Walking Collins Avenue for the first time, I understood why these buildings have their own gravitational pull. The Colony Hotel glowed in lavender against a February sky so saturated it looked digitally rendered. I had come to write about Little Havana, but the pastel façades kept drawing me north, block after sun-warmed block, until I had entirely forgotten my assignment.
The Horowitz Palette
Horowitz did not invent pastel — the Caribbean had been painting in coral and mint for centuries — but he systematized it for the American strip. From a studio in the Carlyle Hotel in 1978, he developed ninety complementary colors: warm tints for body walls, cool for trim, neon accents for signage. Color, he realized, could do the architectural work that ornament no longer could.