The Raleigh, Miami Beach
Editor's Pick
South Beach
Miami Beach , Florida
33139
Tel: 305 534 6300
info@raleighhotel.com
www.raleighhotel.com
Concierge.com's insider take:
One of the most significant buildings in the South Beach Art Deco district, this hotel is centered around the area's most beautiful and famous swimming pool—a scallop-edged jewel that was a setting for Esther Williams' aquatic film scenes in the forties and is now the scene of Sunday pool parties. Built in 1940, the 108-room hotel had lost its luster before hotelier André Balazs, owner of the nearby Standard, Los Angeles' Chateau Marmont, and The Mercer in New York City, moved in to restore the Deco style and élan. Cannily, he also lent the place a cool, laid-back feeling that is rare in glitzy South Beach. Now, the redone hotel, with its Old Havana theme—bold colors, rattan and cane furniture, brown-and-ocher terrazzo floors, fluted pillars, and lots of plants and palm trees—is pulling patrons from other hotels down the street. The stylishly eccentric rooms vary enormously; some are frankly on the small side. Why not splash around instead in the tub of the 980-square-foot Esther Williams Suite?
