Hotel Colonnade Coral Gables, Autograph Collection

The Hotel Colonnade features a pale stucco exterior and a distinct, open-air rotunda that sits high above the street corner. George Merrick designed this building in nineteen twenty-six to serve as the grand sales office for his new city, Coral Gables. Prospective buyers climbed the stairs to the second floor, where they walked across ornate tile work to view large-scale models of proposed Mediterranean-style neighborhoods. Today, the space functions as a hotel lobby, still holding the echoes of that initial land boom.