Rainbow crosswalks honoring the LGBTQ+ community are always lovely to see, but the history of this particular one is extra-special. It was installed in 2018 to honor the work of Leonard Horowitz, a gay furniture designer who worked with Barbara Baer Capitman to preserve the many Art Deco buildings that I obsess over and specifically brought the color palette that has become The Palette of the Art Deco Historic District.
Miami Beach in the 70s and 80s was not the glamorous place it is today; it was seedy and the gorgeous Art Deco architecture that is beloved today was in disrepair. Barbara Capitman and Leonard Horowitz created the Miami Design Preservation League to preserve as much of this architectural history as possible, and I’ve used their website as a resource a lot because it’s the richest on this particular subject. Leonard Horowoitz in particular was the one who pushed for repainting the mostly-white facades into candy colors to give them all new life, and the colors you see in the crosswalk are the colors that were in his color palette.
Leonard Horowitz died in 1989 due to complications from AIDS, and in the subsequent year Palace Bar was founded as the first and only LGBTQ+ bar on Ocean Drive. Per the Atlas Obscura article cited above, they would paint their curbs in rainbow colors to show that they were a safe space, and in 2018, this crosswalk became a permanent signal to that and as an honorific to the man whose eye and vision helped bring this historic area back to life.
In a time where there is so much backlash to anything related to the queer community here in the United States, talking about why this part of Miami Beach is so beloved and so beautiful feels extra-important this time around knowing that a gay man had the vision to make it pop and he worked with Mrs. Baer Capitman and a band of activists to preserve these buildings. I celebrate these buildings to honor their work.
ETA: in early October of 2025, Florida governor Ron DeSantis ordered the removal of Miami Beach's rainbow crosswalk as part of a state-wide "crackdown" on rainbow crosswalks, as apparently those pose a greater threat to the people of Florida rather than issues like climate change or the skyrocketing costs of living. I can't say I feel optimistic about this or the other rainbow crosswalks across the state that had also been removed coming back anytime soon given the state's recent voting record, but I would be more than happy to be proven wrong.
