The Freedom Tower, Cuba's Ellis Island

Rising above Biscayne Boulevard is a graceful tower crowned with an ornate cupola, one of the most beloved buildings in Miami. It opened in nineteen twenty five as the home of the Miami News and Metropolis newspaper, designed by the celebrated firm of Schultze and Weaver. Its two hundred and fifty five foot tower was modeled on the Giralda, the famous bell tower of the cathedral in Seville, Spain.

But this building earned its lasting fame decades later, and under a very different purpose. The newspaper eventually moved out. Then, in the early nineteen sixties, the federal government opened a refugee assistance center inside these walls.

For more than a decade, as hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled the revolution of Fidel Castro, this was where they came to be processed, examined, and helped to start new lives in America. They received medical care, food, clothing, and documents here. To the Cuban exiles who passed through its doors, it became known as El Refugio, the refuge, and it earned the nickname the Ellis Island of the South.

In two thousand eight it was declared a National Historic Landmark, honored not for its architecture but for what it meant to a people in exile.