From its opening on New Year’s Eve in 1930, the Surf Club was a playground for both Hollywood and British royalty. Frank Sinatra honeymooned there with Ava Gardner. Elizabeth Taylor visited with her first fiancé. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor made it a vacation spot while Winston Churchill spent so much time there, he had two oceanfront cabanas: one for afternoon naps and one for painting seascapes. On the eve of a redesign by architect Richard Meier, the Miami institution gets it due in Assouline’s The Surf Club, which chronicles its high times and seaside glamour.
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