The Raleigh

Hotel description

The growing pains are over: The Raleigh has emerged from its most recent bout with restoration, and the result is a hotel that quite lives up to its exceptional public image. We are also happy to say the rooms are up to the level of the hotel’s impressive public spaces. Today there are other places to stay in Miami, but you almost wouldn’t know it—for many of the stars of the moment, The Raleigh is the South Beach hotel.

This is much as it was in 1940, when this L. Murray Dixon Art Deco masterpiece first opened its doors. The swimming pool is a landmark, its sculpted outline and waterfall having served as backdrops for many an Esther Williams film shoot—in case you remember Esther Williams. (She was a bit like current Raleigh devotee Anna Kournikova, except an actress, and an aquatic one—oh, never mind.)

Hard times befell Miami, at least as a tourist destination, and The Raleigh’s fortunes waned as well—its attempts at rehabilitation, it seems, couldn’t keep pace with the more flamboyant development taking place elsewhere around town, such as the Schrager/Starck collaboration at the Delano. You might think the natural step would have been to out-flash the competition—but that would have been too obvious, not to mention the fact that trying to out-flash Starck is a fool’s game.

Instead the modern Raleigh is intended to be like the original Raleigh, only more so—not a stuffy historically correct replica, but an homage to the bold and vivid spirit of the Art Deco Forties. There’s no blobby hypermodern furniture, and little that could be called Euro-Zen; but this is no period film set either. It’s a subtly idealized fantasy world, and it’s the inhabitants who attract the most attention. If you’re celebrity-averse, or afraid of beautiful people, then this is not the hotel for you—but if you fancy a sip in a buzzing bar, surrounded by starlets and singers, then you could do a lot worse.

Hotel policy

A minimum 2-night weekend stay beginning on Friday.