Legendary Fontainebleau Miami Beach Dazzles, Plus New Las Vegas Hotel

21.03.2024 - 16:31 / forbes.com / Frank Sinatra / Elvis Presley / Gwyneth Paltrow / Barack Obama / Marilyn Monroe

Years ago, when I first strolled into Miami Beach’s swanky Fontainebleau, I felt a heightened pizzazz, aswirl in the kind of stimulating panache and prestige that trumpets: Pay attention! For travel lovers of glam getaways—especially those renowned as celeb and A-lister favorites—Fontainebleau Miami Beach is a legendary draw. Today, it continues to be a hotspot of cool goings-on, much expanded and revitalized again and again since its 1954 launch. A $1-billion makeover in 2008 wowed. “Every era of American history has its architectural touchstones, buildings that transcend their time and come to define a cultural moment,” says author Stephen Wallis in Fontainebleau, the newly published, silk-wrapped, oversized hardcover coffee table book (3.4-pounds) by luxury publisher Assouline, which celebrates the curvilinear-shaped resort’s illustrious past, present and forward leap. “The Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach is that kind of landmark,” he adds. “An instant sensation when it opened, it remains an enduring icon, repeatedly updated and evolving to this day.” With principal photography by Peter Arnell, who is Fontainebleau Development’s chief brand and design officer, this striking book highlights treasures and pleasures of the famous Florida oceanside symbol. Dive into its thick paper stock pages that are ripe with riveting photos and illustrations. Wallis engagingly writes about Fontainebleau’s history and mystery, deals and diversions, challenges and change-makers, imagination and innovation.

Stellar personalities across the decades have schmoozed, sipped, savored delectable dining, smooched, sashayed, swam and sunbathed at Fontainebleau Miami Beach. Among those who have enjoyed its grounds: Amanda Beard, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jill St. John, Joan Crawford, Kate Hudson, Kelly Ripa, Marilyn Monroe, Mario Lopez, Regis Philbin, Sammy Davis Jr., as well as President John F. Kennedy, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair. Their images thread throughout the book.

“Then as now,” says Wallis, “guests arriving at the Fontainebleau entered through a glittering 17,000-square-foot lobby, where a trio of show-stopping chandeliers shimmered above graceful islands of seating and a polished white-marble floor inset with a repeating black-bowtie motif”—one of the hotel’s signatures. Its premiere architect Morris Lapidus, who often wore a bowtie, was a master of plotting seduction, elegance and even whimsy into his building projects, who “unabashedly designed his work as theater, as an architecture of joy,” explains Wallis. Environment as entertainment.

Music is integral to Fontainebleau’s raison d’être. Among the artists who have performed