Miami's landmarks and neighborhoods, one question at a time.
Casey Paquette leads a question-and-answer conversation with Dr. Paul George, resident historian of HistoryMiami Museum, about the places that made Miami. Recent episodes follow the Olympia Theater and the Biltmore Hotel to their centennials and the Cape Florida Lighthouse to its bicentennial.
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Miami History Podcast approaches South Florida's past through specific places: a theater, a hotel, a lighthouse, a neighborhood, a museum. Its core is a question-and-answer exchange between Casey Paquette and co-host Dr. Paul George, resident historian of HistoryMiami Museum. Paquette poses the questions. George supplies the dates, names and turns of events. It is a plain structure, and it works because the questions are pointed. When did the Olympia Theater open, and who came? The answer is February 18, 1926, with an opera singer and orchestra leader Paul Whiteman among the draws. The conversation adds that the Columbus Hotel opened the same day, a few blocks away, with a dinner and ball later that evening and many of the same pioneers and dignitaries on the guest list. Anniversaries shape much of the recent run. Buildings still standing a century after they went up frame the Olympia and Biltmore Hotel episodes, and the city of Hialeah is named among earlier centennial subjects. The Cape Florida Lighthouse gets its own bicentennial episode, recorded in the same December it turned two hundred. That conversation takes in the Battle of 1836, when the lighthouse was badly damaged, and the Civil War, when rebel guerrillas put out its lamp. By 1878 it had been decommissioned in favor of a more effective light. Not every subject is a landmark. An episode on the Edgewater neighborhood grew out of a listener's suggestion. Another turns to HistoryMiami Museum itself, following the institution from an Edgewater location to its first dedicated building, raised on the old farm grounds of the Vizcaya complex with help from Dade County. In Puerto Ricans in Miami, Paquette talks with guest Dr. Victor Vasquez, a Miami Dade College professor, author of a new book and recently elected city commissioner in Miami Springs. Vasquez first recounts his own background, from a family that came from Puerto Rico to New York in the 1940s to his service in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, and the episode connects to a previous one on Wynwood, where Puerto Ricans moving in changed the neighborhood. The tone is friendly and collegial, with remarks about the weather at the top and thanks traded at the close. Paquette often states the month of recording, and in one episode says plainly that it is for anyone listening years down the road. A mid-episode break points to the wider Miami History Project, which includes a blog at miami-history.com, a channel of short documentaries and a newsletter. What a listener gets is a fact-dense account of how particular Miami places came to be, delivered one question at a time by a longtime South Florida historian.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants the particulars of Miami's past, such as opening dates, guest lists and why a lighthouse was retired, laid out in plain question-and-answer conversation. Also a good fit for someone curious about how places like Edgewater, Wynwood or HistoryMiami Museum took shape.
What sets it apart: The show is built on Casey Paquette putting pointed questions to a museum historian, Dr. Paul George, about one Miami building, neighborhood or community at a time. Several recent episodes are pegged to a landmark's centennial or bicentennial.
Reflecting on South Florida's vibrant past.
Cape Florida's lighthouse went dark during the Civil War; your next visit may need a longer look.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A 1926 theater opening opens onto downtown Miami's boom, celebrations, and later reinventions.
Miami's Olympia Theater is treated as more than a centennial landmark. From its corner at Flagler Street and East 2nd Avenue, the episode opens into a compact history of downtown Miami and the forces gathering around it. Casey Paquette and Dr.
A Coral Gables landmark carries Merrick's ambitions into wartime service and the city's sense of itself.
The Biltmore Hotel anchors this look at Coral Gables as ambition, architecture, and civic identity begin to overlap. George Merrick's plans meet John McAtee Bowman's hotel enterprise, and Casey Paquette keeps the conversation moving with questions that give the history a clean…
A two-century lighthouse story anchors a sharp, grounded look at South Florida's shifting history.
The Cape Florida Lighthouse comes through as a compact history of South Florida in motion. Casey Paquette and Dr. Paul George connect the name Cape Florida to Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513, then carry the story through the federal lighthouse program that began in 1822, after…
A clear neighborhood history of how Edgewater grew from a two-block subdivision into a wider Miami address.
Miami's Edgewater Neighborhood follows the making of a Miami address, from the area north of the city's original limits to the 1920s boom that helped fix Edgewater as a neighborhood name. Casey Paquette's question-and-answer setup gives Dr.
HistoryMiami Museum's origins come through Miami's early cultural ambitions, Vizcaya's grounds, and the push for a larger home.
Miami was still a young city at the end of the 1930s, and Dr. Paul George frames HistoryMiami Museum as a response to residents who wanted a richer cultural life and a firmer grasp of local history.
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Miami History Podcast traces the Olympia Theater at Flagler Street and Southeast 2nd Avenue, a corner that first held the Hippodrome and Air Dome movie houses.
Miami History Podcast marks the Biltmore Hotel centennial in Coral Gables with Casey Paquette and Dr.
["Miami History Podcast marks the Cape Florida Lighthouse bicentennial on December 17, 2025, when the tower first lit in 1825.", "Casey Paquette and Dr.
Recorded in mid-December 2025, Miami History Podcast's "Miami's Edgewater Neighborhood" says Edgewater is "ground zero for the last boom," with sleek high-rises now defining a waterfront district once marked by vice.
Casey Paquette and Dr.
August Geiger came to Miami from New Haven in 1899 and studied architecture with Walter DeGarmo before opening his own office in 1911.
The Miami History Podcast examines Coral Gables’ 1920s theme villages, planned as part of George Merrick’s Mediterranean-style city.
The Miami History Podcast marks Hialeah’s September 10, 1925 incorporation with historian Paul George.
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David Martinez shares his memories of growing up in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood during its transition into Little San Juan, a hub for Puerto Rican families after World War II.
Host Casey interviews Iris Guzman-Kalaya about her research on El Jardin, a historic property in Coconut Grove now home to Carrollton School.
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