A new group called Friends of Miami Marine Stadium has recently formed to protect one of Florida's most threatened landmarks. The city of Miami is developing a Master Plan for Virginia Key. Friends of Miami Marine Stadium seeks to make sure this magnificent resource is preserved and a plan is created to maximize its public use. The group plans to lobby agressively for its restention and possible historic designation.

Beginning in the 1930s in Europe and Latin America, a series of sport facilities had been built in which the plastic aesthetic qualities of poured-in-place concrete were exploited for visual effect. Pier Luigi Nervi’s (1891-1979) Florence stadium (1929-32) and Palazzo dello Sport (1958-59) in Rome pioneered plastic concrete shell construction. In Nervi’s footsteps, Carlos Raúl Villanueva (University Stadium in Caracas, 1950-52), Oscar Niemeyer, and especially Felix Candela, the Spanish-born architect who immigrated to Mexico (1910-1997), made concrete a genuine expression of modern Latin American architecture, whose sensuality and plasticity contrasted with the rationalist canons of the international style.

The 6,566-seat grandstand of the Commodore Munroe Stadium, named for Coconut Grove pioneer and boating enthusiast Ralph Munroe, was completed in 1964. Poured entirely in concrete, with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof structure, it consists of a dramatically cantilevered folded-plate roof supported by eight big slanted columns anchored in the the ground through the grandstand.

The project for almost seven-thousand-seat grandstand was commissioned to Pancoast, Ferendino, Grafton, Skeels and Burnham. Andrew Ferendino and Hilario Candela, a young Cuban architect educated at Georgia Tech, were put in charge of the project. (A thoughtful comment by Mr. Candela on his vision for Miami Stadium -- past and present -- can be accessed by clicking here.)

Hurricane Andrew damaged the stadium in 1992. Engineering reports have since proven that the structure was sound, but need repairs, yet the structure has remained closed since then.

The Marine Stadium is perhaps the first recognized landmark structure done by the Cuban architects after their exile in Miami. With the new Master Plan for Virginia Key, this magnificent architectural work sample of the Modern Movement an important piece of Miami Heritage and History is in danger to be demolished, despite few years ago the mayor from Miami promised to refurbish the structure.