Richard Fitzpatrick bought land on the North Bank of the Miami River from the Bahamians, becoming one of the first and most successful of the permanent white settlers. He operated a successful plantation with slave labor where he cultivated sugarcane, bananas, maize, and tropical fruit.

Fort Dallas was established on the plantation of Richard Fitzpatrick as a United States military post to assist with unrest with Seminole Indians (Second Seminole War). The building itself sat two blocks away from the current site of the InterContinental Miami hotel.

Fort Dallas is named after Commodore Alexander James Dallas, US Navy – brother of George Mifflin Dallas after whom the City of Dallas, Texas is named.

Second Seminole War ended, Village of Miami charted on the South Bank of the Miami River by Fitzpatrick’s nephew.

All but the barracks and another building burned (The barracks served as plantation slave quarters, then as army barracks during the Seminole Wars, and as Julia Tuttle’s home in 1891 before being moved to its current location at Lummus Park in 1924)

Earliest photograph of the North Bank, site of the InterContinental Miami

Julia Tuttle purchased Fort Dallas and used the barracks as her home

Flagler wrote to Tuttle a long letter recapping her offer of land to him in exchange for extending his railroad to Miami, laying out a city and building a hotel.

With the railroad under construction, activity in Miami began to pick up. Men from throughout Florida flocked to Miami to await Flagler’s call for workers of all qualifications to begin work on the promised hotel and city. By late December 1895, seventy-five of them already were at work clearing the site for the hotel. They lived mostly in tents and huts in the wilderness (now the area considered as Overtown), which had no streets and few cleared paths. These men were primarily victims of the freeze, which had left both money and work scarce.

The arrival of Florida East Coast Railway tracks (owned by Henry M. Flagler) to Fort Dallas, thereby creating the City of Miami. On April 13, the first train came into the Miami.

The City of Miami was incorporated & named after the Miami River. John Reilly, who headed Flagler’s Fort Dallas land company, was the first elected mayor.

The first reference to Royal Palm Hotel grounds (owned by Flagler) is found. It was the first hotel in the City of Miami.

Flagler built the Royal Palm Hotel, Miami’s center piece, in less than two years. The site of this hotel covers mostly the North Bank of the Miami River. The IC Miami site at his time was partially there; Biscayne Bay was in filled during the 1920s, after which Bayfront Park and the current site of the InterContinental Miami came to be.

Spanish American War declared. The city captured America’s attention when 7,000 U.S. soldiers were deployed there in 1898 after the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana (2/15), the fuse setting off the Spanish American War.

A 200 volunteer guard organized into the Miami Minutemen and patrolled the hotel grounds fearing Spanish warships during the Spanish American War

First picture of the Royal Palm Hotel

In the 1910s, hotel guests could open up two of Miami’s daily papers and read about themselves. Both the Herald and the Metropolis printed lists of guests checking into Miami’s Royal Palm, Halycon and Seminole hotels. But the first Miami Beach hotels weren’t considered posh enough to merit similar coverage.

Fort Dallas barracks moved to Lummus Park to make way for condos.

1926 Hurricane hits Downtown Miami with major destruction to the city.

Royal Palm Hotel closed. No reason to the closure available at this time, although the 1926 hurricane and damage could be the culprit.

The hotel site was a marina and a residential area at different points in time. Ongoing historical research is being done at this time.

Chopin Plaza dedicated by the Polish American Club

Theodore Gould a developer from Washington DC built the Miami Center and the Pavilion Hotel. The hotel was designed by Pietro Belluschi, the famous architect who designed the Pan American building in NYC.

The travertine marble was imported from Italy, the slabs were numbered when cut so when reassembled in Miami the slabs followed the same vein. An entire quarry was emptied to build the hotel and the adjacent Miami Center. They are the largest marble structures in Florida. Precious woods imported from Africa, including the rare Babinga were used throughout the entire hotel.

It is the only hotel lobby in the world to have been built around a work of art. In 1981, internationally renowned sculptor Sir Henry Moore (1898-1986) created the 18-ft, 70-ton Spindle sculpture. Made of travertine marble with a base of ooba tooba granite from Brazil, it was dropped into the lobby space by helicopter and from that point the hotel lobby was built. The Spindle is the largest of the artist’s sculptures in private ownership and is appraised at over $20 million.

The layout of the hotel was planned to suit the needs of a casino, although the hotel never operated as such. The hotel is considered to be the first hotel in Miami catering to the business area of the city.

The Presidential Suite was decorated for and named for President Ronald Regan. The Royal Suite was decorated for and named after Princess Caroline of Monaco.

Intercontinental Hotels Corp. announced that it would manage the Pavillon
Hotel in Miami, now to be known as the “Hotel Inter-Continental Miami at Miami Center”

Intercontinental Hotels Corp. purchased the hotel from the Bank of New York

Strategic Hotels & Resorts purchased the InterContinental Miami Hotel, InterContinental Hotels Group remained as the hotel management