Flagler Street, the pavement under your feet, is Miami's original commercial spine, named for the man who made the city possible. Henry Morrison Flagler was already a retired Standard Oil co-founder when he became obsessed with developing Florida. He built a chain of grand resort hotels — the Ponce de León in St. Augustine, the Royal Poinciana in Palm Beach — and connected them with his Florida East Coast Railway.
When he extended the line to what is now Miami in 1896, he essentially created the city. The street named for him was immediately the center of commercial life. For decades it contained Miami's major banks, department stores, and government buildings.
The Dade County Courthouse, built in 1925, still looms over the east end of the street, its neoclassical bulk a reminder of when downtown Miami had civic pretension. Today Flagler Street has reinvented itself as one of the great electronics and accessories discount corridors in the Americas — a chaotic, fragrant, multilingual bazaar where vendors sell phones, sneakers, jewelry, and luggage at prices that attract buyers from across Latin America. It's not what Flagler imagined.
It is absolutely, unmistakably Miami.