What did luxury look like in Miami’s Coconut Grove? Take a look back

In the late 1960s, long-haired, beaded and tie-dyed flower children and hippies brought their incense, guitars and peace symbols to the streets and parks.

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In the 1970s and early ‘80s, it was the place to hang out before South Beach found new life.

Then, the Grove got an injection of new luxury.

Fancy shops moved downtown at the Mayfair complex. Top-of-the-line hotels, restaurants and discos opened.

Originally spelled Cocoanut Grove — residents decided to drop the “a” in 1919 — the village has attracted sailors, academics, artists, explorers, dropouts and scientists.

It was the place where northern millionaires built their sprawling estates near the bay and Black residents turned Charles Avenue into a district lush with its own sense of history and architecture.

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From Dinner Key you can admire Miami’s City Hall, once the terminal for Pan Am’s famed clipper service. Along Main Highway, you can still see old vestiges of the Grove: Carrollton School, El Jardin, Miami’s first Mediterranean Building; Bryan Memorial United Methodist Church, a Byzantine-influenced memorial to William Jennings Bryan; Plymouth Church, with its mission-style coral rock buildings; the old Pagoda at Ransom Everglades.

When Commodore Ralph Middleton Munroe moved into the Grove in 1888 he began to design his next home, which would eventually be known as the Barnacle, now a historic site.

In recent years, the Grove has moved away from being a quiet, everybody-knows-everybody community with a vibrant artist population to a nightlife and shopping alternative to South Beach. And luxury towers are now part of the landscape.

Let’s take a look at a pivotal time in Grove history, when the Grand Bay, Mayfair Shops and the Mutiny came to town:

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