Article in the Miami Herald, July 26, 2007
BY CHARLES RABIN
Workers — who initially thought they had hit a pipe — unearth a ship’s cannon outside the Lido Spa Hotel on Tuesday.
Video | Cannon controversyThe cannon dug up near the Venetian Causeway on Tuesday might indeed be from a British brig or Spanish galleon that roamed the seas centuries ago.
But in keeping with South Florida’s zany history, it turns out the cannon spent a good deal of the mid-1900s as a simple decorative piece guarding the entryway of the old Monterrey Motel on Miami Beach.
”They had it out front,” Historic Museum of South Florida curator Jorge Zamanillo said, a day after its discovery under a sidewalk. “It was probably abandoned and used for fill.”
As word spread of Tuesday’s find, a flood of phone calls shed new light on the cannon’s origins: Prior to it standing sentry at the Monterrey, the cannon was pointed toward Biscayne Bay behind a scary old abandoned home — perhaps in wait of an unfriendly armada.
At least, that’s longtime Miami Beach resident Natalie Segal’s recollection.
”There was this old abandoned house like you’d see in scary movies,” said Segal, 69, who remembers the cannon dating back to the late 1940s.
“It had overgrown grass. It was like plodding through somewhere no one had ever walked. We came across this cannon at the waterfront. We just looked at it and thought we ought to get out of there.”
Still, the caretakers of the county’s artifacts weren’t taking any chances Wednesday. By mid-afternoon, county archaeologist Jeff Ransom — who said the cannon was an artifact whether it was above ground or not more than a half-century ago — had workers dig a trench to store the cannon for the time being.
PRESERVATION
He said the state has offered to pay transportation costs to Tallahassee, where it would be preserved. But first Miami Beach officials have to agree to pay to have an electrolysis machine peel away all the elements that have compounded on the cannon over the years.
”Then it will be just iron, and hopefully we’ll find a marking,” Ransom said.
Ten feet in length and perhaps weighing several tons, the cannon was uncovered Tuesday by construction workers installing new pipes outside the Standard hotel, formerly known as the Di Lido Hotel, and before that the Monterrey Motel.
