In August, Miami Beach replaced the Jetty lifeguard tower at the southern tip of South Beach. The new tower is a copy of the old one, red and white stripes and lighthouse lantern included. If you didn't know the old tower well, you'd walk past without noticing anything had changed.
I've been photographing this tower for over ten years. Two frames here show the original. The rest follow the replacement from a fenced lot in Lummus Park to its spot on the sand.
Where the Jetty Tower Sits
The tower stands at South Pointe Park, the southernmost point of Miami Beach, next to the rock jetty that runs along the north side of Government Cut. Government Cut is the man-made shipping channel into PortMiami, opened in 1905. The park itself opened in 1985, and the rebuilt South Pointe Pier runs about 450 feet out beside the channel.
From the beach, the tower is the last structure before the rocks. Look north and you get the length of South Beach. Look south and you're looking across the channel at Fisher Island.
A Lighthouse Among the Art Deco Towers
Most of the towers on South Beach trace back to Hurricane Andrew. The 1992 storm wiped out the existing stands, and architect William Lane designed five replacements in 1995 that became symbols of the neighborhood's revival in the nineties. About twenty years later, Lane's firm came back with six new prototypes to replace 36 towers running from South Pointe Park to 86th Street. Other towers came from design competitions and commissions by local business owners.
The Jetty tower doesn't look like any of them. It's a striped lighthouse, closer to Cape Cod than Ocean Drive. When it came time to replace it, the city could have swapped in one of the newer prototypes. It built the same tower a second time instead.
I covered the earlier wooden towers in Wooden Lifeguard Towers of South Beach.
The Original Tower
The first frame is from about ten years ago. The second is from earlier this year. The tower sat at the mouth of the channel through every storm season in between, and you can see it in the paint and the trim. In both frames, the name is lettered on the deck.
Parked in Lummus Park
Before it went out to the beach, the new tower sat inside a chain-link enclosure in Lummus Park, set back among the palms with equipment parked around it. A lighthouse standing on grass behind a construction fence is a strange thing to see, so I went back more than once.
The fence was the problem. In some frames I shot through it. In others I used sea grape leaves and palm fronds in the foreground to frame the tower and cut the fence down. One frame puts the sun directly behind the lantern.
Back on the Sand
The new tower went in on the morning of August 14th. The old structure was taken apart before the swap.
In the first frame, the orange traffic cones from the install are still at the base while a man with a metal detector and a shovel works the sand in front of it. The second is a sunrise frame with a bicycle parked under the deck and the Jetty sign back in place. The only giveaway is the paint, which is clean and bright in a way the old tower hadn't been for years.
Finding It
South Pointe Park is at 1 Washington Avenue, at the bottom of South Beach. Park in the lot on Inlet Boulevard and walk east, past the playground and the hill. Cross the walkway to the path that leads to the beach, and you'll be facing the tower. The beach faces east, so go for sunrise if you want the sun coming up over the water behind the tower, and get there before it clears the horizon. Walk out on the pier afterward for the view back across Government Cut.