Lecture 2. Art Deco Mumbai in and Miami

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Vandana Baweja


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What is Art Deco?

This lecture examines Art Deco in Miami and Mumbai. These two cities have been chosen as case studies for their unique status. These case studies were chosen because: The Art Deco buildings that came up in Miami and Bombay (renamed Mumbai on 1995) in 1930s and 1940s combined decorative aspects of the pre-depression Art Deco and the post-depression architecture of the streamlined moderne. The two cities of Miami and Bombay have a large concentration of this kind of Art Deco that combines pre-depression Art Deco and the post-depression streamlined modern architectures. The Art Deco ensembles in these cities are large and unified enough to have a significant impact at an urban level. Here you see images of entire streets lined with Art Deco buildings, Ocean Drive in Miami on the left and on the right you see Maharshi Karve Road on the Oval Maidan in Bombay. These streets are lined with homogenous ensembles of Art Deco, which makes them two of a kind in the world. This lecture looks at how these two cities became sites of a large concentration of Art Deco buildings. Bombay was a British colonial city that was the gateway to India—it was most the well-linked port city to Europe via the Suez canal. It was also a largely mercantile city that after independence from the British rule in 1947 became the commercial capital of India, like New York is to the USA. Miami and Bombay/Mumbai were vastly different kinds of global cities. Bombay was a South-Asian trade hub, which was a significant node in the global colonial network of port cities. Bombay was well connected to the world through its sea routes and land linkage to the hinterland in India. Miami was seen as the winter playground of the rich—an American "Riviera” that was the gateway to Caribbean tourism and colonial trade routes. Miami’s primary function was tourism, while Bombay’s primary function was capitalism in the service of colonialism.

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