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> At wondrous Dinner Key, just south of the city, Pan American's great-winged Clippers cleared 2,509 passengers between the U. S., Cuba and the near Indies, the Southern Hemisphere (and men now dream of a great mart at Miami, for the goods and peoples of the western world).
> Rain fell one morning, and women wore light topcoats that night. Over was Florida's longest cold spell on record. How many sunbirds the freeze and its chill, cloudy aftermath had kept or driven away was unknown. Florida's winter adding machines are not geared to subtract.
One of Miami's claims to fame is that it is the city near Miami Beach.
Town in the Sky. There are two Miami Beaches. Both of them front, benefit, outdazzle Miami across blue Biscayne Bay. One is geographic; a long (10-mile), low spit between the Bay and the Atlantic. The other is the town of Miami Beach, which is like no other town in the U. S., or in the world:
> 1,600 acres of land which a scant 25 years ago was mangrove tangle, bare sand, avocado patches.
> 2,800 acres dredged from the bottom of Biscayne Bay, dumped onto the natural core and into 15 fabricated isles.
> Winding through and between the mother key and the islands, 20 miles of inland waterway, 35.2 miles of beach and bayfront; 110 miles of palm-lined street and lane.
It is Florida's booming, catholic pleasure dome, looming low and broad against the Atlantic sky. Coconut and royal palms, hibiscus, croton, flame vines, night-blooming jasmine shroud mile upon serpentine mile of streets and lanes and waterways. On Lincoln Road, where the mangrove and sand once sold for 75¢ an acre, the play world shops at swank branches of De Pinna's, Hattie Carnegie's, Saks-Fifth Avenue, and property is quoted at $1,000 a front-foot. The creamy, orange, blue and yellow palaces, villas, cottages are of concrete blocks beneath their stucco (to guard against "the next hurricane"). Their open patios, loggias, halls and broad window spaces are designed for life and ease in the sun; on their roofs, the sun is put to work, heating water in glassed reflectors. Northward by the Atlantic is the Surf Club, where the cabanas trace an S along the beach, and a Philadelphia socialite named Alfred Ilko Barton teaches the rich how to be lavish. By the County Causeway over the Bay, and in the Flamingo Hotel's blue basin, are the yachts and cruisers: Nakhoda, Pleiades, Marmot, Virago (lately chartered by J. P. Morgan), many another. Just beyond the city line of Miami Beach (where gambling is taboo), in separately incorporated Surfside, is the Brook Club, where gambling is an elegant business. At the extreme, northerly end of the spit is a subdivision called Golden Beach where Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt last week rented the Ross W. Hudsons' house for occupancy April 18.