The demolition of the Deauville Beach Resort in Miami Beach started Saturday morning, just days after the city issued the permit. According to a story in The Miami Herald, the Miami Design Preservation League, a Miami Beach preservation group, challenged the demolition order and an appeal is pending.

The Deauville opened in 1957 and had been closed since 2017. It was once a destination for dignitaries and stars, but it will forever be remembered for hosting a rare, extended stay by The Beatles, including a live performance for their second appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show ,in February 1964.

More recently, the Deauville had been home to the Arturo Sandoval Jazz Club (2006-2008) and the after-hours program of Snarky Puppy’s GroundUp Music Festival. In 2017, an evening included a performance by the immortal Derek Smalls, aka Harry Shearer, the pipe-smoking, cucumber-wielding bassist of the not-quite-great, sort-of-lamented British band Spinal Tap. Accompanied by a band band that, as I astutetly noted in my chronicle then, looked and sounded suspiciously like members of Snarky Puppy, Mr. Smalls revisited some of the Tap’s greatest hits, including “Break Like The Wind,” “Hellhole,” and “Sex Farm,” playing on the same stage The Beatles once appeared.

Or so I was told at the time. Sure. Why not? We like a good story.

Besides, if you live long enough in Miami Beach, you learn that the sublime and the ridiculous happen and live side by side here — impermanently, of course.

 

The Deauville a few weeks back, already fenced but still relatively intact. The iconic sign over the entrance was not on the rubble Saturday and according to one of the workers, it was saved and stored.