Little Santo Domingo
Miami, FL
Little Santo Domingo Historic Survey
Project Type: Historic Resources Survey
Project Status: Completed
Dates: August 2023 – August 2024
Team: Plusurbia Design with Diaspora & Development Foundation
Client: The Allapattah Collaborative CDC
The story of Miami’s Little Santo Domingo is the story of the American Dream.
It is the story of how working class people of all different races, ethnicities and languages have come to make a better life for themselves and their families. It is a layered history of settlement – from Native American to German-Creole, from a racially diverse farming community to a segregated all-white working class neighborhood, from a tri-ethnic community to a place where Hispanics of color can feel comfortable, and since the 1980s, a distinctly Dominican diaspora community. It is a story of how an immigrant community and a community of color revived a commercial district that had been abandoned in the wake of the 1980s McDuffie protests.
Throughout history, the story of Little Santo Domingo in Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood is a story of resilience, grit, hard work and determination. This history of economic opportunity is made possible by the historic neighborhood settlement patterns, the small farms that evolved organically into small subdivisions, with modest commercial buildings fronting the street. On 17th Avenue, the design of the street has historically supported small business activity with on-street parking, wide sidewalks, and vital shade trees – mature mahogany trees, the national tree of the Dominican Republic.
Today, Little Santo Domingo is threatened. Communities of color in Miami and across the United States face a pattern of erasure, of histories lost because their stories were not recorded, and because their communities have been continually displaced. Little Santo Domingo is experiencing this today.
The non-profit group The Allapattah Collaborative CDC is working tirelessly to prevent this erasure. Through their efforts, Little Santo Domingo was recognized as a Main Street community in 2021. Little Santo Domingo gained the national spotlight when it was identified by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of the United States’ “11 Most Endangered Historic Places” in 2023. Clearly, local and national organizations alike have recognized that there is something special that has taken place on this unique Allapattah street, and it is something worth protecting.
