The Past, the Present, and the Future — The Story of 4501 Prairie Avenue

4501 Prairie Avenue in Miami Beach.

The Ewing Condominium. Built 1925. Eight units. 101 years of experience and life.

This building owns a special place in my heart and always will. The hope is that my children grow up in Miami Beach feeling the same connection to it that I do.

I happen to know the building more intimately than most. Mainly because I grew up in it. My mother and I moved into the penthouse as tenants in 1988, and she eventually bought our unit from the landlord — Dan Paul — as part of a cooperative tenant buyout in 1992.

I lived in the building for more than twenty years across two apartments — with my mother in the penthouse from 1988 to 2000, away at the University of Florida in Gainesville from 2000 to 2005, back home with her for almost a year, and in my own Unit 7 from 2006 to 2017.

She still lives there. I still own Unit 7. I still attend the condo board meetings. For a while, I was the president of the Association, but that was the past.

I am connected to five of the eight units in this building. Over the last fourteen years I have transacted on four of them — multiple times. I sold Unit 1 at 4501 Prairie Avenue in April 2021. The family I sold it to has asked me to list it again. This week it is back on the market. Listed at $920,000, reduced to $890,000 on 21 May 2026. See the listing here.

Before I tell you anything about the kitchen or the impact windows of Unit 1 or why I would buy this unit without hesitation, I want to tell you about the significance and importance of the Ewing Condominium for Mid Beach, for Miami Beach, and for my own life.

Dan Paul Was the Landlord

My mother and I were living at Club Atlantis on 25th and Collins Avenue in the mid 80's. Her big thing was to find a place closer to North Beach Elementary, a top ranked public school year over year decade over decade. So when she heard from a friend that Unit 6 was becoming available for rent at 4501 Prairie Avenue, which is less than a quarter mile from the school, she had to have it.

The building was owned by Daniel Perkins Smith Paul at the time. The same Dan Paul who argued Miami Herald v. Tornillo before the United States Supreme Court in 1974 — the landmark First Amendment case that struck down right-of-reply laws nationwide. The same Dan Paul the Miami News once called "Dade's knight" because, as the paper put it, "the name Dan Paul comes up in so many civic controversies that it is hard to keep up with him." The same Dan Paul who would walk into a room in his pink bowtie.

I recall going to see the unit we ended up moving into for the first time. No central AC just wall units and they were off. The current tenant was a lady. A cat lady. You could smell the aroma of ammonia from the cat litter from the hallway outside. She had 5 cats, at least. Every wall was painted a different obscene color — purple, yellow, green, pink, orange, red. For any prospective tenant this place being an eyesore was an understatement, but perhaps this was the tenant's prerogative all along. My mom saw right past it and before I knew it our stuff was going in. We were paying something like $500 a month to rent. My mom immediately hired a guy to paint the entire apartment all white. And she had to bring in pest control 4 times to bomb the flea-infested place.

Finally it was ours.

Tornillo is the case that decided whether a state can force a newspaper to publish something. Florida had passed a "right-of-reply" law — if a paper criticized a political candidate, the candidate could demand the paper print his rebuttal, word for word, free of charge. The Miami Herald refused. Dan Paul took the case all the way to the Supreme Court and won unanimously, 9–0. The ruling struck down right-of-reply laws in every state and settled, once and for all, that the government cannot compel a publisher to print anything. It is one of the landmark First Amendment decisions of the twentieth century.

He was called the father of Metro for his work shaping Miami-Dade's metropolitan government. He represented the National Audubon Society to stop a jetport from being built in the Florida Everglades. His clients included the Miami Herald, the Wall Street Journal, and the Miami Dolphins. Harvard Kennedy School established the Daniel Paul Professorship in 2001 in his honor.

Paul himself was a three-time Harvard graduate — Harvard College (A.B., 1946), Harvard Law School (LL.B., 1948), and Harvard Kennedy School (M.P.A., 1949).

Mr. Paul, pink bowtie and all, came to see our unit in person. "Who painted this unit white like this??" He looked over at his super who pointed at my mother and Mr. Paul said "From now on every unit gets painted white and looks just like this one." He looked down at me. "So you're the guy causing all the trouble around here?" He looked at my slender, short frame and nodded. "Big things come in small packages."

Dan Paul passed at the age of eighty-five in 2010. His home was just as spectacular as the apartment building he once owned. He was the owner of 40 La Gorce Circle — a waterfront house on the southern tip of La Gorce Island. Arguably one of the best addresses in the city.

Mr. Paul spent his career fighting developers.

When his tenants at 4501 Prairie came to him with a proposal to buy the building themselves before a developer could — Dan Paul said yes.

November 3, 1992

I was ten years old.

On that date, four of the tenants in the building filed paperwork with the State of Florida to form Prairie Gothic Development Corporation (Sunbiz Doc# P92000002886). The four founding directors were Arleen Weintraub in Apartment 1 — a longtime neighbor I'd known since I was six years old, who built her career as an urban planner for the City of Miami, rising to Assistant Director of the Department of Development on projects including Bayside Marketplace, the Parrot Jungle transition to Jungle Island, and the Federal Courthouse — and who would later sell me Unit 7, my own apartment, in 2006 — Phil Schneider who lived in Unit 2 and ended up buying PH 5, who I would later sell Unit 8 for, Sarah Eaton in Unit 4, who served as the City of Miami's Preservation Officer, and my mother in PH 6. All members of the new corporation bought Unit 3.

They weren't lawyers. They weren't developers. They were neighbors. They formed a corporation, raised money among themselves, and bought the building from their landlord. Then they did the legal work to convert it from a rental property into a condominium so each tenant could take title to their own unit. Later in the 1990s they took construction loans and renovated the whole building.

This is not a story you hear anymore — a cooperative tenant buyout in Miami Beach, in 1992, of a 1925 Art Deco building, sold by the most prominent First Amendment attorney in Florida.

On October 4, 1996, Prairie Gothic Development Corporation deeded Unit 6 to my mother for $140,700. I was fourteen. That deed is recorded in OR Book 17378, Page 3015 in the Miami-Dade public records. It is the single most important real estate document in my own early history with this business.

The Building Plays Itself

Phil Schneider, who signed the corporation papers alongside my mother, is one of the most accomplished property masters in American film. His IMDb credits include Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Best Picture nominee), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, The Blind Side, Syriana, Get on Up, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Marley & Me, I Am Number Four, CSI: Miami, and Starz's Magic City.

Magic City was a period drama set in 1959 Miami Beach. The producers needed a building that read as authentically Miami Beach in 1959 — already standing, already lived in, already a part of the neighborhood. They cast the Ewing.

That was not a coincidence. Phil lived here. He owned both Unit 5 and Unit 8. His prop trucks parked on Prairie Avenue.

He wasn't the first to bring cameras to the building. Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993) shot here, with Robert Duvall, Richard Harris, and Shirley MacLaine. Blood & Wine (1996), with Jack Nicholson. Up Close and Personal (1996), with Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. The Blackout (1997), with Claudia Schiffer, Matthew Modine, and Dennis Hopper. The previous owner of Unit 5 — Dawn Traurig, who I rented and then sold the unit for — catered movie sets.

The Ewing is a film building because it looks the way Miami Beach used to look. Eight units, courtyard, arches, moulding, Dade County pine, the kind of detail you can't fake on a soundstage. When Magic City needed 1959, it didn't need a set. It needed this address.

Four Units. Many Relationships.

I got my real estate license in 2006. Twenty years ago this year. The first deal of consequence I did in this business was buying Unit 7 from Arleen Weintraub — the longtime neighbor who'd lived in Apartment 1, who'd signed the corporation paperwork in 1992. She sold it to me directly. She was honorable and strong. She single-handedly kept the building afloat with countless hours of gardening and doing everything in her power to preserve its original lustre and charm. She rode a Vespa around South Beach.

On June 4, 2012 I sold Unit 8 for $125,000 — representing Phil Schneider as the seller — to Javier Olivares, the Chilean broadcaster who built his career on Chilevisión and Radio Carolina in Santiago before crossing to Miami for Telemundo 51 and Univision, where he anchored the national digital newscast.

On January 24, 2020 I rented Unit 8 for Javier at $1,425 a month, representing both ends of the deal. In 2025 he was elected to the Chilean Chamber of Deputies for the 2026–2030 term.

On November 15, 2020, in the middle of COVID, I rented Unit 5 for $3,000 a month. I sold it on February 3, 2023 for $684,999. I represented both ends of both transactions.

Arleen passed away on March 15, 2020. I had rented her apartment out off-market shortly before — representing both ends of the deal — and the tenant stayed on through her passing. When the tenant eventually moved out, the family asked me to handle the formal sale of Unit 1 — her former apartment, where she'd lived since the 1980s. I sold it, representing the seller. The family who bought it that day are the same family who called me back this spring and asked me to sell it again — five years later, the same agent on the same side of the same table.

Four units. Many relationships. One building.

The Unit

Unit 1 is 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, 1,393 square feet — the corner unit on the ground floor of the Ewing's eight-unit footprint. The main building, where Unit 1 is located, is 6 total units (2 units per floor). The ground floor is extra special because it feels like you are in a house. The western and southern exposures get sun from morning to sunset. The living room has a working, wood-burning fireplace. There is a formal dining room and a separate breakfast/flex room. The unit comes with a private storage garage. There is a building elevator but you don't need it on the ground floor.

I have seen the Florida Room used as a bedroom before, but the Unit 1 owner took it to the next level. The original Florida Room was open to the living room; the owner enclosed it with a door, so even though he is using it as an office it is now an actual third bedroom. That makes it a more functional layout for a family who needs an extra bedroom — or for someone who works from home and needs a real office with privacy and still gets the natural light.

As a team, all 8 units, recently completed installation of building-wide impact windows. All paid in full. The work is done. Whoever buys this unit walks into silence, energy efficiency, hurricane-code compliant glass, an insurance discount, and no further issues with your windows.

The dining room sits on the original Dade County pine floors, framed by an arched opening into the living room. The plaster bookcase niches are baked into the wall — not a wood unit set against it. Detail like that is typical of 1925 construction and rare to find intact a hundred years later.

The Ewing courtyard has a working fountain at its center and the kind of lush landscaping you walk through to reach your front door.

Why This Building, This Unit.

If I were buying in this building, I would buy this unit. Ground floor. Wrap-around impact windows on two exposures. Working fireplace. The flex room turned into a real third bedroom with a door. The corner footprint with no neighbor sharing your living-room wall.

It is the unit I would pick.

The units never come on the market. And when they do they get scooped up. The building is not for everyone. The people it is for already know that.

The building has charm. High ceilings. Glass wrapping the unit on three walls.

Even South of Fifth, which I have already openly discussed I am a big fan of, is not surrounded by single family homes every way you turn. South of Fifth, a completely different price point, is surrounded by condos and a few townhomes. South of Fifth has a lot more traffic and noise.

South of Fifth also has monthly Condo Maintenance fees that resemble a second mortgage. In this building those costs remain relatively low — $1,278.02 monthly maintenance plus $144.77 in reserves, $1,422.79 all-in.

You are on a quiet residential street. In this neighborhood you are the only condo on the block.

Homes directly across the street from you, on canal, are selling for $12,000,000 and up. Dry homes around you for over $5,000,000. Land in this area is at a premium. And all these numbers are only on their way up.

You are parking less than a $1,000,000 into a piece of real estate that has been standing the test of time for over 100 years. And the area has risen along with it.

Miami Beach is a different place and a different market. We were always undervalued. All you had to do was drive an hour and a half north to Palm Beach to see that.

This is Miami Beach. Mid Beach. In an amazing public school district, various other schools, close enough to the highly sought after Private schools in the area, walking distance to 41st street, in close proximity to Miami Beach Golf Club, La Gorce Country Club, houses of worship, several parks, Mt. Sinai and I-95.

Even though we are only a 25 minute drive to Brickell, for example, Miami Beach isn't a place where condos keep getting built and they sit empty. Especially one as unique as this.

With only 8 total units, 5 others in your main building, you hardly see your neighbors if you choose not to. Want to say Hello and be friendly you can. But if you want to feel like living in a house for a fraction of the cost, this is the spot for you. It is now the time, so start making a new future, and it's exciting to be a part of it. So what's it going to be? You tell me.

I sold this unit. I grew up in this building. I'd like to walk you through it.

— David Hunt Solomon