Remembering the Five O’Clock Club.

A sultry, velvet-draped jewel box of nightlife, the Five O’Clock Club defined postwar glamour on the Florida coast. Opened in the late 1940s at 641 Lincoln Road, the joint quickly became a magnet for swanky tourists, local socialites, and the Hollywood elite. It was a supper club in the grand tradition: tuxedoed waiters, a swinging house band, and candlelit tables set with cocktail coupes and cigarette girls weaving through the haze. Night after night, performers like Sophie Tucker, Peggy Lee, and Louis Armstrong lit up the intimate stage, while the dance floor shimmered with the clink of highballs and the rustle of satin gowns.

The Five O’Clock Club wasn’t just a place to drink – it was where stories were born. As the unofficial clubhouse of crooners, comedians, and anyone with a little cash and a taste for the high life, the club helped shape Miami’s image as a glamorous after-dark oasis. It was, in many ways, the blueprint for what South Beach would become decades later: cosmopolitan, a little risqué, and unapologetically stylish. Though the original club has long since closed, its legend lives on in the Art Deco cocktail glasses it helped inspire, and in the enduring fantasy of a perfect evening that begins, naturally, at five o’clock.

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