Barbara Baer Capitman; Champion of Art Deco

Barbara Baer Capitman, the intrepid little old lady credited with saving Miami Beach’s colorful Art Deco district made famous on the hit television series “Miami Vice,” has died in the city she sought to preserve. She was 69.

Mrs. Capitman, who suffered from diabetes and heart problems, died Thursday at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, according to hospital spokesman Arthur Ehrlich.

She was president of the Art Deco Society of America and had organized chapters in cities around the country, including Los Angeles, to preserve the “decorative arts” style of architecture popular between the two world wars. Although somewhat more whimsical in Miami, the style is exemplified by the Chrysler Building and Radio City Music Hall in New York City and the old Pan Pacific Auditorium and the Times building in Los Angeles.

At the time of her death, Mrs. Capitman was putting together the first World Congress on Art Deco and working on a book, “Art Deco U.S.A.” Last year she published a book about Miami Beach’s 1930s hotels and other Art Deco buildings called “Deco Delights.”

Mrs. Capitman became a preservationist in 1975 as a means of making new friends after the death of her husband, William, at 53. She attributed her quavery voice, which her detractors frequently mimicked, to the shock of his death.

Within four years, despite opposition by the Miami Beach city manager and Chamber of Commerce, Mrs. Capitman and her Design Preservation League won listing of the mile-square district on the National Register of Historic Places, providing federal tax incentives for restoration. The area is the only district with 20th-Century architecture in the register.

“It was a tremendous achievement by one person--one little old lady,” said her son Andrew.

“Barbara Capitman deserves her reputation as the indomitable champion of the Art Deco treasures of Miami Beach,” said billionaire investor Robert Bass, chairman of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.”

The district’s 800 or so buildings, designed in the ‘30s to look like ocean liners or rocket ships or even bonbons to take vacationing Americans’ minds off the Depression, are the focus of Miami Beach’s annual Art Deco Weekend festival, which draws about 400,000 people.