Sometimes we ventured farther east to Southwest Fourth Street and Eighth Avenue near the Riverside Mercantile Building. This building, built by the Ku Klux Klan in 1926, became the home of Cuban exile live theater in the 1960s -- Teatro Martí.
Diagonally across from it and a block down near the bottom of the ridge was Ada Merritt Junior High School, the county's oldest junior high school, in a Spanish Colonial-style building. Four blocks north stood the Tivoli Theater where each Christmas, neighborhood kids received free presents from Santa Claus, or more likely, from a kindly management.
Nearly all these structures are gone. Today, more than 50 years later, the demolition of historic Riverside houses not only continues but has accelerated as a consequence of the greatest developmental boom in the area's history.
As sad as it has been to witness the demise of Little Havana's early buildings, other venerable Miami neighborhoods have suffered more.
Many of the city's toniest early subdivisions framed wide, beautiful Biscayne Boulevard just north of downtown. But now, block after block of homes and other buildings north of the Omni shopping mall have been demolished.
