from harsh northern winters.
He already owned this bolthole in the South Florida sun, a waterfront mansion purchased in 1928 for forty thousand dollars. Before heading to jail in 1931, Capone allegedly planned the St. Valentine’s Day massacre from its breezy balcony. The Gangster would make Miami Beach his second chance city home until he passed away in 1947.
Located in the Palm Islands gated community, today the house exists under the shadow of Covid docked cruise ships and mega mansions owned by celebrities like Barbra Walters and the rapper Birdman. As a physical structure, the house is charming but unremarkable. It has the pool, high ceilings, and Spanish accents you would expect from a 1920s Florida house.
After changing hands multiple times over the years, the house was purchased by real estate investor Todd Glazer for $10.75 million. He wants to demolish the out of date structure and replace it with a shiny new mansion. The new home will go for around $45 Million, a tidy profit.
Glazer has a history of renovating and demolishing noteworthy properties. He gained recent notoriety for tearing down the notorious late pedophile Jeffery Epstein’s Palm Beach abode.
A typically Floridian apropos connection between criminals past and present.
Miami Loves Gangsters
Cities idolize different figures from their past. Paris loves its artists, London its royals, and Miami its criminals.
Organized crime loves South Florida back. As we saw in The Godfather II, into the 50s the area provided a perfect perch to monitor gaming properties across the straits in Havana. Castro took over, but the gangsters were too accustomed to the weather to leave.
The golden age of Miami criminals was the “Cocaine Cowboys” era of the 1970’s and 80s. Fortunes, unlike anything seen by criminals before, accumulated overnight for villains in the drug trade. This new bread idolized their mafioso predecessors, Capone in particular.
Today Miami is significantly less violent than the past. Don’t get me wrong, there are still lots of shady enterprises. The proverbial northern Cuban capital handles literal tons of illegal Latin American gold, is the brokerage point for major arms transactions, and is still a player (though displaced in primacy by Mexico) in the drug game. Perhaps the biggest crooks came down in the pandemic, financial institutions seeking a sunny place for their shady people in the tax free state.
You can see why Al Capone’s house stirs emotions. In a city now dominated by antiseptic glass high rises, it feels hard to lose another piece of history.
Sometimes You’ve Gotta Forget the Past
I love history, and I’ve got the pretentious university degree to prove it.
Legacy buildings bring a unique character to their cities. Without these, everything would just feel the same. History’s important for instilling and maintaining a local uniqueness that’s constantly being eroded by time and technology.
That being said, I have a hard time NOT siding with the developer on this one. First, the home is on a private Island, so the public has no access and does not benefit at all from its history. Second, It’s in terrible shape, and it seems unreasonable to ask a private person to update the house for a questionable public good.
I get that Al Capone’s retirement home is a bit of a curiosity, but it’s in no way central to Miami’s story. Chicago’s yes, Miami not so much. There are also lots of similar style Spanish homes still around in great renovated shape, so you can’t really make a case for its architectural significance.
One of the best things about Miami is that it’s constantly evolving and not limited by artificial nostalgia. We see across the country, from San Francisco to New York, how “Historic Preservation” is used to hinder growth for the benefit of legacy residents.
This is a small case, but it has big implications for what can and should be changed in the city. It’s a bridge too far to dictate to an owner of a private home on a private Island what he can do with his private property. I’m sure the island’s homeowners association will do a fine job of protecting the neighborhood's interests without local government’s help.
Finally, I’m reminded of Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's famous quote, if “we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” Miami’s best days are still to come and the city needs to let entrepreneurs like Glazer do their thing. Already home to the jet set, a laissez faire attitude towards development will only help attract the next generation of Rockefeller’s, Astors, and Carnegies.