History of 1201 Brickell Bay Drive

The waterfront parcel on Brickell Bay Drive will soon be redeveloped by Ken Griffin. This lot was once residential and featured a mansion, apartment house, and mid-century hotel. Here is its history.

Cover: The empty lot of 1201 Brickell Bay Drive in March of 2025. Courtesy of Casey M. Piket.

When it was announced that Ken Griffin purchased the 2.5-acre property at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive for $363 million in April of 2022, everyone knew something was big was coming. The lot had served as a parking lot for many years waiting for development. It was sold to Griffin by the Florida East Coast Realty Corporation, a Tibor Hollo company, after giving up on the idea of constructing a tower on the site themselves. Hollo purchased the property in 2000 for $15.5 million in 2000.

While the lot still sits empty today, construction of Griffin’s building will begin soon. Although things will dramatically change after the completion of the Citadel Tower, this section of Brickell Bay Drive was once a part of a quiet residential quarter prior to the recent redevelopment of the Brickell neighborhood. The northern half of this parcel was where the residence of Huston Wyeth, a Miami pioneer, was once located. The southern section was where the Fredora Court Apartments stood for many years. By the 1950s, the Wyeth mansion was incorporated into the Ocean Ranch Motel, which operated from this parcel from 1946 until it was razed in the 1973.

Land Fortified with Bay Bottom Fill

Figure 1: Aerial view of today’s Brickell Bay Drive in 1916. Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum.

A lot of the Biscayne bay front along the Brickell neighborhood was fortified with bay bottom and sand to provide the shoreline seen today. Dredging and filling areas along the shoreline was a common practice and was also used to create additional land such as with the Biscayne Bay islands and the western boundaries of Miami Beach.

The aerial photo in Figure 1, estimated to have been taken in 1916, provides evidence that the shoreline from today’s SE Eighth Street to SE Twelfth Terrace, required some fill and sand to fortify the shoreline. The lot at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive was part of the land included in the section of white sand in the photograph north of the boathouse that jets out from the shoreline.

Huston and Leila Wyeth

Figure 2: Portrait of Huston Wyeth.

In the early 1920s, the president of the Wyeth Hardware Company of Saint Joseph, Missouri, constructed a mansion on the northwest corner of the 2.5-acre property at today’s 1201 Brickell Bay Drive. An avid fisherman and boater, Huston Wyeth and his wife, Leila, began traveling to Miami in 1900, just four years after the city’s incorporation.

Huston and Leila established a permanent winter home along today’s Biscayne Boulevard in 1915, but decided to sell that residence and construct a mansion in the Brickell neighborhood by the onset of the second decade of the last century. The couple spent their summers in Saint Joseph, where Huston would serve as president of his hardware company, and spent the winter months at their Brickell home where they would enjoy temperate weather and great fishing during the worst of winter in Missouri.

Huston became ill during the winter of 1924 prior to traveling to Miami in January of 1925 for rest and relaxation. It was at their bay front mansion in Brickell that he passed away on January 25, 1925. His widow, Leila, held onto the residence until the early 1940s when she sold it. By 1945, Harry Dewitt purchased the property and incorporated the Wyeth mansion into the Ocean Ranch Hotel.

Fredora Court Apartments

Figure 3: Fredora Court Apartments in the 1920s. Courtesy of Larry Wiggins.

In addition to the Wyeth mansion, which was situated on the northwest corner of 1201 Brickell Bay Drive, then known as South Bayshore Drive, Fred and Dora Brown constructed the Fredora Court Apartments in 1922. The Browns moved from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Miami in 1914, to lease and manage the Biscayne Hotel on today’s Flagler Street and Miami Avenue. After a few years, the couple moved onto managing the Principia Apartments on Southeast First Street in downtown Miami, before constructing their own apartment complex in the Brickell neighborhood.

Fred hired the architectural firm of Hampton and Reimert to design a Mediterranean complex with 25 large furnished apartments and a beautifully landscaped courtyard which provided an unobstructed view of Biscayne Bay. The Browns named the apartment house the Fredora Court Apartments by combining their first two names.

By the mid-1940s, the Browns sold the complex and the new owners renamed it to the South Bayshore Apartments. A few years later, the apartment moniker was slightly modified to the South Bayshore Drive Apartments. The complex stood until the late 1970s when it was acquired by a large insurance company and the building was razed in anticipation of redevelopment.

Ocean Ranch Hotel

Figure 4: Postcard of an aerial shot of the Ocean Ranch Hotel in the 1950s. Courtesy of Casey M. Piket.

By the mid-1940s, Harry Dewitt from Akron, Ohio, began buying real estate in Miami including the former residence of Huston and Leila Wyeth on South Bayshore Drive, today’s Brickell Bay Drive. Dewitt’s plan was to construct a pool adjacent to the Biscayne Bay, and a set of cabana-style rooms around the mansion for guests to enjoy both the pool and bay.

Figure 5: Aerial photograph of the Ocean Ranch Hotel in 1951. Courtesy of Bob Waterhouse via Miami Springs Historical Society and Museum.

The pool became very popular with guests and residents alike. Many children who grew up in Brickell during middle decades of the twentieth century remember learning to swim in the Ocean Ranch pool. The students at the nearby Assumption Academy recall having access to the pool for swimming lessons as well.

However, over time, the Ocean Ranch became a flashpoint for late-night parties, providing too raucous an environment for one of the long-time and nearby residents of the neighborhood. Julia Harris, head of the Miss Harris Florida School for girls, felt that the noise and alcohol consumption at the Ocean Ranch Motel was not conducive for the learning environment she had hoped to foster at her school. She decided to move her educational institution to Stuart in 1958. The school had been at 1051 Brickell Avenue from 1921 until the time of their relocation.

Figure 6: Postcard of the Ocean Ranch Hotel pool. Courtesy of Casey M. Piket.

In 1973, Mutual of Omaha purchased the property at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive and demolished the Ocean Ranch Motel. There were plans to redevelop the parcel with a more modern hotel, along with other ideas during the 1970s – 1990s, but nothing every materialized. When the Florida East Coast Realty purchased the land in 2000, they had planned on erecting a tower on the property, but over the next two decades never moved forward with redevelopment. That is when they sold the property to Ken Griffin in 2022.

Citadel Tower

Figure 7: Rendering of the Citadel Tower which will be constructed at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive.

The tower planned for 1201 Brickell Bay drive has a proposed height of 1,032 feet and 54 stories, will be a mixed-use development featuring 1.3 million square feet of office space, a 212-room rooftop hotel with fine dining restaurants, health spa and fitness center. The edifice will serve as the corporate headquarters of Citadel and Citadel Securities. It is expected to cost more than $1 billion to construct and is scheduled to break ground in the third quarter of 2025.

The tower will occupy the full 2.5-acre parcel making it difficult to ever imagine a time when this parcel was part of a quiet residential neighborhood. The tranquil era of the 1920s through mid-century decades of the Twentieth Century are long gone, but hopefully the stories of the Wyeth family, Fred and Dora Smith, and the fabled Ocean Ranch Hotel garners an appreciation for a bygone era.

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