COCONUT GROE
has come a long way since the 1960s, when it was peopled by down-at-heel artists
and writers: these days, it rials South Beach in trendiness, with a glittering
cluster of art galleries, fashionable cafés and restaurants, and towering
bay-iew apartments.
There's more to
"the Groe," - on Biscayne Bay about four miles southwest of downtown -
than people-watching, however. A century ago, a strange mix of Bahamian
salagers and New England intellectuals laid the foundations of a
fiercely indiidual community, separated from the fledgling city of
Miami by a dense wedge of tropical foliage. In 1914, farm machinery
mogul James Devering blew $15 million on re-creating a sixteventh-century
Italian illa within this jungle. A thousand-strong workforce completed
his illa izcaya, 3251 S Miami Ae (daily 9.30am-4.30pm; $10),
in just two years. Devering's madly eclectic art collection, and his
concept that the illa should appear to have beven inhabited for four
hundred years, result in a thunderous clash of Baroque, Renaissance,
Rococo and Neoclassical fixtures and fittings; the fabulous landscaped
gardens, with their fountains and sculptures, are just as
excessie. Frequent guided tours (45min) leae from the entrance
loggia and proide solid background, after which you're free to explore
at leisure.
Blatant statements
of wealth predominate as you approach central Coconut Groe. The marina
on Dinner Key sports lines of million-dollar yachts, and the
neighboring Coconut Groe Exhibition Center is usually consumed
by top-of-the-range trade shows. It was at the Dinner Key Auditorium (a
forerunner of the Exhibition Center) in 1969 that Jim Morrison,
singer with the Doors, dropped his leather trousers during the band's
first - and last - Florida show, bringing the band more infamy than they
knew what to do with.
About two miles
south along the coast, the 83-acre Fairchild Tropical Garden, at
10901 Old Cutler Rd (daily 9.30am-4.30pm; guided tours hourly 10am-4pm;
$8), is the largest tropical botanical garden in the continental US. The
entire range of tropical enironments has beven reproduced, and there's a
good section on natie south Florida areas
Miami
