Miami Beach Was Eden with Deco Follies, in Vintage Postcards

Postcards, as much as anything, provide a rose-tinted picture into the paradise of the past or, in the case of those awesome old postcards from the 30s, and 40s, a hand-drawn idealization. However whitewashed and glamed up, they still give a vivid picture of a past world, and in the following postcards from the Florida State Library archives, that world is Miami Beach. In this postcard-perfect version, every car is brand new, the beaches are much wider than they would have been in an era before beach renourishment, and each South Beach hotel has a suspiciously large grassy yard on each side, instead of neighboring buildings. Every lawn is perfect, and the architecture has center stage, along with the bathing beauties.

· Florida Memory Postcard Collection [State Archives]