A hotel by that name no longer exists. From my research, I found that it used to be in Bal Harbour and opened in 1957, early 1958. If the building does still stand, it is named something else.
The only Beau Rivage I know is a nice casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. It was damage in the hurricane but they rebuilt it! My mom loves to go there and she just hit a jackpot on the slots :)
I like history too. The Miami Beach History section was one of the first categories I wrote about at Miami Beach 411.
Hey, sieggy, look what I found in Issue #8 of Big Bridge Press: Miami Beach 1955:
"I sit in the April promise of sunlight on my back porch and remember my father, the heliotrope, turning brown in the crowded rows of lounge chairs on the sun deck of the old Beau Rivage Hotel on Collins Avenue in North Miami Beach every Christmas in the late 1950's.
My father loved the Beau Rivage because you never had to leave it.
For our recreational pleasure during the daylight hours, the Beau Rivage offered us their social directress, always the same woman, a perky redhead whose name was Mitzi one year and Doris the next. Mitzi organized indoor games of backgammon, and chess for the whiz kids, pushing lessons in the cha cha and mambo, which she called playtime for the sun-shy. In the hotel driveway, there was a gaudy plaster Italianate fountain that was crumbling even then, although you couldn't see the damage when they lit it up at night in Christmassy red and green."
And here is an old post card of the Beau Rivage. Was the pool that close to the ocean?
thanx gus
that's the hotel that i wase looking for.
the one on the postcard.
i'm glad i know the street name so i know were thet it wase.
but the hotel wase stil there in 1981.
i wase there on vakation for two weeks.
thanx again.
my best regards.
sieggy
Here's a chance to brush up on those old lodgings! I am planning on attending and will definitely ask about the Beau Rivage.
Disappearing Landmarks I Miami Beach Hotels & Motels
View photos of old Sunny Isles Beach motels during a presentation by Dr. Elliot Salloway. Enjoy a discussion about vanishing Miami Beach landmarks by Howard Kleinberg, author of Miami Beach: A History, and the Historical Museum's Dr. Paul George about the quickly disappearing landmarks of this city. Discounted parking at 50 NW Second Avenue.
My grandmother worked as a waitress in the coffee shop of the Beau Rivage from the mid-1970s through the mid 1980s, and I worked there as a bellhop for two summers (1980, 1981). It was one of the most interesting jobs I have had in my life --- lots of action going on there! It is amazing what people do when they are on vacation in terms of letting down their hair.....
The night manager there for a while had a deal going where one of the girls who worked at the front desk would turn tricks for paying customers, and he took a cut of the deal. My bellhop companions were constantly making it with female guests, and I always had a oceanfront room key available for when I needed it. I recall that girl from New Jersey with the pink nipples who loved to be on top....sweet!
I took the general manager's daughter out for dinner one night --- she was a really nice person, but I don't think her dad liked the idea of me dating her.
Sadly, the Beau Rivage no longer exists. It was torn down in the 1990s I believe, and was replaced with condominiums. For those who are interested in where it used to be, it was the next hotel north of the Sea View along Collins Ave.
Hey, no problem! I came across this forum by accident and when I saw mention of the Beau Rivage I had to toss my two cents into the fray. I've got loads of stories of the place --- the staff there made going to work every day like visiting a human game preserve. The stories of Jackie Hilliard are enough to keep one laughing for a few weeks.
Jackie Hilliard was the social director at the hotel --- a perfect example of a guy who considered himself a great star (but no one else did). The photo of him in the lobby ("Playing tonight in the Cotillion Lounge ---- Jackie Hilliard!") was at least 20 years old, so it didn't show all the wrinkles :-P . In effect, he was the "Ted Baxter" of the hotel staff
The thing that was amusing about Jackie was that, like everyone else who worked there full time, it was interesting to watch how he would freeload off the hotel because he felt he was entitled to it. He would walk off with entire cheesecakes from the kitchen while guests would be in the dining room. When he would arrive at the hotel to get ready for his evening of entertaining the guests, he would walk in through the lobby door and stop, as if he was waiting for a fanfare announcing his presence. The best thing about him though, was listening to him sing. He would always have the amplifier on his microphone turned up all the way so you could hear him singing all the way out in the lobby, and his last song of the evening was always "My Way".
The cast of characters there was really interesting. There was an old woman who actually lived in the hotel for many years. She was quite senile and would always call the front desk every day to complain that there was a ghost in her room. A bellhop would have to go up there and scare the ghost away.
The dance instructor there at the time was a guy named Don Pazneau, who was as queer as a four dollar bill. He was always trying to get me to come over to his apartment after work for a drink (mind you, I was 19 years old at the time, and he was about 65). One of the waiters in the coffee shop was Haitian (and also gay) -- he used to literally prance around the kitchen while he was putting together an order for customers, and the salad chef would always throw heads of lettuce at him. There was a gay bellhop as well --- he was from Brazil, and always used to tell everyone how hairy his scrotum was......... :ohh: Another bellhop named John was an interesting fellow, his wife used to beat up on him routinely. My favorite bellhop was a guy named Wayne. He would come to work every day wearing a ninja costume and carrying a light saber while on his back he had some kind of doll that looked like a monkey.
The head of the service department who supervised all the bellhops was a convicted felon --- he had been prosecuted for mail fraud and had his sentence commuted by agreeing to assist the US Postal service in apprehending other mail fraud operations. He was very entertainting to listen to, as he was always in a rotten mood and would complain about everything going on around him. He was also into a bunch of get-rich-quick schemes, and was trying to launch a new kind of hemorrhoid relief product. It was a plastic tube that you would put this liquid into and then put it in the freezer, then take it out and insert it in your ass to cool the burn. He was absolutely convinced that the thing would sell like hotcakes.
"He would come to work every day wearing a ninja costume and carrying a light saber while on his back he had some kind of doll that looked like a monkey"
You must be joking? :lol:
No old pictures to share of the cast of characters?
No --- this is no joke. Unfortunately I do not have any photos of the cast of characters there.
Another couple of things that I recall ---- the kitchen had freezers that were lined with steel, but they still needed to put rat traps INSIDE the freezers because rats would chew through the steel and run around inside.
You know the basket of rolls that would always be put on the table in the dining room? The rolls were kept in a warming drawer in the kitchen which was always infested with cockroaches. When a waiter would come into the kitchen to fill a basket of rolls, they would very frequently need to brush the cockroaches off the rolls prior to putting them into the basket to take out to guests in the dining room.
I saw the Beau Rivage back in the early 60's when I used to vacation in Miami Beach.Back then it was owned by the same company that ran the Chateau and the Sahara up in Sunny Isles.At that time it catered to clientele that were pretty well off-sounds like things changed drastically over the years.
All those stories were amazing! This was the stuff I'm always looking for! In that Bal Harbor section of MB also stood the 12 Caesers which looked like a dump, The Singapore and the Balmoral all looking outdated even back in the late 1960s and 1970s. My first cousin told me back in the 50s or early 60s his family was looking at motels and the Sahara was "restricted" Being Jewish this meant, there's the door! Also, back then I understood that the Pan American (Sunny Aisles) and the Kenilworth were minority unfriendly. The Chateau on the other hand was supposedly owned and operated by a Jewish guy named Schneider from my hometown, Baltimore.
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What's become of the hotel Beau Rivage?
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