Our Story
History of the Wynwood Walls
In the decades after World War II, the warehouses north of downtown Miami, in a neighborhood known as Wynwood, hummed with sewing machines. Wynwood grew into the third-largest garment district in the United States. Its flat-roofed factories and loading docks produced apparel for department stores nationwide. For a generation, Wynwood was a working neighborhood in the fullest sense, defined by industry, commerce, and the people who kept both running.
That world came apart in the early 1990s. Apparel manufacturing moved offshore in search of cheaper labor, and Wynwood’s factories closed one after another. Many buildings sat empty, their windowless walls left to graffiti and neglect. By the turn of the century, much of Miami saw Wynwood as a place to drive through rather than visit. The bones were still there, however: block after block of sturdy, low-slung warehouses, but little else.
Tony Goldman saw those bones differently. He had already helped revive New York’s SoHo, Philadelphia’s Center City, and Miami Beach’s Ocean Drive, and he had a rare vision for neighborhoods that had been written off but were rich in architecture and history. In the mid-2000s, he began buying property in Wynwood, assembling a collection of buildings across the district. His thesis was simple and, at the time, contrarian: art would be the catalyst. Rather than wait for the market to discover Wynwood, he would give people a reason to come.
In 2009, Goldman partnered with renowned curator Jeffrey Deitch to launch the Wynwood Walls in its inaugural year, turning the exteriors of a cluster of his warehouses into an open-air museum of street art. He invited many of the world’s leading graffiti and street artists to paint at large scale, and the debut during Art Basel Miami Beach drew international attention. Since Goldman's passing in 2012, his daughter Jessica Goldman Srebnick has carried the vision forward. The Walls have hosted artists from across the globe, refreshing the murals year after year. What began as a bet on a forgotten neighborhood became its defining identity: the Wynwood Walls is now one of the most visited destinations in the world, surrounded by a district of galleries, restaurants, offices, and residences that matured around the art. And for the genre itself, the Wynwood Walls helped move street art from the margins into the mainstream, giving it a permanent, curated home and the respect long reserved for work inside museum walls.
“Wynwood Walls was an idea my father, Tony Goldman, had in 2009. As a romantic developer and placemaker passionate about art, he recognized that Wynwood needed a heartbeat and that art could uplift it.”
Goldman Global Arts
Goldman Global Arts is a Miami-based creative collective founded by Jessica Goldman Srebnick and is the curating arm of Goldman Properties. Goldman Global Arts (GGA) has elevated the platform of street art and public art as an instrument of change by infusing art and creativity into life in unexpected ways.
By challenging what is known and inspiring curiosity using a language that connects both people and art, Goldman Global Arts take on projects that will continue to shift the paradigm of how people interact with and perceive the spaces that surround them. To learn more about Goldman Global Arts visit Goldman Global Arts (opens in a new tab).
The Wynwood Walls Foundation
Our 501(c)(3) foundation supports local organizations through funding and programming — connecting established artists with youth through an artist-in-residency program, field trips, and grants. Learn more about the Foundation.
