09/30/2026
In 1928 the most notorious man in America bought a house in Miami Beach, and the city spent the next three years trying to get rid of him. 🌴
Al Capone paid about forty thousand dollars for the Palm Island property, a two story Spanish style villa on a small man made island in Biscayne Bay. He bought it through an intermediary because he knew his own name would kill the deal. The Palm Island estate covered two acres behind a seven foot wall. He added a pool, a boathouse and a gatehouse, and he settled in.
Miami's reaction was immediate and it was official. The city and the county pursued him through the courts, and in 1930 Florida governor Doyle Carlton directed sheriffs across the state to arrest Capone on sight if he entered their counties. He was picked up repeatedly on vagrancy and perjury charges. Miami filed a public nuisance suit seeking to padlock the Palm Island house and shut it down for good. Capone hired lawyers and fought all of it, and he largely won, because owning a house and paying your taxes is not a crime.
What finally moved him was federal, and it had nothing to do with Florida. He was convicted of tax evasion in Chicago in October 1931 and went to prison. He returned to Palm Island in 1940 after his release, in poor health, and he died in that house in January 1947.
The villa stood until 2021, when it was demolished. For decades it was the strangest kind of local landmark, a place people drove past slowly without ever saying why. Miami had spent years insisting the man was not welcome, and he still spent more of his ordinary daily life there than almost anywhere else. 🏝️
AI visualization based on historical context.