Welcome to the Neighborhood
Welcome to the Neighborhood
Spring Garden is the oldest intact single-family neighborhood along the Miami River.
This neighborhood was designated a historic district by the City of Miami in 1997 because it demonstrates the importance of the Miami River to the city’s history.
From the designation report, “The district is significant architecturally for its wealth of early Frame and Masonry Vernacular, Mission, Bungalow, and Moderne style houses that reflect the diversity and evolution of architectural design in South Florida during the early twentieth century. Spring Garden retains a high degree of historic and architectural integrity. This is due, in part, to the fact that most later buildings are not intrusive, but emulate the earlier structures in scale, setback, and materials.”
Getting Our Support (New projects require SGCA support?
New Building or Renovation:
If you intend to build new or dramatically renovate your property, the Spring Garden Civic Association encourages architectural designs that are consistent with the character of the neighborhood. Whether you choose a classic or contemporary architectural style, we can embrace designs that blend in with the earlier structures in massing, scale, rhythm, and materials. For example, we would generally support structures that include local materials such as oolitic rock/limestone rather than imported stones such as granite and slate.
Landscape and Canopy
Many newcomers are drawn to Spring Garden because of the deep building setbacks and large shade trees creating a dense canopy unlike surrounding neighborhoods. The SGCA would like to see landscaping plans/improvements that prioritize native shade trees that contribute to the tree canopy, as well as native shrubs that provide food for birds and pollinators.
We discourage landscaping plans that only meet minimum code requirements and rely heavily on non-native shrubs that do not give back to the local ecology, such as Podocarpus and Clusia. Please familiarize yourself with the attached Spring Garden Historic District Preservation Report as well as the City of Miami Historic District Design Guidelines as adopted by the Historic and Environmental Preservation Board.
Pulling Permits
Certificate of Appropriateness:
Living in a Historic neighborhood means pulling basic permits is a little bit different than other parts of the city. For some reason, the process is not very common sense, and we want to help our residents get through the permit process so that it’s smooth and easy.
When changing or replacing WINDOWS, FENCES, ROOFS, AND DRIVEWAYS, we highly recommend that applicants and their architects share preliminary design sketches and ideas about their project with the HEP preservation staff member (AEspinosa@miamigov.com) assigned to Spring Garden before engaging a trade contractor or going too far into their design process. One or more meetings with the preservation office can help streamline the approval process and get you your Certificate of Appropriateness, first, not last, saving you a lot of headaches and money.