Why is Arthur Godfrey’s name on a Miami Beach street? Get the backstory

Arthur Godfrey Road, the 1 1/4-mile stretch that links the Julia Tuttle Causeway to Collins Avenue, was known as 41st Street until March 1956, when Miami Beach city leaders voted to rename it in honor of the television and radio star who was active in the community.

“The Arthur Godfrey Show” reached 82 million TV viewers in the early 1950s. The prime-time variety show, broadcast from Miami Beach, helped boost the Beach’s image as a tourist area.

Godfrey opened his first show by diving off a boat and swimming ashore, where his guests, the McGuire Sisters, greeted him. He then turned to the camera and said: “It’s great down here at Miami Beach. Why don’t you come down?”

While the rest of the nation shivered through an icy winter, Godfrey came on week after week, cavorting under the Florida sunshine and inviting his viewers to join him. Some of them apparently listened, for Miami Beach’s tourism trade grew and the area soon became one of the nation’s top vacation spots.

Godfrey’s name wasn’t the first considered for 41st street. In 1949, the merchants in the district petitioned to name the street Roosevelt Road, in honor of Franklin D. Roosevelt. That idea was never approved.

In 2015, a Miami Beach commissioner advocated that the city should remove the “Arthur Godfrey Road” name from 41st Street because he was no longer relevant. The measure didn’t pass a Miami beach City Commission vote. Some locals had also alleged that Godfrey was anti-Semitic because he partially owned a hotel with restrictive policies against Jews, while others have dismissed the allegations as unsubstantiated rumors that have persisted through the years.

Godfrey died in 1983 of emphysema and pneumonia. He was 79.

This story was originally published December 20, 2025 at 2:35 PM.