Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Take a spin to Pier 66 for fun local history
Fort Lauderdale’s Pier 66 Hotel and Marina has endured for decades as one of South Florida’s iconic buildings. You can’t miss its crown of white spires atop its 17-story octagonal tower — a nod to its rich history.
Although Hurricane Irma damaged the tower last year, the hotel’s owner, Tavistock Development Co., an Orlando-based real estate development group, has plans to renovate it and have it designated as historic.
As the hotel, 2301 SE 17th St., readies for changes that could add up to 750 residences, as well as a 4,000-square-foot marina space,
here’s a look at six things you may not know about the destination.
1. It sports a ‘space-age’ look.
The building is one of the last of its kind in Broward County: It features space-age, mid-century modern architecture. What makes the hotel, designed by architect Richard F. Humble, “space age” is how it uses geometric shapes, steel and windows to portray a modern design, said Michaela Conca, president of the Broward Trust for Historic Preservation.
“Many of the buildings representative of that style have been destroyed,” she said. “I would hate to see this be another example of how they take things away.”
When the tower was added in 1965, it was among the first buildings to rise more than 15 stories, Conca said.
These days, it’s in an area zoned for buildings under 120 feet tall, but its owner, Tavistock, has asked Fort Lauderdale to let it rebuild the hotel at its current height of 221 feet if the tower is ever damaged or destroyed.
The city could approve a development agreement for the Pier 66 renovation Tuesday. The agreement, which advocates the historical designation, would be a step toward protecting the hotel in perpetuity, Conca said.
2. The ‘66’ comes from its gas-station past.
The hotel tower wasn’t the first building constructed there.
An executive of Phillips Petroleum Co., a national oil company, first visited the site east of the Intracoastal Waterway in 1955 and purchased 22 acres, where the company built a Phillips 66 gas station. The “66” endured in the hotel’s naming.
Before the 17-story tower, a two-story hotel was built there in 1957, complete with a nine-hole golf course, swimming pool and 24-hour restaurant. A night at the original hotel in 1957 cost $45.
When the tower was completed, it loomed over the red awning of Phillips 66 gas station. The remains of the six-pump service station were bulldozed in June 1981 to make room for growth. Phillips Petroleum Co. eventually sold off the hotel.
3. Its builders toyed with numbers.
The Phillips 66 gas station went further than inspiring Pier 66’s name and location. During the design of the building, architects kept thinking about that number. The elevator takes 33 seconds to ascend from the lobby to the Pier Top Lounge, and 66 seconds total if going up and down.
A white crown of spires above the Pier Top has 66 points. The tower was crowned with its lounge, which rotates once every 66 minutes.
4. Spin too much, and you might lose belongings.
The top floor of Pier 66 features the Pier Top Lounge, which these days opens once a month for brunch. You can sit down and order a drink as the room rotates, offering panoramic views of the city. In the 1970s, it led some unsuspecting lounge patrons to lose track of their belongings. The hotel’s lost and found was a treasure trove of expensive, forgotten possessions, from canes to mink capes.
One visitor recalled having to “chase” her bag after she put it down. “I found my purse by chasing [it] around the room until it came back to me,” Patricia Hart Klein, of Boca Raton, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 2005. “It was kind of silly, but everyone laughed and laughed.”
Still, sitting in the rotating top can be magical, Conca said. She initially visited Fort Lauderdale in the 1980s, and the Pier Top was the first place she went. “When I sat there in the evening, I was overwhelmed, even back then,” she said. “You can see the city, and you can see the ocean. And you could just sit there and be like ‘wow.’ ”
5. Celebrities flocked to it
Pier 66 has drawn a star-studded guest list through the decades.
Clive Chu, now retired, recalls being hired by Phillips Petroleum Co. as the president of the hotel to lead a $9 million renovation in 1980.
He hosted plenty of celebrities from when he was hired to when the five-star hotel was sold, Chu told the Sun Sentinel.
In 1982, he served a French meal to actor Cary Grant, Grant’s wife and 20 other guests in the thennewly opened Windows by the Green, a restaurant.
When the hotel reopened in 1983 after renovations, then-Florida Gov. Bob Graham was the guest of honor at a $200-per-couple dinner.
While filming the movie “Stick,” actor and director Burt Reynolds stayed at the Presidential Suite, which went for $600 a day, according to a Sun Sentinel news article from 1983. The two-bedroom suite had luxuries including goldplated bathroom fixtures, fresh flowers, toilet paper imprinted with the Pier 66 logo and a sweet nightly gift left on the guests’ comfy pillows — Godiva chocolate and a miniature bottle of Courvoisier French cognac.
Twenty other actors in Reynolds’ movie stayed at the hotel, too, Chu said.
Chu said he remembers when Donald Trump once pulled up to the Pier 66 marina to park his ship. Others who docked their yachts in the hotel’s marina reportedly included Malcolm Forbes, the publisher of Forbes Magazine; journalist Walter Cronkite and singer Frank Sinatra. He also remembered country star Kenny Rogers showing up.
6. It wowed boaters as a travel stop.
Before today’s boating technology, Pier 66’s marina grew popular as a jumping-off point for travel to the Caribbean.
The marina was “the pinnacle of a high level of service,” said Paul Flannery, executive director of the International Yacht Brokers Association. He remembers when his family would take their yacht from the Hamptons to Pier 66 during the winters of the 1960s and ’70s.
Dock attendants wore uniforms as they ran up to docking boats with a telephone. Before the age of cellphones, boaters would use the corded phones to call and request essentials — ice for their freshly caught fish or drinks after a long day at sea.
Flannery said this was before boats could make a trip from the northeast coast of the United States to the Bahamas in hours.
The Pier 66 marina was a place to fuel up before the three-hour run to Bimini. For the adults in the Flannery family, “fueling up” also meant a visit to the bar at the rooftop lounge.
The family loved their time in Fort Lauderdale and at the marina so much they moved to South Florida in 1971, he said. He said he has watched the South Florida economy thrive because of such touristfriendly destinations.
“The reason the boats come here, the reason those jobs are here, is because of places like Pier 66,” he said.