Since 1938
A seaside hotel, opened back up to the light.
How a forty-room 1938 hotel on Collins Avenue became Azure Maré, and what we kept when we restored it.
1938The year the house first opened
The building
Streamlined, white and built for the breeze.
The hotel went up in the last years of the 1930s building boom, when Miami Beach was filling with small hotels in the new streamlined style: smooth stucco, rounded corners like the bow of a liner, horizontal racing stripes and concrete "eyebrows" over the windows to keep out the afternoon sun.
It had forty rooms, a lobby with a terrazzo floor in sea-green and cream, and a garden running to the dunes. Through the decades it was a winter hotel, a wartime billet and, for a long time, a tired guesthouse. The bones never changed.
The restoration
What we kept, and what we changed.
The 2024 restoration took two years and followed the Miami Beach Architectural District guidelines. The facade, the eyebrows, the porthole windows on the stair and the lobby terrazzo were repaired by hand. The neon on the parapet was remade in the original colour.
Inside, forty small rooms became forty-six suites and studios, with stone bathrooms and quiet air conditioning. The courtyard went back to royal palms and sea grape, a pool went in, and the old dining room became Coquina, with a wood grill where the coal stove used to be.
- Original terrazzo restored in the lobby and the Deco Balcony Suites
- Hurricane-rated glass behind the original window lines
- Solar hot water and no single-use plastic in the rooms
- Native dune planting that protects the beach
The house today
In numbers.
- 46Suites and studios in three categories
- 12Cabanas on our stretch of the beach
- 5Floors, with the rooftop terrace on top
- 3Blocks to Lincoln Road, eight to Lummus Park
How we host
Warm, quick and never stiff.
We are a small house, and we run it that way. The concierge desk is staffed around the clock, and you can text it from your room for towels, a table or a car. Housekeeping comes when you want it, not at nine sharp.
Most of the team live within twenty minutes of the hotel. Ask them where to eat in Little Havana, which morning the farmers market is on, or where the manatees turn up in winter. They will tell you the truth.
Guest book
In their words.
We ate breakfast on the terrace every morning and watched the pelicans come in low over the water. I would book the same suite again tomorrow.
The room keeps the old curves and the terrazzo, but the shower and the bed are completely modern. Quiet at night, which I did not expect on Collins.
The events team handled everything, from the long table on the lawn to a menu for two guests with allergies. Nobody had to ask for anything twice.
Booked a cabana for the afternoon and stayed for dinner. Our host kept the water cold and the umbrella angled without us ever asking.
Small but beautifully done, and thirty steps from the pool. Great value for this part of South Beach.
The banana old fashioned is worth the trip on its own. Good music, not too loud, and the bartenders actually talk to you.
Come and see it
The house is better in person.
Rooms from $395 a night, with no resort fee and the beach thirty steps away.