Allapattah, Florida

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Allapattah is a neighborhood partly in the city of Miami, Florida, and partly in an adjacent unincorporated area of Miami-Dade County, at 25°48′52″N, 80°13′26″W.

The name is derived from the Seminole Indian language word meaning alligator. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the area was known as the Allapattah Prairie.^[1] The area is northwest of downtown, and about five miles east of Miami International Airport.

Allapattah was predominantly White from early in the 20th Century until the late 1950s, when there was a large influx of African-Americans displaced by the construction of Interstate Highway 95. Cubans began moving into the neighborhood in the 1960s. In the 1980s there was an influx of Dominicans Nicaraguans and later Haitians. It was then that the area began to become the mix that it is today. Now, residents from all across the Caribbean and Latin America reside in the area of Allapattah.^[2]

Today, many of the businesses and educational institutions in the neighborhood are generally located on Northwest 36th Street (US 27). The boundaries are roughly as follows: to the north, Northwest 46th Street, to the south, Northwest 20th Street, to the east, Northwest Seventh Avenue (US 441), and to the west, Northwest 27th Avenue.

[edit] Places of interest

• Allapattah Metrorail Station
• Earlington Heights Metrorail Station
• Allapattah Library
• Allapattah Middle School
• Miami Jackson Senior High School

[edit] References

1. ^ Muir, Helen. 1953. Miami, U.S.A. Miami, Florida: Hurricane House Publishers, Inc. LCC 53-8981.
2. ^ {http://sneakykitchen.com/Stories/allapattah.htm - Allapattah - A Mix to the Max] - accessed December 23, 2005