Personal Best: Paul George

Paul George has spent his career recording Miami’s treasure-filled history so well that he has become a local treasure himself. The historian for the Historical Museum of Southern Florida was a “World War II-era kid,” who grew up in the Little River/Shenandoah neighborhood of Miami. He went to college in the ’60s, getting his master’s degree and then a Ph.D. in history from Florida State University. He returned to live in Miami, in the same area of his upbringing, in the ’80s. Since then George has played a major role in preserving through permanent record this region’s immense and lightning-fast transformation.

As a professional historian, George has been writing about, teaching and leading tours of this county’s rich life for almost three decades. He also has served on the Miami-Dade County Historic Preservation Board for nigh on 10 years, reviewing structures that range from Miami’s largest public housing project to its mid-50s architecture. We caught up with the Miami Dade College teacher for a few questions just after he’d finished his morning ritual of reading the The New York Times at his “favorite little Cuban bakery,” La Gran Via (950 SW Eighth St.), and just before he was to embark on a three-week summer driving tour from Miami to New England.

 

What are you up to these days?

I’m working on a couple of books. A history of Mount Sinai Medical Center, a history of St. Stephen’s Episcopal school, a history of the Wynwood neighborhood. I love old inner city neighborhoods. Also I serve as editor of two history journals. The tour season through the Historical Museum of Southern Florida is temporarily over as of mid-June. I’ll do a small number of tours in July and August and start again in September. I also do private tours: a crime tour, a Little Havana walk. …

 

Name the area’s greatest treasures as you see them?

Just the natural environment of the subtropics. Few other parts of the U.S. have what we do. There is no other Everglades, Biscayne National Park, the flora and fauna, the beaches, the climate. It’s quite unique, and it’s an area that has embraced, to varying degrees, over a million exiles over the last 50 years. A lot of people who needed help have come here, and we’ve been able to help them. Miami is part of that city of the future.

 

OK, what about the hidden treasures you didn’t reveal just now?

The hidden treasures are the neighborhoods: the history of how they came together, how former farmland, because of the ’20s boom, became Allapattah and Shenandoah. They all have their own stories, their own personalities. My father came from Philadelphia and always marveled at the diverse neighborhoods that made up Miami. Also, the beauty of a March day or a November day — it’s shocking how beautiful a day can be here.

 

What treasures have we squandered and/or pillaged as a community?

That’s a good question. We’ve squandered a lot of our natural environment… we’ve eliminated a lot of wooded areas. Little bungalows have been knocked down in east Little Havana. We’ve knocked down a lot of our early built environment. It makes historic and economic sense to restore places and we really haven’t done that.

There are three buildings on NW Fourth Street, between NW Third and Fourth Avenue, just east of Garcia’s Restaurant on the Miami River, that were forcibly restored. I point out to tour groups that this is the way neighborhoods could have been. They’re gorgeous. They look really solid and have all the details of when they were built 80-90 years ago. It’s one of the great what ifs…. But, then, you can go into Coral Gables and you can see very old homes for Miami standards.…

 

What are your personal bests? The places/people/experiences in Miami that make living here worthwhile for you?

The international flavor of the place, and so many of the folks from Cuba and Haiti, either immigrants or first-generation residents, tend to be very open. There’s a friendliness, a lack of being too reserved. There’s different haunts in Coconut Grove, the bayfront. Even though downtown has gotten blasted lately, and deservingly, I think it’s on the cusp of enormous changes in 10 -15 years. I’m being real conservative on that estimate. My experience has been that it takes time, it takes investors, just groups who say we’re going to make it a better place. But you can see the pressure is on now.

 

I read in Miami Today recently that the historical museum is scheduled to manage the Miami Circle site pending a lease agreement.

I think it’s marvelous. It was discovered in summer 1998, and it’s been closed to public since almost that time. It needs to be open, given interpretation. It needs to be accessible as soon as possible to the public, school groups, tour groups, John Q. Public.

— Interviewed by Robin Shear