On January 14, 2026, the Biltmore Hotel marked its hundredth anniversary with what local news described as a Roaring Twenties-inspired gala, staged on the same date, one hundred years earlier, that George Merrick gathered friends and community leaders to unveil the hotel for the first time, according to the Biltmore's own centennial materials. Local 10 covered the gala as a single, tidy milestone: the Biltmore turns 100.
It isn't one milestone. It's the third one in three years, and if you live in the Gables and only remember hearing about "the centennial" once, you likely caught the middle chapter and missed the other two.
Three Landmarks, Built Three Years Apart, Turning 100 Three Years in a Row
Between 1924 and 1926, George Merrick and his development team put up three things that still define how the city looks and functions today: a public swimming pool carved out of an old rock quarry, the city government itself, and a resort hotel on Anastasia Avenue. Each one is now completing its hundredth year, in order.
| Landmark | Built | Turned 100 | How it was marked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venetian Pool | 1924 | 2024 | Closed for a multi-year historic restoration during its own centennial year, reopened in fall 2025 |
| City of Coral Gables | 1925 | 2025 | Closed its centennial with a Miami Symphony Orchestra concert staged at Venetian Pool |
| Biltmore Hotel | 1926 | 2026 | Marked with a Roaring Twenties gala on Jan. 14, a hundred years to the day after Merrick's original gathering |
That last row is still in progress. That's the part worth understanding if you live here, because the calendar hasn't closed on it yet.
The Pool Missed Its Own Party, Then Hosted the City's
There's a small irony buried in the timeline. Venetian Pool turned 100 in 2024, but according to Atlas Obscura's account of the site, its most recent major restoration began in October of that same year, with a planned reopening in fall 2025. The Gables' own official FAQ page still carries the line that it's "the only certified historic facility that is also a public pool in the country." The pool spent its own hundredth year closed for that restoration work.
It reopened just in time to host someone else's. When the city closed out its own 2025 centennial, it didn't pick a ballroom or a plaza. It staged a Miami Symphony Orchestra concert at Venetian Pool, reopened only months earlier, with guests shuttled in by trolley from a parking lot behind City Hall starting at 5:30 p.m., per the city's centennial events page. The landmark that started the run in 1924 got to close the second chapter in 2025.
The rest of that centennial year reads like a walking tour of the same few blocks. A HistoryMiami-led tour with resident historian Dr. Paul George started at the 1910 Merrick House, more than a decade older than any of the three centennial landmarks, and looped past Venetian Pool, the Biltmore, the DeSoto Fountain, Coral Gables Congregational Church, and Poinciana Place. A vintage market called the Coral Market set up inside that same 1910 house, built from local coral rock, to sell housewares and furniture in the family's original living rooms. And on March 13, 2025, the city dedicated a time capsule at the Biltmore's fountain entrance, marking 100 years since Merrick broke ground on the hotel and golf course, a year ahead of the building itself turning 100. That single ceremony straddled both centennials at once: the city's founding year and the Biltmore's construction year, a single groundbreaking anniversary sitting exactly between the two hundred-year marks.
The Biltmore's Turn Started With a Party and Isn't Finished With One
If the city's centennial was a closing act staged at someone else's landmark, the Biltmore's is shaping up as a full calendar year built around its own address. The gala in January referenced the exact night in 1926. The hotel's dining room, Fontana, ran a month-long anniversary menu through July 31. On July 4, the hotel's fireworks were paired with a new patriotic drone show, presented jointly by the city and the Biltmore to mark the country's 250th anniversary, according to Coral Gables Magazine's summer events roundup. Even sharing a date with a national holiday, the hotel's own hundredth keeps surfacing as the second reason for the celebration.
The hotel is also running a standing centennial package for the length of its anniversary year: a $100 resort credit, breakfast for two included daily, and two cocktails created specifically to mark the hundredth year, according to the offer listed with Miami and Beaches. A separate giveaway promises fifty winners a two-night stay. Unlike the gala or the fireworks, which had one date each, the package is built to run the length of the year, which means residents who want a low-key way to mark the hotel's hundredth don't need to have caught a specific night in January or July to do it.
Why the Sequence Matters More Than Any Single Party
Here's the part that gets lost when each of these gets covered as a standalone event: Merrick didn't build a pool, then years later decide to found a city, then years after that decide to add a hotel. He built all three within about three years, on land that had been pine and palmetto scrub not long before. The pool, the incorporation papers, and the hotel weren't separate projects on separate timelines. They were one continuous push, and the fact that they're now turning 100 in three consecutive years is simply the calendar catching up to how fast that stretch actually moved.
That pace is easy to miss when you're driving past these buildings every week. It's less easy to miss once you line the years up. Venetian Pool, built in 1924, hosted the symphony that closed out the city's own hundredth birthday in 2025. The Biltmore broke ground that same founding year and opened its doors the year after. None of that is three separate anniversaries that happened to land close together. It's one origin story with three release dates, and Coral Gables residents have now lived through the closing chapters of two of them and the middle of a third.
What's Left on the Calendar
The Biltmore's centennial materials note that more programming is still being announced for the remainder of its anniversary year, so residents who want to catch whatever comes next have reason to check the hotel's own centennial page periodically rather than assume the milestone ended with the January gala. The standing resort package remains the most accessible way to participate without waiting for an announced date.
For everyone else, the concrete takeaway is simpler: the next time someone mentions "the Coral Gables centennial" as if it were one event, it's worth knowing which of the three they actually mean, and knowing that the third one is the only one still open.
Curious what a hundred years of compressed development has done to property values, lot sizes, and what's actually for sale on these same streets today? Surelis Yanes has spent two decades working this market block by block. Let's Connect.
