The Beatles at the Deauville Hotel, Miami Beach

The Beatles' second Ed Sullivan Show appearance was broadcast live from the Napoleon Ballroom of the Deauville Hotel, 6701 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, on 16 February 1964. The hotel closed after a 2017 fire and was imploded in November 2022. The lot is empty, awaiting redevelopment, and there is no Beatles marker.

Sunday 16 February 1964

A week after their first Ed Sullivan Show from New York, the Beatles did the second one from Florida. CBS set up in the Napoleon Ballroom of the Deauville, the hotel where the band was staying, and the program went out live. The group played six songs: She Loves You, This Boy, All My Loving, I Saw Her Standing There, From Me To You and I Want To Hold Your Hand. The estimated audience was about 70 million viewers. The Miami Design Preservation League puts it at 22,445,000 homes. CBS showed the appearance again on 20 September 1964.

The band spent that week at the hotel. According to the preservation league, they rehearsed in the basement, checked out of their rooms on 21 February, and the Deauville gave each of them a white terry cloth jacket with the hotel emblem.

The building that hosted it

Melvin Grossman designed the Deauville, which opened in 1957 on the site of a 1926 hotel. It was built in the Miami Modern style and had other famous visitors: John F. Kennedy addressed the Young Democrats Convention there in 1961.

An electrical fire closed the hotel in 2017, and the owners then ran up millions of dollars in fines for code violations. Its 17-storey tower was imploded on 13 November 2022. Just before the implosion, Miami Beach voters had turned down a ballot measure that would have allowed a taller replacement tower on the site.

What is at 6701 Collins Avenue now

The lot has been empty since the demolition. On 27 June 2025 the Miami Beach City Commission gave final approval to a plan by the developer Terra. It calls for a partial reconstruction of the old hotel's base alongside a new tower by Foster + Partners, with about 150 hotel rooms and 100 condominium homes, and still had to pass design review by the city's Historic Preservation Board. Reports at the time said construction could begin in 2026.

No plaque or sign about the Beatles has been reported on the site, and none of the approval reports mention one in the new design. The ballroom where the broadcast happened no longer exists.

Seven months later the Beatles returned to Florida for a concert at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville on 11 September 1964. The first Sullivan appearance, on 9 February, came from the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York.