Steven Klindt, the executive director of the new Coral Gables Museum, laughs when he tells a story about how his new museum came to be. Plenty of people were involved over nearly a decade, but Realtor Robert Fewell, Klindt said, was among the most instrumental.

That’s because the view outside of his window didn’t live up to Coral Gables’ tony standard. To be accurate, it was rather an eyesore.

“He got tired of looking at a crummy building,” Klindt laughs.

So Fewell, who made his money in real estate and who has called Coral Gables home for 55 years, donated $2 million toward the estimated $3.5 million it took to restore the old 1939 police and fire station on Giralda.

The original building housed the police and fire staff through the 1960s and was made of coral rock, a porous material that had grown grungy over the decades and this led to a problem.

“One of the things that gave us a cost overrun was when they pressure-cleaned it. It did not come clean. I saw men on scaffolding for a long time filling all these holes with a putty knife,” Fewell said.

The effort, proponents say, was worth it. The restored landmark, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, will eventually house artifacts from the city’s past and host art and historic exhibitions once they are installed after the new year.

Officials, jazzed about the space, want to throw its doors open to the public on Sunday morning as the LEED-certified museum delivers a day devoted to free tours, live music, ribbon-cutting and presentations.

“We’re seven months late in opening the building . . . and so many people are eager for its opening we’re having an open house — showing off the building,” Klindt said.

Fewell hopes the building’s restoration and use as a museum honors founder George Merrick’s dream for his city — a dream deferred as the one-two punch from a 1926 hurricane and the Great Depression almost derailed Coral Gables.

“I think every city this size should have a museum,” Fewell said. “It’s one of the things Coral Gables did not have. I just always loved Coral Gables. It’s a beautiful city but an unusual city.”

Bringing the building up to standards, all the while honoring its past, proved a challenge for architect Jorge Hernandez.

“We wanted to restore it in such a way that it isn’t a mummifying of the building but . . . give it new life and allow people to understand the meaning of the building,” Hernandez said.

The building was built of solid slabs of coral, “Egyptian, in a way,” Hernandez explained. “We had to peel away many layers of subsequent changes to get to that ground zero.”

Originally, the building, like others of the time, had no air-conditioning. The jail cells had no glass. Little critters could easily jump through the bars and share a cell with the prisoners.

“It was a sweaty, rough and tough masculine environment and we had to air condition it, stabilize the humidity and prepare it for works of art. It’s difficult to do that without jeopardizing the coral stone which breathes and needs to breathe, Hernandez said about the restoration which includes a 5,000-square-foot plaza and the 3,000-square-foot Robert and Marian Fewell Gallery.

A combination of natural light and some creative methods of concealing lighting and wiring fixtures combine to give the museum a touch of old and new.

“Yes, this is the history of Coral Gables,” Klindt said, “but it can be contemporary, too.”

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/08/1864473/new-museum-in-coral-gables-opens.html#ixzz13rv9BsQY

BY HOWARD COHEN
hcohen@MiamiHerald.com