Skip to content
Menu
WeatherMapNewsGuides

These earn us a commission through Viator. Same price for you, and the commission had no hand in the order.

Search
The peach and mint facade of a three-storey Art Deco hotel seen from below with a palm frond crossing the frame
Daderot

Landmark

The Colony Hotel

Last updated

A three-storey Henry Hohauser building from 1935 whose neon sign is the image most people carry of South Beach without knowing the name.

Photo: DaderotPublic domain

If you have seen one photograph of South Beach you have seen this building, and there is a reasonable chance you could not name it. The Colony stands at 736 Ocean Drive, between 7th and 8th Streets, and its vertical neon name sign is the single most reproduced object in the Art Deco Historic District.

It is a Henry Hohauser design with plans completed in July 1935, which puts it at the very front of the deco wave on this street. Hohauser was the most prolific architect of the district — he is responsible for a substantial share of what you walk past here — and the Colony is frequently described as the first streamline-modern building on Ocean Drive, the point at which the street stopped being Mediterranean and started being modern.

What makes it work is discipline. The building is three storeys and not especially large. It has no ornament in the carved or applied sense at all. Everything it does, it does with proportion, banding and one vertical accent:

Three horizontal bands of glazing, each a wide run of windows rather than punched openings, which is the streamline move — it makes a small building read as horizontal and fast.

Colour banding that runs unbroken across the façade and turns the corners, tying the three floors into one object.

A single vertical element, the projecting fin above the entrance carrying the hotel name in neon, which supplies the whole composition's counterweight. The fin sits on an inverted T, so that the horizontal base and the vertical sign form one figure.

That is it. Three bands, one fin, and a flat parapet. The reason it photographs so well is that there is nothing in the frame that is not doing a job.

Practically, it is a small working hotel with a front desk immediately inside the door and a terrace on the pavement. It is not a museum, and what you can see of the inside is limited.

Getting there and parking

The Colony is at 736 Ocean Drive, on the west side of the street between 7th and 8th Streets, towards the southern end of the deco hotel row.

On foot it is three blocks south of the Art Deco Welcome Center at 1001 Ocean Drive, and about eight minutes from South of Fifth.

Stand opposite. The view that matters is from the Lummus Park path across the road, where you can see the whole façade, the banding and the sign in one frame rather than a foreshortened corner.

Parking. The 7th Street municipal garage is two blocks west on Collins and Washington and is the closest large option, usually the cheapest in the district. Meters on Ocean Drive are expensive, contested and sit directly in front of the building, which is also what ruins most daytime photographs of it.

By trolley and bus, the free Miami Beach trolley and the South Beach Local both run the Washington and Collins corridors a block or two west.

From mainland Miami, the MacArthur Causeway lands on 5th Street; the Colony is two blocks north and one block east.

What to look at, from the pavement opposite

Stand in Lummus Park directly across Ocean Drive. Forty feet of distance turns a hotel front into a composition.

  • Count the bands. Three floors, three continuous runs of glazing, three stripes of colour. The rule of three governs almost every deco building in this district and the Colony is the cleanest demonstration of it on the street.
  • Follow a stripe round the corner. The banding does not stop at the façade's edge. That continuity is what makes the building read as an extruded solid rather than a decorated front.
  • Look at the fin. The vertical sign board projects forward of the wall plane, which is why it is legible from a long way down the street in both directions. Its width is roughly the width of the central bay below it. Nothing about the proportion is accidental.
  • Look for the absence of ornament. No mouldings, no carved panels, no applied decoration. Compare that with Casa Casuarina four blocks north, which is all ornament, and the difference between 1930 and 1935 in this city becomes a five-minute walk.
  • Check the shadow line. The horizontal projections above the windows are doing the same job as the eyebrows on the buildings either side, which is throwing shade onto the glass. The band is functional first.
  • Look down at the threshold. Terrazzo laid into the entrance, with geometric patterning, is common along this street and often original. It is the detail nobody photographs.

What a non-guest can actually walk into

Worth being straightforward about, because South Beach hotels vary enormously on this and the guidebooks are vague.

The Colony is a small hotel, not a grand one. The entrance opens almost immediately onto a reception desk, and the lobby behind it is shallow. There is no soaring room to stand in, no mezzanine, no mural, and not a great deal to see beyond the doorway. Walking in to look around will feel exactly as awkward as it sounds, because you will be standing in front of someone checking in.

The realistic way to be at the building is the terrace, which occupies the pavement in front under an awning and operates as a bar and café. Order something and you are sitting under the sign, which is the actual experience people are after. Ocean Drive terrace pricing applies, along with the same advice that applies to the whole street: ask for the printed menu, ask whether service is included before you order, and read the total before you sign.

If you want lobbies, the Colony is not the building. The Tides at 1220 Ocean Drive, four and a half blocks north, has the grandest lobby on the drive and is used to people walking through it. Several other properties along Ocean Drive and Collins keep their front doors open and will not mind you looking.

A general rule for the district: if the front doors stand open to the street, the lobby is fair game. If there is a doorman standing in the gap, it is not. Do not photograph guests, and do not go past the lobby line.

The neon, and why most of South Beach's is not original

The Colony's sign is the reason most people take the photograph, and the honest context makes it more interesting rather than less.

Neon was genuinely part of 1930s Miami Beach. Hotels competed on their frontages after dark and a lit vertical sign was how a three-storey building announced itself down a long straight street. But glass tube does not survive seventy years of salt air, hurricanes, bankruptcies and changes of ownership. A great deal of what glows on Ocean Drive today is restoration work carried out from the 1980s onwards, as the district recovered and owners rebuilt signs from photographs, drawings and whatever original hardware remained.

That is not a debunking. It is the same story as the pastel paint: the Miami Beach that visitors recognise is a 1930s skeleton given back its skin in the 1980s by people who cared enough to do it. The tube may be new. The design, the placement and the argument for it are old.

What follows practically. The neon is the reason to come back after dark, and the best ten minutes of the day for it is the short window around dusk when the signs are lit but the sky still has colour in it — roughly twenty to thirty minutes after sunset, earlier than most people turn up. Full dark flattens the buildings into black shapes with lit lettering; dusk gives you the façade and the sign together.

Walk the strip once in daylight and once at dusk. It is the same ten blocks and it is not the same street.

Photographing it without three hundred other people in the shot

The Colony is photographed several thousand times a day. Getting a clean frame is a question of hour, not of equipment.

Just after sunrise, from the park. Ocean Drive faces east, so the sun comes up out of the Atlantic behind you and lands square on the façade. Between about 7am and 8:30am the street is close to empty, the terrace is not yet set, and the light is warm and flat across the front. This is the frame everyone wants and almost nobody gets.

Mid-morning still has good light, and the crowd is manageable until about eleven.

Middle of the day is the worst: harsh overhead light, the terrace full, cars parked along the kerb in front of the building, and the awning throwing a hard shadow across the entrance.

Dusk, twenty to thirty minutes after sunset, for the neon and the sky together.

Three practical notes. Cross the street. From the pavement directly beneath it you will only get a corner. Wait for a gap in the kerbside parking, which is the single biggest spoiler of daytime shots on Ocean Drive and clears earliest in the morning. And at weekends the street is frequently closed to traffic, which removes the parked cars entirely and is the best accidental gift the city gives photographers.

Do not photograph terrace diners or hotel guests. Take the building.

Tours that visit The Colony

Operators run these trips past The Colony, or stop there as part of a longer route. We list what the booking data supports — not everything that mentions the name.

These earn us a commission through Viator. Same price for you, and the commission had no hand in the order.

Private and small-group departurespriced per boat or per vehicle, not per person

Near The Colony

Straight-line distances, so allow more on the road — the island is long and has one main parkway.

Every attraction
  • The peach and mint facade of a three-storey Art Deco hotel seen from below with a palm frond crossing the frame

    Neighbourhood

    Ocean Drive

    Free

    Ten blocks of deco facade on one side and open park on the other, and almost everything depends on which side you choose.

    1–2.5 hoursFree to walk. The sidewalk cafes, hotel bars and beach loungers are not.660 ft away

  • A visitor standing in a small gallery looking at framed works hung on a white wall

    Museum

    Art Deco Welcome Center

    The preservation league's own building, and the ten minutes that make the next two hours of walking make sense.

    0.5–2.5 hoursThe Welcome Center, shop and information desk are free to enter. The Art Deco Museum, guided walking tours and the self-guided audio tour are ticketed, with museum admission included in the guided tour.620 ft away

  • Clipped hedges and a stone basin in a formal courtyard garden with palms rising behind

    Historic site

    Casa Casuarina

    Free

    A 1930 Mediterranean Revival palazzo dropped into the middle of a deco street, and now a private hotel you can only enter by booking.

    10–30 minutesFree to look at from the street. There is no public admission to the interior; access requires a restaurant reservation or a room booking.990 ft away

  • Curving paved walkways running through low coastal planting in a landscaped seafront park

    Park

    Lummus Park

    Free

    Ten blocks of palm, path and free outdoor gym, and the decision that kept anyone from building between Ocean Drive and the Atlantic.

    0.5–3 hoursFree. The park, the outdoor gym, the volleyball courts, the restrooms and the beach access cost nothing.510 ft away

The Colony: common questions

Can you go inside the Colony Hotel in South Beach?

Only just. It is a small working hotel and the entrance opens almost immediately onto a reception desk, with a shallow lobby behind it and very little to look at beyond the doorway. The realistic way to be at the building as a non-guest is the pavement terrace under the sign, which operates as a bar and cafe. If it is lobbies you want, the Tides at 1220 Ocean Drive has the grandest interior on the street.

Who designed the Colony Hotel?

Henry Hohauser, with plans completed in July 1935. Hohauser was the most prolific architect of the Art Deco Historic District and is responsible for a substantial share of what you walk past on these streets. The Colony is frequently described as the first streamline-modern building on Ocean Drive — the point at which the street stopped being Mediterranean Revival and started being modern. Three floors, three bands of glazing, and one vertical neon fin.

Is the neon on Ocean Drive original?

Mostly not. Neon was genuinely part of 1930s Miami Beach, but glass tube does not survive seventy years of salt air, storms and changes of ownership. A great deal of what glows on Ocean Drive is restoration work carried out from the 1980s onwards, rebuilt from photographs and drawings as the district recovered. The design and the placement are original; the tube usually is not. It is the same story as the pastel paint.

When is the best time to photograph the Colony Hotel?

Just after sunrise, between about 7am and 8:30am. Ocean Drive faces east, so the sun comes up out of the Atlantic and lands square on the facade, the street is nearly empty and the kerbside parking that ruins most daytime shots has not filled. Shoot from the Lummus Park path across the road so you get the whole building. Come back twenty to thirty minutes after sunset for the neon with colour still in the sky.

Is the Colony Hotel the same as the Colony Theatre?

No. The Colony Hotel is at 736 Ocean Drive, a 1935 Henry Hohauser building with the vertical neon sign. The Colony Theatre is a 1935 cinema at 1040 Lincoln Road, now a performing arts venue, about fifteen minutes' walk north-west. Same name, same year, different buildings on different streets, and the mix-up is common enough that it is worth checking which one an event listing or a booking actually means.