Bayfront Park is Miami's waterfront civic commons, with Biscayne Bay spread ahead of you and the downtown skyline rising behind. The park has been here since the 1920s, though it has been redesigned twice — most significantly by sculptor Isamu Noguchi in 1987, who gave it its current configuration of gentle berms, performance spaces, and landscaped walks. Bayfront Park has witnessed history.
In 1933 an assassination attempt was made here against President-elect Franklin Roosevelt; Chicago mayor Anton Cermak was shot instead and later died. The park hosted the sonic free-for-all of the 1980s, when Miami Vice was being filmed nearby and the city was simultaneously drowning in drug money and reimagining itself as a global city. Today the park anchors Bayside Marketplace, the tourist waterfront complex next door, and hosts concerts, festivals, and New Year's Eve fireworks.
The Challenger memorial in the park honors the seven astronauts who died in the 1986 space shuttle disaster — a reminder of how close Kennedy Space Center is, and how Florida's fate has always been intertwined with American ambition.