Carl Fisher conceived Lincoln Road as a Main Street for Miami Beach, and construction began in 1914. Promoted as the "Fifth Avenue of the South," it flourished as a prominent shopping destination. By the late 1950s, however, Lincoln Road suffered from traffic congestion and increased competition. In an effort to save their businesses, property owners turned to Morris Lapidus, architect of the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc hotels, to develop a new plan for the road. In 1960, Lapidus envisioned it not just as a place of shopping but as a promenade where people could walk and enjoy beautiful flowers and foliage as well as store windows. Completed and opened to the public in December 1960, the project centered on a black and white piano key-like paved spine with architectural follies, planting beds, and water features. It became one of the first places in the United States where a major thoroughfare was closed to traffic and made pedestrian-only, and it is Florida’s oldest pedestrian mall, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.