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Park
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Ten blocks of palm, path and free outdoor gym, and the decision that kept anyone from building between Ocean Drive and the Atlantic.
Photo: Tichnor Brothers, Boston (publisher)Public domain
Lummus Park is the reason Ocean Drive works. It is a strip of public park roughly 74 acres in extent, running along the east side of Ocean Drive from 5th Street to 15th, and because it exists there is no building of any kind between the hotel row and the Atlantic. Every other stretch of this coastline had towers put on it. This ten-block window did not, and that single planning decision is worth more to the look of South Beach than any individual building in it.
The name belongs to J.N. and J.E. Lummus, brothers who began developing the southern end of the island through their Ocean Beach Realty Company from 1912. J.N. became the first mayor of Miami Beach when the town incorporated on 26 March 1915. The strip between their street grid and the water was set aside as public park rather than sold as oceanfront lots, and it has stayed public since.
What that gives a visitor is a buffer, and the buffer is genuinely useful. From the park path you can see whole deco façades at once, which you cannot do from the pavement directly beneath them. There is intermittent shade under coconut palm and sea grape, which the west side of Ocean Drive does not have at all. There are public restrooms, which the street does not have either. And there is a continuous paved path running the full ten blocks, flat, wide and stroller-friendly, that connects south into South Pointe Park and north into the beachwalk.
The park also carries the things people do on a beach rather than in the sea. There is a free outdoor gym at 9th Street — pull-up bars, rings, parallel bars, sculptural climbing frames — busy from before seven in the morning. There are sand volleyball courts. There are the palm groves where the shade chess and the radios and the long afternoons happen.
One honest note. The park at night is not the park in the day. After about eleven it is dark, thinly used and better left to the joggers. Walk Ocean Drive instead; it is ten feet away and lit.
Lummus Park is the green strip on the ocean side of Ocean Drive. If you are standing on Ocean Drive, it is the side without buildings. Cross at any numbered street between 5th and 15th.
On foot is the only sensible approach. From the municipal garages around Washington Avenue it is a three to five minute walk east along any cross street.
Cycling. The path through the park runs the full ten blocks and connects south to South Pointe Park and north to the beachwalk, which makes it part of a continuous, flat, traffic-free route up the island. Cyclists share it with pedestrians and are expected to give way.
Parking. There is metered parking on Ocean Drive itself, which is the least practical parking in South Beach. The municipal garages on and around Washington Avenue between 7th and 17th Streets are cheaper over a day and closer than they look.
By bus and trolley. The free Miami Beach trolley and the South Beach Local both run the Washington and Collins corridors, two and three blocks west respectively.
Beach access points with matting, showers and restrooms are spaced along the park at the numbered cross streets rather than continuously, so aim for a cross street rather than cutting through the vegetation.
Look north from 15th Street along the shoreline and you will see what South Beach would otherwise be: a wall of towers standing directly on the sand, running most of the way to the county line. That is the normal condition of this coast. Lummus Park is the exception.
The strip was dedicated as public park in the earliest years of the town rather than parcelled into oceanfront lots, and because the deco hotel boom of the 1930s therefore had to happen on the far side of a street and a park, the buildings that define South Beach are three storeys, set back, and visible in full from forty feet away. A row of 1930s hotels built hard against the sand would have been a different and much less legible thing.
It also produced the district's odd, workable geometry: a commercial street, a green buffer, a dune line, then a beach wide enough that the towel crowd and the water are a long way apart. You can be in a bar and be two hundred yards from the surf.
The practical consequence is that Lummus Park does a lot of jobs at once. It is the beach's front garden, the street's overflow, the district's only public toilet block, a gym, a playing field, a sleeping spot, an event site and the vantage point for every photograph of Ocean Drive ever taken from across the road. On a Saturday in February it is doing all of those simultaneously.
Everything in this section costs nothing, which in South Beach is worth stating twice.
What is not free: the loungers and umbrellas on the sand beyond the park, which are concession-run and priced accordingly. The park's own grass costs nothing to sit on.
Before 8am. The park belongs to residents. Runners on the path, the gym at 9th Street already full, yoga groups on the grass, older men setting up chess in the palm shade, and the sun coming up out of the Atlantic on the far side of the dune. If you are going to be in South Beach at one hour only, make it this one.
9am to 11am. Families crossing from the hotels to the sand. Volleyball starts. The path gets busy with cyclists and scooters, who are supposed to be on the road and mostly are not.
Noon to 4pm. The grass empties and the palm groves fill, because the difference between sun and shade here in July is roughly ten degrees of comfort. This is when the park earns its keep: it is the only shade between Ocean Drive and the ocean.
5pm to sunset. The best light on the façades from the park side, the gym busy again, the path at its most crowded, and the smell of the food carts along Ocean Drive. Note that the sun sets behind you on this coast, over the bay — the Atlantic gets the sunrise.
After dark. The park thins fast. It is not lit to the standard of the street, and by eleven it is a dark strip with a lot of vegetation in it beside a very bright one. Cross to Ocean Drive. The walk is ten feet.
Lummus Park is South Beach's default event site, and several times a year large parts of it are fenced.
January has traditionally brought Art Deco Weekend, the Miami Design Preservation League's street festival, which closes Ocean Drive and spills into the park with stalls, classic cars and lectures. It is free, it is the single best weekend of the year to be here if the architecture is why you came, and it makes the beach crossing slower.
February has traditionally brought the big wine and food festival, whose marquees occupy a substantial run of the sand between roughly 11th and 14th Streets for the better part of a week, including build and strike days. If you booked an ocean-facing room for that week, expect a view of a tent.
Early December is Art Basel Miami Beach. The fair itself is at the convention centre several blocks north-west, but the island-wide effect is total: hotel rates, restaurant availability, rideshare surge and pop-up activations, some of them on this sand.
March is spring break, and the park is where the city's management of it is most visible — staffed beach entrance checkpoints at selected cross streets, bans on coolers, glass, tents, inflatables and unpermitted amplified music, and a conspicuous police presence.
4 July brings fireworks off the beach and a crowd to match.
Dates move. Check the City of Miami Beach events calendar before you build a day around this strip.
Operators run these trips past Lummus Park, or stop there as part of a longer route. We list what the booking data supports — not everything that mentions the name.
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Straight-line distances, so allow more on the road — the island is long and has one main parkway.
Neighbourhood
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.250 ft away
Beach
Free, public, and about three times wider than it was fifty years ago, because most of it was pumped there on purpose.
1.5–6 hoursFree. The entire beach is public. Loungers, umbrellas and the concession rows are not.0.4 mi away
Landmark
Around three dozen individually designed towers along Miami Beach, each known by the street it stands at rather than by a number.
0.5–1.5 hoursFree. The beach, the accesses and the towers cost nothing.530 ft away
Museum
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.220 ft away
Where this place fits into a day, and the pages that plan one.
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This is an adult neighbourhood that happens to have a world-class beach and two very good parks. Use the southern end, use the mornings, and skip March.
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This beach was built by the Army Corps between 1975 and 1982. Knowing that explains the width, the dune line and the long walk to the water.
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Everything here is within a mile and a half, so the plan is about hours rather than distances. Get the direction of the light right and the day builds itself.
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Yes, and unusually for South Beach almost everything in it is. The grass, the paved path, the outdoor gym at 9th Street, the volleyball courts, the playgrounds, the public restrooms and the cold showers all cost nothing. The only charges nearby are parking and the concession loungers and umbrellas out on the sand. If you want a free day in South Beach, this ten-block strip and the beach beyond it is it.
At 9th Street, inside Lummus Park, just back from the sand. It is a free open-air calisthenics gym with pull-up and dip bars, rings, parallel bars and two large sculptural climbing structures carrying something over thirty stations between them. No membership, no booking, no staff. It is busiest before 9am and from around 5pm, and it draws a mix of serious athletes, visitors and spectators.
Yes, and it is the best flat walk in South Beach. The park path runs from 15th Street south to 5th, then continues into South of Fifth and the landscaped walkways of South Pointe Park at the island's southern tip. That is roughly a mile and a half end to end, all level, all paved, with the ocean on one side. Going the other way, the path links north into the beachwalk and continues up the island.
Use ordinary city judgement and prefer the street. The park is not lit to the same standard as Ocean Drive, the vegetation blocks sightlines, and after about eleven it is thinly used while the pavement ten feet west is bright and busy. There is nothing unusual about the risk; it is simply a dark strip next to a very well-lit one, and the well-lit one takes you to the same places.
Because the strip was set aside as public park in the earliest years of the town rather than sold as oceanfront lots. The Lummus brothers developed the southern end of the island from 1912, and J.N. Lummus became Miami Beach's first mayor when it incorporated in March 1915. The consequence is that South Beach's 1930s hotels had to be built on the far side of a street and a park, which is exactly why you can see whole facades at once.