The Fontainebleau spite wall
Two former partners, one swimming pool, and a court ruling on who owns the afternoon sun.
Listen to this place’s story in Peplos.
How the story begins
Ben Novack and Harry Mufson created a hotel together, the Sans Souci, and then fell out. By 1959 a tower on Novack's land was going to put Mufson's swimming pool in shadow from about two o'clock every winter afternoon. Novack had the Fontainebleau. In 1955, about a year after it, Mufson's Eden Roc went up next door. Novack was livid. His new tower rose on the north side, facing it, fourteen stories, twenty feet from the property line.
The rest is in the app. Peplos plays the full story when you reach the place. You can also listen ahead of time.
Visiting
Both are working hotels on Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, north of the Art Deco district. See them from outside, from Collins Avenue. The Eden Roc's 2008 tower blocks most of the view of the wall.
Sources
- Fontainebleau Hotel Corp. v. Forty-Five Twenty-Five, Inc., 114 So. 2d 357, Florida Third District Court of Appeal, 1959, Occidental College copy
- Eden Roc Miami Beach Hotel, Wikipedia
- The spite wall between the Fontainebleau and the Eden Roc, Florida Trend, 2014
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