Coral Gables was the dream city of the 1920s Florida land boom, and the Biltmore Hotel was and still is its most recognizable landmark.

Completed in January 1926, the city’s centerpiece was designed by the New York architectural firm of Schultze and Weaver and was fashioned after the Westchester Biltmore in Rye, N.Y.

Jazz Age guests included the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, and movie and sports stars including Babe Ruth. Later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept an office there when he was vacationing in Miami.

In the 1920s and ’30s, the half-acre pool was the largest in the world. Johnny Weissmuller once taught swimming there, and, in the 1930s, aquatic shows brought in the crowds as the Great Depression worsened. Jackie Ott, the “Wonder Tot,” was a star of those shows, diving from an 85-foot-high platform.

The 15-story central tower, the tallest structure in Florida when the hotel opened, was inspired by the Giralda Tower on the cathedral in Seville, Spain.

The property was developed for $10 million in 1925 by Coral Gables developer George Merrick and John McEntee Bowman. It was the centerpiece of the Miami suburb that was designed following the strict principles of the “City Beautiful” movement. Although Coral Gables is a thriving city now, by 1929, three years after the Florida real estate boom went bust, Merrick and his development company were bankrupt, and Bowman bought out Merrick’s stake in the hotel for $2.1 million.

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The hotel remained open after the 1920s Florida land boom went bust in 1926, although the building was used as a military hospital during World War II. It remained a Veterans Administration hospital, and home of the University of Miami’s medical school, until 1968, when the government abandoned the building.

Derelict, it was given to the City of Coral Gables in 1973 and restored in the mid-1980s at a cost of $55 million. Reopening as a hotel in 1987, it remains viable. Rooms start at $210 to $299 a night in the offseason.

The Biltmore, which has a golf course designed by Donald Ross, was named a National Historic Landmark in 1996. In 2012, the American Institute of Architects’ Florida-Caribbean chapter included the hotel on its “100 Years, 100 Places” list of the most important structures in the state.

“Florida Buildings I Love” is Harold Bubil’s homage to the Sunshine State’s built environment. This story originally ran on Feb. 8, 2017.  

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Buildings I Love, Harold Bubil: No. 9: Biltmore Hotel, 1926, Coral Gables