Making A Splash

THE CITY’S HISTORIC FOUNTAINS CONTINUE TO PROVIDE A SENSORY EXPERIENCE FOR RESIDENTS AND VISITORS ALIKE

In his quest to create a viable tropical-urban community based on contemporaneous Garden City precepts, George Merrick knew that a crucial role would be played by public squares and plazas, each contributing to his foundational concept and acknowledging the need for communal outdoor spaces. Once again, Europe (and its town squares) became the model for an Americanized version of an Old World amenity. Enter the plazas of Coral Gables. 

These plazas were among Merrick’s signature architectural gestures in the Gables — often grand (bordering on the Baroque), mildly ceremonial, always with an implicit or explicit “pride of place.” According to the original 1921 City Plan, the design team “laid out broad

sweeping boulevards with great vistas and tree-lined streets, plazas and fountains (italics added)… carefully planned to maximize the potential that is intrinsically part of the tropical environment.”

 “Starchitects” of the day Denman Fink and Frank Button (Florida’s first registered landscape architect) are credited with the design of many of the city’s original historic structures, including the now-famous plazas with their fountains that invited people to linger amidst the calming sounds of water gently rising and falling. Then as now. Splish-splash

BY BRUCE FITZGERALD AND KARELIA MARTINEZ CARBONELL. PHOTOS BY VICKI CERDA