Opa-locka City Hall
A city in Miami-Dade County built entirely in Moorish Revival architecture in 1926. The mayor's office has minarets.
Glenn Curtiss, the aviation pioneer, developed Opa-locka in 1926 as a Moorish fantasy city inspired by the Arabian Nights. He built 105 buildings with domes, minarets, and arabesque arches. The city was named after a Seminole phrase meaning 'big island covered with many trees in the swamp.' The streets are named Sharazad Boulevard and Ali Baba Avenue.
Opa-locka City Hall is at 780 Fisherman St, open weekdays. The building is a National Historic Landmark. The surrounding neighborhood has the highest concentration of Moorish Revival architecture in the Western Hemisphere. Drive the streets — the contrast between the ornate 1920s buildings and the surrounding urban landscape is striking.
The Great Depression ended Curtiss's plans before he could finish. What remains is a fragment of a vision — a handful of extraordinary buildings in a neighborhood that has struggled for decades. The city hall is genuinely beautiful. The story of how it got there is genuinely American.