Social Scene

When it opened in 1965, Bal Harbour Shops looked unlike any other shopping center. What was once considered a bold experiment is now a globally admired model that continues to influence retail environments around the world.

But of course, charting new territory doesn’t come easy, and in order to do so, Bal Harbour Shops founder Stanley Whitman fired the leading retail architect of the time, Victor Gruen, and took design control into his own hands. Stanley’s vision was clear: this would be an open-air enclave, inward facing, a true environment with wide, runway-like walkways (to accommodate side-by-side shoppers in either direction), bubbling fountains, myriad palm trees and other flora—including in the parking lot, which many scoffed at—and charged for parking (a first!) so as to ensure that serious shoppers would have a place at Bal Harbour Shops.

Stanley secured the land where the Shops stand today, paying more than anyone else per square foot—and the construction to follow. “Only my mother and wife believed in me,” he would often quip. Stanley went on a decade-long cross-country tour of shopping centers from Hawaii to Maine, Washington to Texas, documenting everything he didn’t want to do. What he was left with was a manifesto of sorts. Stanley was going to create a destination for luxury shopping, with an environment as transformative as the fashion housed within its boutiques.

Today, amidst the world’s most coveted luxury brands and restaurants, the Shops’ tropical enclave counts more than 700 trees (and 80 species) in its canopy: Alexander, Thatch, Cabadae, and Macarthur festooned with orchids shade the interior, spreading their dramatic shadows across the Central Courtyard. At the perimeter, protecting the serene retail enclave, are Coconut, Sea Grape, and Ficus Trees, as well as Pauros Palms, Kapoks, Silk Floss, and Baobab Trees. And in 1999, the beloved koi and turtle ponds were built, delighting visitors of all ages as they pause to admire the gentle rhythm of life below the surface.

For more on the history of Bal Harbour Shops click the link in bio.

January 5, 1965. It’s time to break ground on what will become Bal Harbour Shops. Members of the Whitman family pose with shovel in hand and a bulldozer behind them. Second from left is founder Stanley Whitman, the visionary who almost no one believed in, who broke every rule, ceiling, and standard that stood in his way. A maverick. A disruptor, long before there was such a term.

Stanley was the second of three sons, born November 15, 1918, to Leona and William Whitman, a wealthy Chicago family who spent winters in Miami Beach. They quickly became enmeshed in the city’s high society, and built a modern beachfront mansion on 32nd and Collins Avenue (where the Faena holds court today), making Miami Beach their permanent home in 1920. Whitman senior became an early investor in real estate development, taking big risks including the creation of Española Way in Miami Beach on a tract of land that was formerly a mangrove swamp, and investing in Lincoln Road, which at that time was the city’s preeminent shopping arcade.

After graduating from Duke—where he met his future wife, Dottie—and serving tours in the Navy, Stanley, like many twenty-somethings, was looking to find his path. He turned his attention back to Miami Beach, the city that held his fondest memories, and was now, in 1945, beginning to take shape as America’s Riviera, an oceanfront playground for frolic, fantasy, and fortune. Stanley and his young family settled in a former army barrack that had been converted into apartments, on a narrow swath nestled between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal. It was here that his vision for Bal Harbour Shops was born—and built.

Stanley became embedded in the very newly established Bal Harbour Village—in fact he was one of its founding residents—and as he watched South Beach begin to lose its luster, and waves of expansion reach further north building hotels, homes, and even new bridges, he saw a void: a place to gather, to shop, to engage—but one that catered to the new wealth that was flooding the area. Stanley was determined to create a modern-day piazza to allure precisely these well-to-do denizens, already seduced by the promise of a sparkling new future.

Whiten up. With these perfectly crisp whites from Brunello Cucinelli, Ralph Lauren, and Loro Piana, Labor Day can wait.